Bishop Hill Is CCS worth it?
Mar 11, 2011 Energy This is interesting - a new paper that looks at carbon capture and wonders about the extra energy used in capturing and storing the carbon. If you use extra energy, you are releasing extra CO2, right?
Carbon Capture and Storage is being actively developed for deployment in fossil fuel power stations in an attempt to reduce future emissions of CO2 due to concerns about climate change. The deployment of this technology will cause an inevitable reduction in the overall efficiency of any electricity generation plant leading to an increase in demand for the fossil fuels used to power the generation process. This paper estimates the average reduction in generation efficiency caused by the imposition of Carbon Capture and Storage and considers its effects upon the depletion rate of global coal reserves. Future production of coal is modelled using a symmetrical production curve. The results suggest that the widespread adoption of Carbon Capture and Storage may result in the exhaustion of coal reserves several decades in advance of when this may happen if CCS is not deployed.
Reader Comments (23)
Hehe, I saw CCS and I immediately thought "Is Code Composer Studio worth it!" No. Not in the least. Ugh.
Mark
They did do a good version of Whole Lotta Love
I was listening to Radio 4 last week and I can't remember the programme, but there was someone speaking on it who was "Professor of zero energy carbon capture and storage". What a title for your CV! So don't worry. Some of the finest minds in the country are hard at work on this...
"The results suggest that the widespread adoption of Carbon Capture and Storage may result in the exhaustion of coal reserves several decades in advance of when this may happen if CCS is not deployed."
Surely that's what they're trying to achieve? What better scenario for the watermelons than there not being any coal left to further poison us all with deadly CO2?
There is an obvious solution to the problem of coal reserves running out. Just plaster all the countryside with windmills and stick them on the roofs of buildings too so that there is not a pleasant view left anywhere and nowhere is free of their noise.
The most depressing aspect of the CCS scandal is the vast waste of financial and human resources incurred to date.
For starters, just think how many man-hours went into producing this paper, and do you think it will alter by one iota the mindset of Huhne, Hendry, Lucas etc.
Hundreds of turbine-generator engineers world wide have been booking thousand of hours over the past several years looking into how to solve the unbelievable number of technical problems involved in accommodating this requirement.
Remember in the UK, CCS is a legal requirement for coal-fired plant - as Ed Miliband crowed on 23 April 2009, "no new coal without CCS".
Even if want to build a clean, efficient CCGT power station you will not get a permit unless the design of the plant is "carbon capture ready" and a space has to be earmarked adjacent to the power plant to allow construction of the CCS gear at a later date if and when it becomes available.
For a 2,000MW CCGT power station this dead space, (dead for decades because if you try to use the area for any other purpose the power station will be closed down) is equivalent to 30 Wembley football pitches.
CCS rivals corn based ethanol for policy absurdity. The energy going into separation, compressing and injection into the ground will makes little sense from a cost basis or in GHG reduction. Couple that with the fact mother nature sequesters much much more quite naturally as it forms carbonaceous rock as sentiment in the oceans. If you must sequester carbon, (and that's highly debatable) figure out how to enhance the natural processes just a little.
Brownedoff
Yes indeed. And the CCS technology is... embryonic, shall we say. Besides the EROEI issue, there's the minor detail about what to do with all the captured CO2. There will be lots. I know pumping it into depleted oilfields under the North Sea is under serious consideration, but you have to get it there first...
Besides, one or two geologists are sounding a note of caution over the long term containment issues. Too many people (not just Miliband, E.) seem to be treating CCS as a done deal. It is anything but.
Sean
'sentiment in the oceans' ;-)
Wish I'd thought of that.
Remember in the UK, CCS is a legal requirement for coal-fired plant
Which effectively outlaws new coal-fired plants for the foreseeable future. An interesting paper by a retired energy chap, Phillip Roberts (it's not on the net but I can copy to anyone interested - info@swap.org.uk), argues that CCS is likely to benefit only the oil industry which might be keen to use it as an EPR (Enhanced Petroleum Recovery) technology.
