What would it take for coal fired power plants to meet the recently announced EPA standards? Is it a matter of technology or cost? If some new technology were developed could coal again be used for power generation?
Much of the technology exists, both for use of coal in electrical power generation and as conversion to syngas or synthesized liquid fuel. One problem is that much of the ‘clean coal’ technology is proprietary and closely-held in engineering detail. This (as with the SDI in the '80s) has meant a field day for coal opponents, who can confidently claim that ‘clean coal’ is hooey because there’s no field evidence that it works.
The particular ‘fun’ with the new rules is that most clean-coal technologies involve some additional fuel consumption … and the carbon from this factors into the new EPA numbers. Clean coal that does sequestration involves a very substantial ‘overhead’ - greater than 30%, and probably much more if the equivalent of ‘well-to-wheel’ cost for the actual sequestration is included. Sure, there is a nifty market in the growing fast-food industry for some of the recompressed and liquefied CO2 … but probably not enough to keep up with even baseline generation increase that would involve coal firing.
There are two problems with coal. The first is the ‘gist’ of the new teeth in the EPA regs, the idea that CO2 is a ‘named pollutant’. There’s no getting around that heat-engine cycles that use coal as a fuel will have a substantial carbon ‘footprint’ compared to others (the poster-child ‘other’ example being catalytic direct steam, which produces something like 11 molecules of steam at typical ‘engine’ superheat level for each molecule of carbon in methanol fuel). If there are absolute restrictions on carbon emissions, then expect to see ‘cheaper’ natural gas dominate
What is happening to coal is not just about coal.
I believe that the impetus behind the new regulations affecting coal go far beyond the mere products of combustion including CO2. The deeper objectives are linked to the broader transformational initiatives of degrowth.
Underground CO2 sequestration, of a sort, has been going on for years in the oil fields. CO2 separated out from natural gas processing, is injected back into oil field formations to enhance oil recovery (EOR). So far the only large (110MW) coal power plant CO2 sequestration project to come on line is in Canada. It also is used for EOR. Since oil fields are not always handy to a power plant, there have been other projects to test sequestration in other deep geologic formations, however, so far they have all been small test projects. The following is an MIT database of various catagories with lists of these projects:
I have been casually following the technical development of carbon-capture-and -storage technology for a few years and what I read seems to indicate that nobody;including the vast majority of engineers working in the power industry, really believe it’s feasible both for technical and economic reasons.
Carbon-capture-and-reuse; in other words using Co2 removed from flue gas to manufacture synfuels and other chemicals as detailed by some other posters in this thread seems to have some promise…
Perhaps, much to the chagrin of the enviros, the future of coal will change after the 2016 election.
(Flame suit on.)
The use of coal for electric power generation has declined primarily because of ‘free-market’ economics. Natural gas is very plentiful and cheaper for end users.
A coal powered facility in Holyoke, Ma recently shut down completely. No plans to convert it to gas. Most of the time it has been in standby mode. Only came on line when required.
Used low sulfur coal from China. Major pollution for the area, even though they tried to keep it clean. I bike by it quite often.
Rich
North Dakota’s Dakota Gasification Company, which makes artificial “natural” gas from lignite coal, has been sequestering the byproduct CO2 for years and sending it in a 200-mile pipeline to the oil fields of Saskatchewan. See dakotagas.com.
At some point, the newly-plentiful supply of natural gas (which is what makes the new regulation possible without reducing electrical supply below demand over the next several years) will again increase to the point where cleaning up emissions will become economically feasible. The coal isn’t going anywhere in the meantime (although the infrastructure to transport it might).
Some of these posts are startling. What is “degrowth”? Also, if the 2016 election were to result in a huge rebirth in the coal industry, how on earth would the country benefit in the long term? Many of us have grandchildren, do we not? Do you want them living in that world…while you’re no longer here to answer for it?
The pure and simple fact is that coal usage is way down and going lower because it is the worst possible source of energy. Many of us have rationalized fracking (although I bet almost none of us live in a county with large numbers of waste injection wells; but I do) and as worshippers at the altar of Capitalism we have to recognize that oil is not only at near-historic lows but is likely to stay that way for quite a while. The renewables industry is growing and unlikely to yield to more filthy carbon, so…What on earth is there to like about or defend about the dirtiest, most unhealthy source of energy in the world? On what possible grounds? That the railroad industry will take the consequent hit? That it’s somehow a plot by envio-liberals/socialists/communists, etc to kill American industry? Rubbish!
