Coal not dead yet

[Lab]

Japanese technology squeezes more power out of coal

New plant touts 30% greater generating efficiency with 30% CO2 reduction

http://asia.nikkei.com/Tech-Science/Tech/Japanese-technology-squeezes-more-power-out-of-coal

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[blue streak 1]

Costs ?  Costs of various coals per BTU.  Same for Oil and Gas. Then KwHour costs.

Proceduce plant construction costs per KwHour. Same for regular thermal.

Life of these plants compared to present thermal plants.

[Murphy Siding]

Wouldn't this cut coal demand by 30% ? 

[tdmidget]

Pure hokum. Blowing oxygen over hot coal will indeed produce a gas. It is called carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon dioxide and heat produced from any combustion process is directly related to the amount of carbon burned.

A pipe at an angle is new tecnology?

[IslandMan]

Coal could provide the world's energy needs for centuries, but the problem is the carbon dioxide that would go with this.

There are a couple of technologies which, if used together, could bring coal back into the picture as a clean energy source.

Carbon dioxide could be pumped into exhausted fracking wells to keep it out of the atmosphere. Since carbon dioxide is adsorbed by shale more readily than methane, this should keep the greenhouse gas out of harm's way.

The second technology is underground gasification of coal, or UGC. In this, two linked wells are drilled into the coal seam and oxygen and steam pumped in. The coal is partially burned to a mixture of combustible gases (largely carbon monoxide and hydrogen) which is brought to the surface.  The gas mixture can then either be converted to hydrogen or burnt in a power station, the carbon dioxide produced in either case interred as described above.

UGC would be used for coal seams which are uneconomic to mine (in fact you wouldn't want to use UGC near any conventional mine, to avoid the risk of gas leakage and uncontrolled underground fires. UGC would be used where there is no possibility of atmospheric air getting into the coal seam).

 

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

After reading the article, it would appear that this "new" technology is just moving from a pilot plant to operational testing.  There is a certain amount of wishful thinking involved, which is to be expected, but let's see how well this proposal works out in everyday operation.

[Euclid]

Maybe the idea is so shocking because we were all told that coal is dead.  Now we learn that was just a political position; and after eight years of punishing coal, it appears to have only made it stronger.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/clean-coal-technologies.aspx 

[RME]

tdmidget

Pure hokum. Blowing oxygen over hot coal will indeed produce a gas. It is called carbon dioxide.

I'd be careful of judging engineering, particularly proprietary or 'trade-secret-related' engineering, from the language in a magazine article or PR release.  The practice of GPCS on locomotives alone shows the BS in your blanket assertion; one very likely reason to use "oxygen" in a clean-coal system is that, combined with FGR, it allows oxidation control in the combustion plume without concern for atmospheric nitrogen, so it's relatively easy to obtain the desired CO and, where desired, H2 via the water-gas shift reaction, without concern over NOx generated by high process heat.  Yes, all the C eventually wants to wind up as CO2 ... which is then reacted or compressed to be sequestered from the atmosphere.

The amount of carbon dioxide and heat produced from any combustion process is directly related to the amount of carbon burned.

Well. of course it is.  Fourth-grade chemistry will tell you that.  But you neglect the fact that carbon takes two oxygens, and they do not add with equal kinetics, and carbon monoxide is a gas even under standard conditions (whereas any fixed carbon is, as anyone who has studied carbon-fiber composites or carbon/carbon construction will know, usually a decidedly refractory substance). 

If there were a Combustion Fairy (probably a relative of the Electricity Fairy so beloved of the battery-electric vehicle people) who guaranteed that carbon always banged straight to CO2 during power generation, there would be a more direct relationship as you  note.  Of course most of the history of automobile emissions technology would be greatly simplified if this were the case...

A pipe at an angle is new technology?

I think this is referring to the idea of holding carbon dioxide in its liquid phase at sufficient pressure depth, net of any additional subterranean heating.  Not sure how well this would work in practice; personally I like the idea of sequestration with partial adsorption in fracked beds a bit better, if ground-based sequestration is the approach that is supposedly most cost-effective.  I agree with you that even the approaches used in liquid-phase CO2 sequestration are hardly new technology; presumably it's relatively new to the countries expecting to make cap-'n-trade progress in World Opinion by sequestering some politically-suitable amount of their increased carbon combustion emissions...

[/quote]

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Euclid

Maybe the idea is so shocking because we were all told that coal is dead.  Now we learn that was just a political position; and after eight years of punishing coal, it appears to have only made it stronger.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/clean-coal-technologies.aspx 

 

It's also an economic position.  Because of fracking and increased production, many utilities are finding natural gas to be cheaper than coal for generating electricity.  A fair number of coal-fired plants have been converted to natural gas.

[RME]

CSSHEGEWISCH

It's also an economic position.

Perhaps a better interpretation of tdmidget's position is that, even ignoring all capital and operating costs of the clean-coal approach, an additional amount of fuel has to be burned, with associated carbon emissions.  The last time I looked at the technology, the best approach still involved at least 37% extra coal mass for the same net electrical MW output.  This might be compared with the roughly 6% penalty from DPF regeneration in diesels ... which provokes such cries of agony from cost-conscious fleet managers.

It's easy, of course, to adjust the economics to reflect the increased fuel burn, and it is relatively easy to accommodate the increased mass of CO2 in sequestration schemes.  But the cost of coal-fired electric power will have to go up by at least that amount "permanently" even if  a full nitrogen-excluding FGR cycle can be made as Rankine-cycle-efficient as a good current once-through boiler plant.

Part of the concern will be whether natural gas or LNG 'repowers' will be expected to sequester their proportion of carbon emissions -- these are lower per lb. of fuel consumed, but more gas is needed for the same net heat release to boiler absorbing surface per unit time...

[Ulrich]

Power engineering has really lagged behind in recent years...i.e. we still need to burn stuff to create steam that drives a turbine that generates the electricity to power our smart phones and computers. How 20th century. Thorium nuclear reactors, thermocouples, and maybe even nuclear fusion is the future. Burning coal more efficiently is still burning coal..a stop gap measure at best.. coal not dead YET.. indeed.