“There is thus an inherent trap in the idea of carbon capture and storage which is that despite coming up with a system which presents the possibility of enhancing the life of existing oil wells, which still contain two thirds of the oil they originally contained, this system cannot overcome the fundamental problem that in real terms the energy rate of return for products like gasoline and diesel will be about a half of the historic value from wells which can still lift their oil by normal means.”
“. . . given the energy and infrastructure costs of such large scale systems, which, amongst other infrastructure requirements, will need a whole new system of pipelines to gather the CO2 in sufficient quantity from more than one large power station, it is unlikely that even with reusing under sea pipelines that any one single oil company or consortium of oil companies could actually afford to fund such an undertaking without a large subsidy from the public purse. In practice this will mean that electricity consumers (we all consume electricity) will be providing a hidden subsidy to the oil industry in return for the rather uncertain merits of sequesting some CO2. It must also be questioned how much net CO2 will actually be sequestrated when depleted oil wells are used as the receiving storage vessel so the whole policy may seems to lack credibility.”
and later:
“. . . the augment that carbon capture and storage in redundant oil fields is a good way of solving this is doubtful as the amount of fossil carbon chemically bonded into the petroleum lifted by this technology means that the real rate of carbon sequestration will be less the name plate rate of the project.”
I am not competent to say if the author is right but his points seem valid. In short, CCS has scam written all over it.
The idea of pumping a reactive gas underground to store it in an environment perfect for its reaction is one of the great bad ideas of our time.
It is going to acidify in the ground wate.Being under pressure, high volume and very high concentration, the resulting solution will react more strongly with the native rock and minerals. The gas not held in solution will migrate up, acidifying along the way, and bubble up into everything from ground water to springs.
And, it will be fiendishly expensive to boot.
Typical AGW non-solution:
spend a huge amount of money to fail to accomplish the stated goal, while creating tremendous negative impacts and unintended consequences.
Toing and froing about CCS has raged in The Chemical Engineer ("TCE") for years. The basis of the contra's position is that the huge volume of nitrogen in the station exhaust that has to pass through the separation ("S" in CCS) stage makes the process not just inefficient but actually takes as much power as is available from the combustion. Detailed following of reports show that one after another of the operating companies have given up on it having claimed the "developement" funds available in return for setting up rinky-dink little pilot plants that nowhere near approach commercial scale. Another alternative looked at is to "oxy-combust" the coal (reducing the exhaust to about 20% of the volume) but the huge power needed to produce the oxygen on this scale makes this a non-starter. The politicians are deluded - we need more conventional coal fired power stations in tandem with new nuclear capacity. Gas (even with shale gas) can provide some breathing space but not for long - to understand a gas field imagine two balloons, one inflated with air and one with water - then let go. What happens?
Mar 11, 2011 at 1:09 PM | DaveB
"will need a whole new system of pipelines to gather the CO2 in sufficient quantity from more than one large power station"
I think the problem is not gathering "SUFFICIENT" quantity but the fact is there would be a shedload more CO2 coming down the pipeline every day than they could handle.
There is an enhanced oil recovery project in Canada (very famous, can anyone remember its name?) where they get CO2 from northern USA by pipeline and, with multiple injection wells, the average injection rate over the past several years has been about 1 million tonnes per year. This is on-shore rather than at the bottom of the North Sea!
Now the minumum size of a power station with CCS has to be at least 4 units x 500MW (the Germans are looking at 800MW units for this duty) because at least one unit's output will be absorbed by the Carbon Capture part of the caper.
Now 4 x 500MW units running for say, 300 days a year (they have to come off for maintenance) will generate about
8,000 x 4 x 300 = 9,600,000 tonnes per year
(8,000/500MW is quoted in the paper on page 928, - a bit on the low side, 10,000 is more like it)
So just to handle the output from one power station would require at least 10 oil fields to to be EOR mode just to cope with the avalanche of gas from one 2GW power station.
