COAL PLANT CO2 RESIDUALS TO 1%
A literature review undertaken as part of this study exposes the 90% capture rate cap as an artificial limit. It is an historical benchmark based on the economics of capture. To-date, capture technology developers have largely focused on designing plant for CO2 capture rates of 85% to 90%, leaving 10-15% of the emissions uncaptured, which are usually referred to as residual emissions.
The review indicated there were no technical barriers to increasing capture rates beyond 90% in the three classic capture routes and with the broad suite of CO2 capture technologies currently available or under development. In a “well below 1.5 C” scenario, it is projected that net zero carbon emissions would be required by early in the second half of this century. A techno-economic analysis of a standard process applied to both coal- and gas-fired power plants revealed that, with dedicated process design, the additional costs of achieving essentially zero CO2 emissions were quite modest in comparison with the costs of achieving a 90% CO2 capture.
In conventional carbon capture and storage, CO2 is injected at high pressure into sedimentary basins in a gaseous, liquid or supercritical phase (where the liquid is at a temperature and pressure beyond the point it usually turns into a gas). An impermeable cap rock ordinarily prevents the CO2 from leaking.
But in Iceland, there is no such impermeable cap. Here, an alternative method is being developed where CO2 is dissolved in water prior to or during injection into the porous basalt rock. Dissolving the CO2 makes it less buoyant, and the CO2-charged fluid tends to sink down through the rock, lessening the risk of the CO2 escaping into the atmosphere.
Carbon Dioxide in to Rock Plant in Iceland
The dissolved gas is injected into basalts and reactive rock formations at a depth of about 500m the dissolved gas is injected into basalts and reactive rock formations at a depth of about 500m where the CO2 can turn rapidly into minerals.
Key points
- Carbon capture and storage has a key role in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.
- CO2 storage through mineral carbonation extends the applicability of carbon capture and storage by enabling storage in areas previously not considered feasible.
- The rapid mineralization of CO2 through injection into reactive rock formations increases storage security.
- Carbon mineralization in basaltic rocks offers a global storage potential that exceeds anthropogenic emissions.
- The method can be used for the subsurface storage of CO2, and potentially other environmentally important gases, through water capture, although this approach is water-intensive.
- Considerable efforts are needed to accelerate the deployment of CO2 storage through mineral carbonation, including more widespread operation in diverse conditions.
5 Comments
This technology has caught up with the climate scam. It was not around when the UN/IPCC started the global warming con in the 60’s. When the earth had actually cooled from 1945 to 1979 they released data to show that there was warming but it went into the depths of the oceans.
I assume this process would also apply to a gas power plant which is where we are going at the moment. If gas produces about half the emissions of a coal power plant why aren’t we building more of them and why are we not using the 99% carbon dioxide capture method.
I am more inclined to believe that changes in temperatures are determined by weather patterns such as those driven by the el nina and la nina. The records that allegedly go back to 1880 were not published until 1998 and are at odds with the higher temperatures of the 80’s and 90’s that have not been included in the archived data.
CO2 levels should have increased dramatically when temperatures rose sharply in the late 80’s but they did’t so where is the correlation. In order to line up with the narrative they simply removed the higher temperatures and replaced them with lower temperatures.
“Our guys have been saying this stuff for half a century: ‘the battle to feed humanity was over in 1969’…’65 million Americans will starve by 1989’… ‘England won’t exist by the year 2000’…’a billion people could die from the weather by 2020’… don’t you see? It’s all BS — intentional BS. It’s the Cloward-Piven strategy, applied to science. Our goal isn’t to make science better; the goal is to destroy science, to overwhelm it with pure crap, and rebuild it eco-friendly-and-data-free. It’s like what the Marxists did: make some totally bizarre assertions that everyone knows is crap, then accuse the few people with the guts to openly question it of being reactionaries or deniers or something, and then do everything you can to destroy them. Eventually people learn: don’t question eco-science, and especially don’t imply that data matters. We can’t be proven wrong. We want science to dictate, not investigate.”