[ROCKMAN]

Sub – I don’t know the details but I suspect some processing like getting out as much water as possible and other components that might create any mineralization. Injecting anything down a well bore is not as simple as many might think. First, given how corrosive CO2 can be (especially when water is present) expensive chrome coated steel has to be used. The problem with onsite injection is horsepower. One can always inject CO2 into a salt water bearing sandstone reservoir. But if that reservoir hasn't had its pressure reduced by oil/NG production the injection pressure will have to be significantly higher than formation pressure otherwise the injection rate won’t be sufficient. That rate is no less critical to the process than is the oil/NG production rate of a producing well. That not only takes a lot more energy there’s also the risk of fracturing the rock. Good when you’re trying to produce oil/NG from a shale…bad when you’re trying to inject CO2/water. Water drive (IOW constant pressure) reservoirs are much more common than pressure depletion (IOW declining pressure) reservoirs.

Two ways to overcome that high cost of injection: inject into a pressure depleted reservoir so less hp is required or create some additional cash flow by using the CO2 for EOR. The odds of finding such conditions under an existing plant are slim to none. That why these new plants are being built in areas where the synergism works. Kinda like the answer the old crook gave when asked why he robbed banks: because that’s where the money is. Same thing with CO2 sequestering: it’s only going to happen (without govt mandate) when the economics justify it. Even that big sequestering effort in Texas is using $200 million in tax payer money to make it happen.

[ROCKMAN]

A rather harsh review of carbon capture efforts. From: http://blog.heartland.org/2013/11/carbo ... -policies/

The war on climate change has produced many dubious “innovations.” Intermittent wind and solar energy sources, carbon markets that buy and sell “hot air,” and biofuels that burn food as we drive are just a few examples. But carbon capture and storage is the Edsel of energy policies. In September, the EPA proposed a limit of 1,100 pounds of CO2 emissions per megawatt-hour of electricity produced, a regulation that would effectively ban construction of new coal plants without CCS.

Coal is the world’s fastest growing hydrocarbon fuel. Increased use of coal by developing nations boosted coal use from 24.6 percent of the world’s primary energy supply in 1973 to 28.8 percent in 2011. Wind and solar remain less than one percent of the global energy supply. Proponents of the theory of man-made warming realize that world use of coal will remain strong for decades, so they insist that coal plants use CCS to limit CO2 emissions. Carbon capture is feasible, but it’s very expensive. The DOE estimates that CCS increases coal-fired electricity cost by 70 percent. This does not include the additional cost of building pipelines to transport the carbon dioxide and the cost of establishing reservoirs to store the CO2 underground.

An example is Southern Company’s planned coal-fired plant with CCS in Kemper County, Mississippi, which is scheduled to begin operations in 2014. With recent cost overruns, the Southern Company now estimates a $4.7 billion price tag for the 582-megawatt plant. This exceeds the price of a comparable nuclear plant and is almost five times the price of a gas-fired plant. The DOE pledged $270 million in funding for the Kemper County plant along with a federal tax credit of $133 million. Mississippi customers will be socked with a $2.88 billion electricity rate increase to support the plant.

Nine U.S. plants currently capture CO2 as part of normal industrial processes, such as natural gas or chemical refining and fertilizer production. All nine facilities sell CO2 to the petroleum industry for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), a process which pumps CO2 into the ground. The Kemper County plant will also provide CO2 for EOR. Another ten US projects are underway to capture CO2 and most of these projects are subsidized with federal money. Ford spent $350 million on the Edsel, the most famous car failure in history. But CCS is a much bigger financial boondoggle. From 2008 through 2012, governments committed to spend more than $22 billion on CCS projects. The United States leads the way with a commitment of more than $5 billion.

Despite support by US and world governments, carbon capture is not headed for success. A report released by the Global CCS Institute this month shows that international investment in CCS is now in decline. During the last year, the number of large-scale CCS projects declined from 75 to 65. Five projects were cancelled and seven were put on hold, with only three new projects added. The institute reports that private organizations are not investing in CCS. The number of CCS projects in Europe has declined from 21 to 15, where no new project has entered commercial operation since 2008. The Global CCS Institute states that an “urgent policy response is required” for success. In other words, governments must impose carbon taxes and provide big subsidies for CCS.