Suppose CCS became viable (yeah right) then the UK would build say, 18 x 2GW power stations (just to replace the current fleet of oil and gas fired stations) then the total output of CO2 is a staggering 172,800,000 tonnes per year and then you will need about 200 oil fields in EOR mode. For the UK these fields would have to be under water and, at say, 10 injection wells per field, that is 2,000 platforms at sea.
The mind boggling numbers alone, never mind the the technical and logistic problems, would lead any rational person to say "for goodness sake, stop CCS, now!"
Utter madness.
brownedoff
Many thanks for the numbers. I never seem to have time. The brontosaurus in the room now has an official weight ;-)
I just saw this on the news..... "Doctors are thought to planning on seeking a vote of no confidence in the Health Secretary over his plans to reform the NHS. More than 350 consultants, GPs and junior doctors are expected to attend an emergency British Medical Association meeting next ..."
I suggest we get 350 economists (in fact anyone who can add up with authority), energy experts, etc. to seek a vote of no confidence in CCS, and no confidence in the minister for whatever it's called this week.
Why is it so difficult to get politicians to understand the consequences of CCS? They appear to listen only to green advocacy groups and AGW proponents in formulating energy policy. Why aren't our power companies making themselves heard over the AGW clamour?
I am seriously concerned about the UK's future energy production and if we can't get politicians to listen we are certainly heading for a low carbon future.
Of course all the coal fired power stations they've been building in China have CCS........
CCS is simply a silly idea and by insisting on it the government is putting a ball and chain round the ankle of the economy for no advantage whatsoever. The fact that there has been no successful pilot scheme shows there are fundamental problems which haven't been solved, all the obvious solutions involve large amounts of energy. I suppose there's the usual assortment of fantasies about green jobs arising from CCS and exporting this fabulous new technology.
CCS has the whiff of desperation. If we assume (just for the sake of argument) that the consensus is right about CO2, then CCS represents about the only real hope.
Ranged against it are:
1. The uselessness of renewables. Incredibly optimistic analysis only estimates about 30% displacement of fossil fuels by mid-century.
2. The industrialisation of China, and then India. Powered in the main by coal. Lots of CO2 going forward.
3. Democratic inertia in the face of long-term problems.
If CCS doesn't pan out and the science is right, we had better get on with building those sea walls. And nuclear. Lots of nuclear.
Where do we get most of these essential house building materials:
plaster board and breeze block? Gypsum for plaster board is a by-product in large quantities from Flue Gas De-sulphurisation at UK coal fired power stations and cement (breeze) blocks too are also economically made in large quantities from Pulverised Fuel Ash waste. So that what plans are there to replace these resources if UK coal fired generation is significantly reduced? OK, not a problem, we can get the stuff from China can't we?
How to Build a House from Coal:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A44486922
CCS is a dead duck. Who is going to build a coal fired power station in the US or Europe with untried technology when you can have a gas fired power station with lower capital costs and a cleaner fuel?
Shale gas has changed everything.
randomnoise,
You don't need plasterboard or breeze blocks to build a yurt, and that's where the people so keen on CCS etc seem to be heading us.
Mar 12, 2011 at 2:12 PM | Robert
I do not know where you live, but in the UK it is not as easy as you imply.
If want to build a clean, efficient CCGT power station in the UK, you will not get a permit to do so unless the design of the plant is "carbon capture ready" and a space has been earmarked adjacent to the power plant to allow construction of the CCS gear at a later, date if and when it becomes available.
For a 2,000MW CCGT power station, this dead space, (dead for decades because if you try to use the area for any other purpose the power station will be closed down) is equivalent to 30 Wembley football pitches (22 hectares).
Also, one power company in the UK will not know until about the end of 2012 if it is to be allowed to lay the 30km pipline from the national natural gas network to the power station site. If the company does get a permit in December 2012, this will be 3 years after it first submitted to the UK government a request for consent to build a 2GW CCGT power station, and probably 4 years since they first started work on the project.
You could not make it up!