The point is that the “war on coal” is, as a NYT columnist noted the other day, actually more like a going away or retirement party. The age of coal is quickly coming to an end no matter how much some will miss it.
So far I’ve just dwelt on coal’s uneconomic costs and its costly filth (by the way, I bet none of us live in a coal heated house, nor miss it; guess why?). But I’d ask coal’s apologists to consider what the coal industry ha
Darn, nkp you are spot on. Their is no plot, natural gas is cleaner, easier to use, has no storage issues and burns clean. Unfortunately for the miners and the railroads their no rational or economic justification for coal.
So long coal
[quote user=“NKP guy”]
Some of these posts are startling. What is “degrowth”? Also, if the 2016 election were to result in a huge rebirth in the coal industry, how on earth would the country benefit in the long term? Many of us have grandchildren, do we not? Do you want them living in that world…while you’re no longer here to answer for it?
The pure and simple fact is that coal usage is way down and going lower because it is the worst possible source of energy. Many of us have rationalized fracking (although I bet almost none of us live in a county with large numbers of waste injection wells; but I do) and as worshippers at the altar of Capitalism we have to recognize that oil is not only at near-historic lows but is likely to stay that way for quite a while. The renewables industry is growing and unlikely to yield to more filthy carbon, so…What on earth is there to like about or defend about the dirtiest, most unhealthy source of energy in the world? On what possible grounds? That the railroad industry will take the consequent hit? That it’s somehow a plot by envio-liberals/socialists/communists, etc to kill American industry? Rubbish!
The point is that the “war on coal” is, as a NYT columnist noted the other day, actually more like a going away or retirement party. The age of coal is quickly coming to an end no matter how much some will miss it.
So far I’ve just dwelt on coal’s uneconomic costs and its costly filth (by the way, I bet none of us live in a coal heated house, nor miss it; guess why?). But I’d ask coal’s apologi
You people are all dreaming … and if you were to depend on “renewables” for heating, cooling, cooking and cleaning in your house, you would be crying for relief.
After 40 years of coal cleaning up with scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators and more, the main remaining “pollutant,” carbon dioxide, happens to be the building block of life. You exhale it from your nostrils (“original sin,” as George Will calls it).
This supposedly heinous gas makes up 400 parts per million of the atmosphere – less than one-half of 1 percent. Of which man, working as dirtily as he can, accounts for no more than 3 percent.
Take a step back from “settled science” – which is far from settled, except in the media effusions of non-scientists – and think for yourselves for once.
Fred, you make sense. To look at a part of the anthropogenic warming that is taken as “settled science,” we can look at not-much-now proclaimed idea that as the oceans warm they take on more carbon dioxide, and as they take more on, they become warmer. But, one little thing that I learned early in my college course of chemistry (4 years of it) is hat as a liquid warms and warms it holds less and less gas. Has the universe changed so much in the last fifty years that liquids now hold more gas as they warm? Truly settled science (knowledge) declares that liquids have not changed.
The media and politicians of both parties do not give nearly enough attention to this issue, the repetition of silly propaganda statements by some notwithstanding. 97% of real scientists doing the research in that field agree that climate change is empirically true and that is is mostly anthropogenic and is a serious danger.
Boys, all I’m going to say is this. Coal’s been pronounced dead or dying many times in the past, but it just seems to keep coming back, for various reasons.
Watch, wait and see.
Not only is the science settled, but the politics is settled now also. The Senate voted 98 to 1, that climate change is real. They also got a filibuster-proof vote of 60, to say that humans contribute to climate change.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/230316-senate-votes-98-1-that-climate-change-is-real
Well lets be honest here about the facts:
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Climate Change is real and Climate change happens from time to time.
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Man has a impact on the micro climate via his activities on planet Earth.
When I attended the University of Wisconsin in the 1980’s neither of the above was in dispute and both were openly taught without controversy or political correctness in the weather courses there. I think most people agree on one and two above and perhaps the Senate was trying to set a baseline with it’s vote.
The controversy is in the belief that “man is solely or primarily responsible for global warming and that man can control it or impact the macro climate dramatically via artificial controls or choices in energy sources”
The latter statement or position is where the controversy is as it has yet to be proven scientifically. So yes it is highly possible that Coal is comming back along with other carbon fuels in that it is still a small minority that believe in the last statement above…regardless of the recent Senate vote, which was carefully worded to exclude the controversial parts of the above last statement that man is primarily to blame.