Would carbon capture really have a measurable effect on global warming? CO2 emissions from power plants total less than one percent of the carbon dioxide that naturally enters the atmosphere each year from the oceans, the biosphere, and other natural sources. If the world fully implements CCS, it’s unlikely that we could detect a change in global temperatures. But, worse than this, if the theory of dangerous man-made global warming is false, CCS becomes an expensive solution to a non-problem. When the dust of history settles and the ideology of Climatism fades away, failed CCS projects will be remembered as the Edsel of energy policies.

[Synapsid]

Plantagenet,

I just noticed that in my post Sunday, 3 November, I said "convert entirely to coal..." while intending to say "...convert entirely to NG..."

Sorry. Shambling into my sunset years.

[Keith_McClary]

Plantagenet,

I just noticed that in my post Sunday, 3 November, I said "convert entirely to coal..." while intending to say "...convert entirely to NG..."

Sorry. Shambling into my sunset years.

We other old fogies are complimented that you think we would have noticed that.

[Keith_McClary]

CO2 emissions from power plants total less than one percent of the carbon dioxide that naturally enters the atmosphere each year from the oceans, the biosphere, and other natural sources.

????

[csnavywx]

The 1% comment on CO2 emissions from power plants misses the point entirely. Anthropogenic FF emissions are an unbalanced flow. Prior to the emissions we produce today, the flows in and out of soils and the ocean were in balance with the atmosphere, hence keeping the atmospheric concentration steady. Our "new" flow is radically out of balance with the absorption capacity of the Earth. In fact, only about half is re-absorbed by ocean surface waters (even particulates from the atom bomb tests of the 50s and 60s have yet to penetrate beyond about 400m) and soils. Ocean water turns over very slowly (on order of a thousand years or more) and soils have limited CO2 capacity that's based on biological activity, temperature and moisture. Incidentally, the warmer it gets, the less efficiently these sinks tend to operate. In another 15-20 years, due to permafrost melt and emissions, the global land sink will be effectively exhausted and begin to become a net emitter. We will then be relying on ocean surface waters to sequester our emitted carbon, at the cost of acidification of said waters.

That 1% is a big friggin deal. (The actual total anthropogenic component is around 3%).

[ROCKMAN]

Keith - That 1% caught my eye also. Seemed much to low at first. But when you think about the many billions of natural sources of CO2 maybe not that farfetched. I've tried unsuccessfully to find an estimate of one obvious source: how much CO2 do the billions of folks on the planet expel in the breathes very year. I figured our resident experts might have a counter view. So far not any denial to the number but a comment on its significance.

[clif]

There is a simple and quite accurate analogy here.

The earth from a CO2 perspective is a closed system, what ever CO2 that is created stays in the biosphere until, it is sequestered in some form. That should not be up for argument.

In a closed system any new source of added CO2 has to do the same.

IE In a closed and sealed room where the CO2 is in a balanced system any added sources of CO2 like lighting a candle has to be accounted for even if the room is the size of the Superdome, and the candle is very small in relation.

The very real trouble is the human race in this case already has far too many candles burning, but KEEPS LIGHTING them.

[Synapsid]

Keith McClary,

I believe it's important to make a gesture of respect, from time to time, to our cohort--don't you agree? We wouldn't want the youngsters to get above themselves.

[Synapsid]

ROCKMAN,

That 1% anthropogenic CO2 equals one hundred times all the CO2 emitted by volcanism on the planet, submarine and subaerial. csnavywx points out that all that CO2 is stacked on top of the carbon cycle--there's no offsetting removal mechanism as there is for natural sources of the stuff.

[Tanada]

Keith - That 1% caught my eye also. Seemed much to low at first. But when you think about the many billions of natural sources of CO2 maybe not that farfetched. I've tried unsuccessfully to find an estimate of one obvious source: how much CO2 do the billions of folks on the planet expel in the breathes very year. I figured our resident experts might have a counter view. So far not any denial to the number but a comment on its significance.

Almost all of the CO2 in the whole carbon cycle is dissolved in the oceans, therefore the oceans absorb much of what is emitted every year attempting to regain the balance between the ocean water PPMV level and the air PPMV level. If we stopped emitting today the oceans would keep absorbing for 20 to 50 years depending on whom you ask and then levels would become relatively stable for a very long time.

[Tanada]

This story has been updated.

The first large scale U.S. “clean coal” facility was declared operational Tuesday — by the large energy firm NRG Energy and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corp.



