Carbon capture and storage - one of the most important engineering challenges
"Carbon capture is too expensive - it will never happen"
Plenty of prominent commentators, including Joe Romm, a past US Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, have said that carbon capture will never work because it is too expensive. How should the carbon capture industry respond to people who take this view? Certainly building coal power stations without carbon capture is getting more expensive (or impossible) in the light of tightening planning restrictions around the world. Perhaps the real question is how coal with carbon capture compares in price to nuclear, wind, solar, gas, and it is hard to predict what these will be in 5 years time. So how should the industry respond to this question?
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Sorin Andrei on -
Karl,
I would say NO, Carbon Capture is not too expensive. Carbon Capture cost is what it is, according to current technology development and according to society interest to the subject. It's like saying that 120$/barrel for crude is too expensive. The price may be high but still, everybody is buying. Depends what are you doing with that carbon after capturing, that dictates the real cost - benefit ratio.
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Permalink Reply by Burton H. Waxman, PhD on
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I have numbers in excess of $50/ton of CO2 captured. Newer technology has lowered that number, and I believe that the system I am working on would bring the number under $10/ton As important to the capturing costs are the capital costs of the structure needed to capture the CO2 using current technology. The scrubbers are in excess of 15 stories high and the capital requirements are estimated to be high. The DOE estimates a cost of $30-40/ton for retrofitting existing plants. A 10 million ton/per year plant would require close to ¼-½ of a billion dollars in capital costs.
The design of much more efficient and lower capital cost (that reads cheaper), is available. The further converion of the CO2 to useful products will make this a slam dunk.
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Permalink Reply by Yousef on -
Dear Burton,
could you please send me the references of your numbers about CO2 capture cost?
best wishes
Yousef
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Permalink Reply by Burton H. Waxman, PhD on
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The costs of CO2 capture are for the operating costs of capturing liquid regeneration and CO2 segregation mostly. They do not include the costs of capital investment or the very substantial cost of cooling the flu gases to the point of facile absorption into capturing liquids. With tower-scrubbers, the flue-gas cooler is the largest consumer of cooling water in the process, typically using 50% of the cooling water. http://www.htcenergy.com/co2info.html.
There are some very good articles that deal with the costs of CO2 capture:
IPCC Special Report on Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage
Coordinating Lead Authors
Kelly (Kailai) Thambimuthu (Australia and Canada), Mohammad Soltanieh (Iran), Juan Carlos Abanades
(Spain)
Carbon Dioxide Capture from Existing Coal-Fired Power Plants
DOE/NETL-401/110907
Final Report (Original Issue Date, December 2006)
Revision Date, November 2007
Capturing King Coal
Deploying Carbon Capture and Storage Systems
in the U.S. at Scale
World resources Institute
The all claim a cost of at least $50/ton and that’s at a much lower energy cost than exists today.
Regards,
Burt Waxman
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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Theodore on -
Sorin's word reminds me of something: all alternative energy project developers (including CTL) would be so happy when crude oil hits all-time high, yet at the same time governments do not want oil price to remain all-time high since it would hurt their voters most. While at the same time, alternative project developers attract invesment by marketing the possibility of high crude oil prices.
On the other hand, I think it is too early for anyone to say carbon capture is expensive. I can only say carbon capture technologies that Mankind has developed so far are intended for the marginal removal of CO2. We have not developed carbon capture technologies that are intended for massive scale carbon capture yet. It is only recently that scientists and engineers are working hard in their laboratory to develop new carbon capture technologies.
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Permalink Reply by Burton H. Waxman, PhD on
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Beyond the obvious social implications of responsible reaction to stop contamination and global warming, are the prospects of potential financial and logistic opportunities by the capture of carbon dioxide and subsequent modification of the acid gases.
One of the problem with nuclear and wind power is the fact that both of them are "push" solutions to energy demand. There are no acceptable methods of storing the energy produced, and the wind or even nuclear energy derived is not amenable to on-demand production. Marrying the capture of carbon dioxide with the potential morphing of this gas back into combustible and transportable fuel is a potential solution that meets the needs of the environment and the economies and logistical needs of the world.
Rapid, and cost effective methods of carbon dioxide capture is close by, and the chemistries of conversion to syngas or hydrocarbons is well know and accessible with non-polluting energy generation. Thus the push energy production morphs into the more effective pull (energy created on demand).
Financial incentives to follow this path are already present in the form of tax credits , and will be further enhanced by governments around the world.
© 2012 Created by Karl Jeffery.
