Week of November 3rd

Notes on "Can Coal and Clean Air Coexist in China?"

• coal produces 75% china's electricity
• brown cloud of smog visible from space- which travels to the US and accounts for 15% of the air polution
• China biggest greenhouse gas producers, but US more greenhouse gass emissions by person
• air would fail US an EU saftey standards in many chinese cities
• air pollution ends up costing $100 billion in health costs and stunts growth
• burn through 20 million tons of coal a year in mountains alone- 2.5 billion ton, double the amount of the US is burned in China annually, not including imports
• most of coal goes to 541 coal-fired power plants and produces energy for people
• China opens 1 large coal power plant a week because of their "engineering optimism"
• Why? China has 1.3 billion pop and produces for US and Europe
• Plan to decrease sulfur dioxide by 10% by next 5 yeras
• plan to shut down small inefficient coal plants and replacing them with larger ones
• pilot program to capture and store CO2 by using coal as a fuel for electricity generagion at a power plant called "Green Gen." 3 phases of project. 1)power and coal plant will contribute $ to contruct IGCC power plant (integrated gasification combined cycle.)
• would cut acaid rain, smog and capure 80% of Co2 that woudl otherwaise be entering the atmosphere through combustion...however, no economically profitable...have to use more coal to fuel the process that turns coal to gas and captures CO2..have to burn more coal to get same electricity.But with the rising price of oil...who knows? It could be profitable and it has to be...the plant is intended to be "for profit."
• "Green Gen" is most ground breaking product currently in the works with cancellation of "Future Gen" a similar US project that tanked when costs skyrocketed.
• Olympics have increased the attention paid to China's air quality. Bejing air quality has gotton better as smaller plants have been closed and factories have been moved to industrial parks on the outskirts of the city.
• Green Gen seems like a good answer, but at the same time China is developing a process to turn coal into liquid fuel which would emit twice as much CO2 and consumes more energy
• However it is interesting to consider how much of China's air pollution is a result of producing products for the US or EU.

Furthur Research on Future Gen

• 5 years and $50 million spent on preliminary studies for Future Gen...a site was picked in Mattoon, Ill... 14 of world's largest coal producers and burners behind it...and then the US Dept of Energy decided to postpone/cancel the plans to build it
• Instead the Dept of Energy wants to work with coal plants already running to develop carbon-capture-and-storage capabillity.
• Costs: $407 million to research how to burn coal most efficiently and $241 million to demonstrate carbon capture and storage tech.....vs....$900 million for FutureGen
• Problem: few plants have capability of developing carbon-capture and storage because they dont have the technology to turn coal into gas and remove pollutants ... and few new plants can be built because of the high cost of cement, steel and tech
• 2 possible future IGCC plants= Duke Energy Plant in Indiana and Souther Company's demo plant
• There have been a few demos of storing CO2 in small amounts...usually then used to push oil and natural gas to surface...but there is no comercial scale plant that captures AND stores CO2
• Post-combustion capture-captures CO2 after coal has been burned- cheapter because it skips coal to gas step but more technically difficult
• Death of FutureGen= death of plans for hydrogen economy. Plant was supposed to produce electricity and clean hydrogen from coal..since the CO2 would be captured and stored. Now plans for this in any other IGCC plants

Additional research on turning Coal into liquid Fuel

• US has 1/4 world's coal reserves and 50% of electricity is produced from coal...why not use it to decrease oil dependency
• 2006-first US coal-diesel production facility in Gilberton PA
• produce 1.4 million tons of waste of coal to produce 5,000 barrles of oil a day of deisel fuel
• To create fuel coal is mixed with 02 and steam at high temperature and pressure to produce CO2 and H2. Then Fischer-Tropsch synthesis uses a catalyst to transform gas into liguid synthetic crude which is then furthur refined. At times mercury, sulfur, ammonia and others are extracted for sale on commodities market
• use waste coal (coal discarded because of low energy content)
• WMPI relys on approaches innovated by South African energy giant Sasol- method uses energy-poor coal with lignite and bitumen
• end product is cleaner than conventional diesel- new car about to come out with new V-6 engine that cuts nitrogen oxids and other emissions further
• discarded CO2 can be used to pump up oil or sold to soda companies
• natural gas can also be a source of synthetic diesel, and its cheaper... but the US doesnt have as much natural gas as coal

all from scientific american website

In my opinion, while expensive scientific break throughs are the only way to make real technological advancements, the focus should be on more economical solutions to both the oil and greenhouse gas emission issues. The idea has to sell, if it doesnt all the money and time spent crafting the idea by valuable scientists is meaningless and a huge waste. The problem is so pressing a real solution needs to be discovered. While I think coal has to be considered as an alternative fuel source for the US, considering the abundance of coal within the US, a feel that going for the most radical and expensive change is very unlikely to work. You cant change industry over night. Instead we should strive for gradual change, create technology that can be implimented in current factories to make them cleaner and use new clearner technology and standards on new factories when they would naturally have been built anyway. I realize this answer seems to belittle to pressing nature of the climate change issue, but doing something that works is better than throwing out a million brilliant ideas that would never work.