Their Petra Nova project, not far outside of Houston, captured carbon dioxide from the process of coal combustion for the first time in September, and has now piped 100,000 tons of it from the plant to the West Ranch oil field 80 miles away, where the carbon dioxide is used to force additional oil from the ground. The companies say that the plant can capture over 90 percent of the carbon dioxide released from the equivalent of a 240 megawatt, or million watt, coal unit, which translates into 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide per day or over 1 million tons per year. They’re calling it “the world’s largest post-combustion carbon capture system.”

“There are not many coal plants that are being built these days,” said Mauricio Gutierrez, the president and CEO of NRG. “We think that actually having an experience in installing a [carbon capture and storage] technology in existing coal plants will have a pretty significant application in the current plants that exist throughout the country, and for that matter, throughout the world.”

But there is another coal plant near completion in the United States that will also capture carbon dioxide — but using a very different approach. It’s the Kemper Plant, being operated by Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Co., and expected to be operational Jan. 31. This plant has been designed to turn lignite, a type of coal, into a gas called syngas, stripping out some carbon dioxide in the process. The syngas is burned for electricity and the CO2 is then again shipped to an oil field to aid in additional oil recovery.

Thus, at Petra Nova the capturing of carbon occurs after the coal has been burned — or “post-combustion” — whereas at Kemper, it happens beforehand.

The arrival of Petra Nova and Kemper comes as the incoming Trump administration will have to try to deliver on sweeping promises made to the struggling coal industry. It remains unclear if that will involve any type of support for carbon capture technology or for the industry, but Trump did allude to “clean coal” while campaigning.

The two very different plants together mark the arrival of a technology, often called “CCS” for short, that has been heralded as essential to the future of coal burning in particular (though it has many other applications), but has struggled despite considerable subsidies from the U.S. Department of Energy. Several projects have seen their Energy Department funding withdrawn, but these two now stand at or near the finish line.

According to the Global CCS Institute, which tracks this fledgling industry, there are 21 carbon capture projects worldwide on a large scale that are either operating or have been built, but relatively few of these are in the power generation sector — making Petra Nova and Kemper quite novel in context of the United States. In Canada, the Boundary Dam Carbon Capture and Storage Project, also a “post-combustion” capture plant using coal, has been operational since 2014.

The Energy Department provided grants totaling $ 190 million to the Petra Nova facility, which cost $1 billion overall. Kemper is a considerably more expensive project, representing a $6.91 billion expenditure for a massive plant with a capacity of 582 megawatts. That includes $270 million in support from the Energy Department, also as part of its Clean Coal Power Initiative.

The Department hailed the news Tuesday. “As the world’s largest post-combustion carbon capture system, the Petra Nova project confirms that carbon capture and storage technologies can play a critical role in ensuring the nation’s energy security and providing good jobs for American workers, all while helping us reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants,” said Christopher Smith, Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, in a statement.

For Petra Nova, a key part of the operation of the plant involves its pairing of power generation with oil recovery. Carbon dioxide injected into the oil field will increase its production, and with oil prices at $50 a barrel or higher, the plant is economical, according to NRG spokesman David Knox. Some of the carbon dioxide then remains sequestered in the oil field after the enhanced oil recovery process.

The plant’s completion is a milestone, says Gutierrez, and a doorway into a wider world of using carbon capture and storage. “I think in the future, this is a technology that is going to be necessary for gas units, as natural gas becomes this bridge fuel,” he said.

Furthermore, Gutierrez said, while the Petra Nova plant is paired with an oil field to help make it economical, that may not always be so with future projects. “We really chose the enhanced oil recovery to improve the economics of the plant to the extent that there is not a price on carbon,” he said. “Potentially that is not necessary to make the economics work.”

The company does not have any immediate plans to adapt a second coal plant with carbon capture technology, but Gutierrez said that if it wanted to do so, the know-how gained at Petra Nova would make the second plant cheaper.

The International Energy Agency and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have both said that carbon capture and storage will be a necessary technology to curb humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“Any country that is in need to increase their power generation, and that is happening through fossil fuels, they will be looking at this technology as a way to mitigate the impact of carbon,” said Gutierrez.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... n-the-way/

[Tanada]

The Department of Energy said last week the memorandum of understanding between the two countries would extend to carbon capture as well as methods such as chemical looping and oxy-combustion that make it easier to remove carbon dioxide from emissions.

