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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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That's the sound of clean coal. Well, cleaner coal. A relatively small unit attached to the smokestack at the Mountaineer Power Plant in West Virginia is capturing some 1.5 percent of the carbon dioxide the coal-fired plant would otherwise belch into the sky.
The loud thrum comes from the whirring of fans that cool the flue gas and the jostling of an agitator that keeps things moving in the tower where the reaction to actually capture the CO2 takes place. There’s also the chug of the compressor, which turns the odorless, colorless greenhouse gas into a milky liquid at 1,400 pounds per square inch (psi).
After that it's off to the storage wells where the fluid CO2 is further compressed to more than 2,000 psi and pumped a mile and a half underground where it's injected into the pores between grains of rock in a layer of sandstone laid down some 440 million years ago.
So far so good for the Mountaineer project, which cost American Electric Power more than $70 million to build. But questions remain. What can be done to clean up coal's other problems, like toxic ash residue or the removal of actual mountaintops? Can carbon capture and storage be scaled up to the size necessary to capture a significant fraction of the world's greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning? What will that cost? And will all that CO2 stay put?
After all, as the mayor of the Ohio town across the river from Mountaineer told me: carbon capture and storage sounds all well and good... until something happens.
—David Biello
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9 Comments
Add CommentYou say it is capturing "some 1.5 percent" of the carbon dioxide the coal-fired plant would otherwise belch into the sky? That's certainly 1.5% good news!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood news indeeed. Just a small remark... We don't need to capture all the CO2. We just need to capture the surplus f the biocapicity (and that assures no impact). So I'd say it's 3% good news ;)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes JamesDavis - you are so superior to those "blind and stupid" West Virginians. You only use the products produced by coal and electricity from coal. You don't actually have to take part in production of those things. You are so much better than they.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLike it or not, coal fired power generation is efficient, economical and legal. And economic reality dictates that it will remain an important part of the picture, political posturing notwithstanding.
But I do thank you for showing us the true heart of an environmental extremist. You aren't by chance a Czar in the Obama administration are you? Because if so, your post would be great stuff for Glen Beck.
How much of the energy produced by coal has to be used to sequester CO2? 20%, 30%?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuestion the validity of even needing to captuer CO2! New study using historic data shows the rate of environmental absorption stays the same regardless of the percentage in the atmosphere. This refutes the "computer models" the IPCC relied upon that shows lower absorption. Beyond that, carbon soot is found to be the primary cause of glacier and ice field melting, not CO2. So, spend the money cleaning up the soot and aerosols, and not sequestering CO2. And, since CO2 is free plant food, we should adapt and enjoy the benefits of increased plant and crop production. For to reduce CO2 would be to cause starvation in the 3rd world. But then, Science Czar Holdren would like that, because he believes in culling humanity.
The economics of capturing CO2 may be moot very soon. Read the article at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15501 and see how our government is collapsing our economy. In a few years, there may not be the funds to operate the facility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGovernment aids to Coal generating plant will not be able to affect climate change in time. It will take decades to begin to have any affect, and will do nothing to eliminate CO2 that has already been released into the atmosphere. Only biomass pyrolysis can hope to have any real impact in the short term. Read the technical sections at www.eprida.com and invest in a proven technology if you can.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStoring CO2 underground is based on the illusion that CO2 is a bad greenhouse gas. CO2 already absorbs as much infrared as is possible. Adding more CO2 to the atmosphere cannot cause more infrared to be absorbed. Wikipedia article "Greenhouse Gas" shows the saturation of the greenhouse effect. For example, absorption of more infrared at 10.6 microns cannot occur if CO2 concentration increases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisR; Blakely : Please cite the exact statement stating this. I just read the whole entry and didn't see any such thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook at the plot. The peak at 15 microns (not 10.6) cannot be any higher. Goggle the report "The Lynching of Carbon Dioxide-the Innocent Source of Life", written by Dr. Hertzberg for more detail.
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