"Together through the development of clean energy technologies," Perry said in a statement, "our two countries can lead the world in promoting economic growth and energy production in an environmentally responsible way."

Carbon capture and other technologies that seek to prevent carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, from entering the atmosphere are considered by analysts and industry officials as critical to the future of oil, gas and coal industries as countries around the world seek to slow climate change. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and a major contributor to global warming.

Earlier this year, at an international energy conference in Houston, the Saudi oil minister called on the industry to find ways to "minimize the carbon footprint of fossil fuels." Three major European oil companies, Statoil, Total and Royal Dutch Shell, meanwhile, are assembling a network of technology and facilities that will capture and store carbon dioxide released from industries in Norway, with a goal of expanding to other countries.

Despite such ambitions, carbon capture systems are few and far between. Even with some success stories - like NRG Energy's retrofitting of a Texas coal plant through the Petra Nova project - the costs remain high. The uses for captured carbon dioxide are limited to pumping it underground to increase oil production, and logistical and legal questions abound around storing it underground.

Petra Nova, installed at the W.A. Parish power plant in Fort Bend County, cost an estimated $1 billion. Each day, the system, which began operating about a year ago, can capture more than 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide, which is piped 80 miles away to an aging oil field. NRG has said it is unlikely to build another such project unless economics change to make it profitable.

The Obama administration awarded a $190 million grant to NRG to develop the Petra Nova project. But President Donald Trump has proposed cutting the program that funds the research and development of carbon capture systems by 50 percent.

Perry has suggested that he would like to put more money into carbon capture research. The technology also has support among some Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who believe that any hope of meeting the 2015 Paris accord's goal on climate change will require the development of carbon capture.

LINK

[Tanada]

Video presentation of new research on CCS demonstrating its potential.

VIDEO

[jawagord]

The sexy Librarian look is alluring but her data seems not up to date. The government of Alberta put up 2 billion dollars more than 15 years ago for a bevy of CCS projects, including funding for projects such as Shell Quest, NWR refinery and the Alberta Carbon trunkline. Shell has been operating for several years. NWR and the pipeline have been delayed for a decade but should go into service this year as the refinery starts processing bitumen and the pipeline is completed to the injection fields (for enhance oil production). Of course none of this has made CCS practical or commercially viable or spurred other private companies into adopting CO2 capture and for good reason. CCS takes a lot of energy, it reduces production efficiency of whatever it is associated with and it takes expensive equipment to work so it reduces the economics of any project both initial capital and operating. Instead of becoming less costly with time, these projects became more costly as the complexity of CCS became better known. It’s lose-lose-lose technology but makes for a nice science project or government boondoggle.

“Right now, there are technologies out there but it’s very expensive,” McCuaig-Boyd said. Alberta has since wound down its $2-billion fund for CCS investments, citing the high costs.

But now some of the world’s most influential oil executives are touting CCS – now rebranded as carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) – as a way to reduce global emissions.

https://business.financialpost.com/comm ... over-again

https://www.shell.ca/en_ca/about-us/pro ... oject.html

https://actl.ca

https://nwrsturgeonrefinery.com/project ... d-storage/

[Tanada]

Carbon capture down on the farm could give Biden an opportunity



By now, everyone is experiencing the consequences of President Joe Biden’s war on fossil fuels. From horrendously high gasoline prices to the cost of cooling and heating homes and businesses, people are suffering the consequences of Biden’s Green New Deal enthusiasm. Of course, high energy prices are a significant cause of inflation. The production and transportation of goods and services require fossil fuels, for the most part. Food prices have been particularly inflated, as anyone who has been to the supermarket can attest.

Carbon capture has often been touted as an alternative to dealing with climate change that does not involve laying waste to the fossil fuels industry with the attendant misery inflicted on consumers. Whether it is developing power plants that capture carbon dioxide instead of belching it into the atmosphere or finding ways to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, such as by planting trees or through more exotic methods such as Project Vesta’s “green sand” approach , carbon capture holds a great deal of promise.

MIT Technology Review recently related another carbon capture project that recruits agriculture for the task of fighting climate change. A research group out of Berkeley, California, called the Innovative Genomics Institute is using a gene-editing tool called CRISPR to alter food plants to absorb more carbon dioxide, further decreasing the amount in the atmosphere. As a happy side effect, the researchers believe that the altered food crops would grow faster, thus increasing crop yields.

The institute's initial efforts will focus on rice, whose genome is well understood, as well as sorghum. Presumably, if the process can be shown to work, it can be expanded to other crops, such as wheat and corn. The initial experiment will cost $11 million and will last for three years.

Making food crops engines of carbon capture is not the entire solution to climate change. But it is a more sensible part of it than waging war on the fossil fuel industry and hoping people will be forced to buy expensive electric cars because gasoline is near $5 a gallon on average — and much more in liberal states such as California.

It has become conventional wisdom that the Democrats are in for a red wave of a shellacking in the midterm elections. The recent election to Congress of Mayra Flores, a Mexican-born Republican from a Hispanic-majority district in South Texas, is seen to be a prelude to the coming electoral massacre that the Democrats face. Biden’s recent exhortation of the oil companies to increase production, which his very policies have been designed to prevent, is a futile and panicky attempt to stave off disaster.

Nothing can save congressional Democrats. But Biden will be afforded the same opportunity to reboot his administration that former President Bill Clinton had after the Gingrich Revolution of 1994. The first two years of the Clinton administration consisted of attempts to pass liberal policies, such as an abortive healthcare reform bill championed by then-first lady Hillary Clinton. After 1994, Clinton pivoted toward the center and declared that the “era of big government is over.” His presidency featured a number of successes, at least until the Monica Lewinsky affair blew it up.

In 2023, seeing many of his liberal allies involuntarily retired to the private sector, Biden could declare, “The era of the Green New Deal is over.” Then he could rescind his executive orders that have placed a boot on the neck of the fossil fuel companies and pivot toward encouraging carbon capture, including the idea of turning food crops into carbon sinks.

The progressive Left will not be happy with anything that does not destroy the fossil fuel industry. The anti-GMO crowd will be especially irate. But Biden, because of his advanced age, is not likely to run for president successfully again. That fact will be oddly liberating to a man who has sought the presidency for decades only to acquire it in the winter of his life. Going out with a winning policy would be legacy-making, not to mention good for the country. Biden could spend the rest of whatever years he has left appreciating that.

Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration titled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars, and Beyond , and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner .

LINK

[vtsnowedin]

In 2023, seeing many of his liberal allies involuntarily retired to the private sector, Biden could declare, “The era of the Green New Deal is over.” Then he could rescind his executive orders that have placed a boot on the neck of the fossil fuel companies and pivot toward encouraging carbon capture, including the idea of turning food crops into carbon sinks.

Or they could figure out this is going to happen and do it now hoping to not lose so badly come November.
The fact they keep doubling down on failed policies in spite of the overwhelming evidence it is going to throw them out of power mystifies me.

[AdamB]

The fact they keep doubling down on failed policies in spite of the overwhelming evidence it is going to throw them out of power mystifies me.

It shouldn't mystify you. Some folks are inflicted with believing in something. They believe guns are bad, abortions are bad, fossil fuels are bad, renewabales are bad, government subsidies are bad, the climate is changing, no it isn't, it just doesn't matter.

No one is going to throw me out of power, look at all the good I'm doing! Both sides play this game, in terms of the long-con I'd say the Republicrats have it over the Democans. They built slowly over multiple administrations, and without a single scruple or principle to hold them back when their Savior showed up to push them across the finish line, it all paid off.

Good for guns, bad for women, good for state's authority (when we want it to be), bad for federal (when we want it to be)....and band plays on.

You aren't getting your sub-species of Republicrat back anytime soon VT.

[vtsnowedin]

You aren't getting your sub-species of Republicrat back anytime soon VT.

You will have to flesh that one out a bit. I have no idea what you mean and what sub-species of Republicrat are you referring to?

[AdamB]

You aren't getting your sub-species of Republicrat back anytime soon VT.

You will have to flesh that one out a bit. I have no idea what you mean and what sub-species of Republicrat are you referring to?

Oh, you slept during the Nazi's have some "good people on their side" white nationalist xenophobes capping off their 4 years by trying to overthrow an election that their own AG said was fairly won by the other folks? One hell of a nap VT. Did you wake up afterwards to those worried about Jewish space lasers starting fires in the US, or did you sleep through those Republican sub-species continuing their rampage against...thinking? Decency? Logic?

Must be nice, living in a world where you can't even see how fine Republicans have become.