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Comments: 198 +- Hardware: Mixing Coal and Solar To Produce Cheaper Energy on Friday September 04, @03:40PM
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Al writes "It might not please many environmentalists, but a major energy company is adding solar-thermal power to a coal plant and says this could be the cost-effective way to produce energy while lowering CO2 emissions. Abengoa Solar and Xcel Energy, Colorado's largest electrical utility, have begun modifying the coal plant, which is based near Grand Junction, Colorado. Under the design, parabolic troughs will be used to preheat water that will be fed into the coal plant's boilers, where coal is burned to turn the water into steam. Cost savings comes from using existing turbines and generators and from operating at higher efficiencies, since the turbines and generators in solar-thermal plants are normally optimized to run at the lower temperatures generated by parabolic mirrors."
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Glad to see the "coalar" tag (Score:2)
as that was my first thought too upon reading the headline =)
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Re:Glad to see the "coalar" tag (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Glad to see the "coalar" tag (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Glad to see the "coalar" tag (Score:4, Insightful)
Coalar energy, let's hope it has the efficiency of coal with the environmental impact of solar, and not the other way around.
Parent
who would object? (Score:5, Insightful)
sounds good to me, donno any environmentalists who would object to burning less coal...
Re:who would object? (Score:4, Insightful)
your answer: its better then coal on its own but might be used as an excuse to avoid making solar/renewable a larger part of an energy plain, such as "we are green, we have coal solar power stations" rather then actually building any wind farms/etc
Parent
Re:who would object? (Score:4, Insightful)
So?
Embracing a technology that is 50% solar-powered is still better than 0% solar power. Also many people forget that coal and oil ARE solar power - it's the sunlight that fell on our planet ~300 million years ago, and now exists in condensed form. Our challenge is not to stop using ancient sunlight completely, but to use today's sunlight. Converting plants to partial-solar is one step towards that goal.
Parent
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Actually, yes our challenge is to stop using ancient sunlight completely, eventually. Burning fossil fuels as a significant portion of our energy generation produces lots of nasty air pollution (which is bad for human health and the environment, even if you don't believe in global climate change) and almost guarantees a horrible economic crash once the resources finally start to run out (which will be in the not so distant future considering the amount we consume now and the rate at which that consumption
Re:who would object? (Score:5, Insightful)
WELL AS I SAID (but you apparently didn't bother to read): "this is one step towards that goal". You can not get to the second floor of your house in one leap - you have to take one step at a time. Today 50% solar/50% coal. Next decade 75% solar/25% coal. The decade after that 95% solar/5% coal power plants. Same applies to cars which are 10% electric/90% gasoline hybrids today, but eventually will be 95% electric with maybe a small gasoline generator for long-distance. But I guess shouldn't expect an environmentalist to understand that simple "transitional" principle. They are too busy pushing-over radio towers and then bragging about it - http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/04/washington.towers.terrorism/ [cnn.com] I tried to make a reasonable statement, but all I got was a slap across the face. You will not win your cause by pissing-off other environmentalists who are on your side.
I drive an 80mpg hybrid, light my house with 25 watt or lower bulbs, and turn-off the heat in the winter to help reduce my carbon footprint - and then some shitheads named the "Earth Liberation Front" go do this. These earth-worshiping religious wackos harm the cause; they don't help it. I'd like to set fire to every one of their offices, and see how they enjoy having millions of dollars of personal property destroyed.
And if they really believe the AM radio waves are interfering with cellphones (impossible) or intercoms (probably but they are second-class devices anyway), then petition the FCC. That's why that organization exists.
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Re:who would object? (Score:4, Insightful)
We have the capacity to keep using fossil fuels for a couple of centuries still, so if we care about the massive self inflicted damage that would cause, we have to stop using dirty fuel sources for that reason, not because it makes economical sense to do so. It doesn't hurt to have cheap available solar cells though.
I'm as much for a cleaner planet as anyone. However, people still have to live and afford to heat in winter & cool in summer. The higher that energy costs rise, the more poor people that will be freezing to death or dying from heat. People have to be able to afford to commute to work and to travel about for all the other things that living in a modern society requires.
Farmers have to use tractors and other machinery to keep the food supply cheap enough to feed everyone. They also need energy to irrigate land (heck, right now California farmers are watching their crops die for lack of water and food will become more expensive and harder to get, especially for the poor/minorities/inner-city-dwellers, because environmentalists want to save a bait-fish rather than feed people). Grocery stores have to refrigerate the food. Trucks have to bring the food to the stores.
That's the disconnect that many environmentalist types suffer. They put a clean environment and animals ahead of the lives of people, refusing compromise so human lives may be preserved and then wonder why they make so little progress.
When environmentalists are willing to seriously damage the nations' food supply because of some perceived risk to a bait-fish's population numbers as in the current situation in California, it makes all the other perfectly reasonable environmental proposals that much harder to get taken seriously by the general public and the politicians. At least by those politicians that need to worry about getting re-elected, as many are in districts with voters that would re-elect them no matter what they did short of turning into Satan Himself on national TV and clubbing baby seals live in HD.
I'm sure there will be numerous environmental groups that will come out against this, as they won't be able to see past OMGZ!! COAL!!! and realize it's a step in the right direction.
Strat
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Since using coal releases about 20x more CO2 than fossil fuels and will not run out for hundreds of years even assuming increasing demand, this is bad news for stopping the use of fossil fuels based on economic reasons.
Huh? Coal is a fossil fuel.
Re:who would object? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I agree, 10 years ago no one was going to try and sell a all-electric car.
False [wikipedia.org].
Re:who would object? (Score:4, Insightful)
So you link to an article which confirms his claim, and label it "false"? In what universe does THAT make sense?
Parent
Re:who would object? (Score:5, Informative)
Marketed .... ok, depending on your definition. Sold ... definitely not, as the article you linked to clearly explains:
On December 5, 1996, GM began delivering the EV1s to its selection of carefully-screened lessees ... Although the car could not be purchased outright, its MSRP was quoted at $34,000.
In the same way that evolution is hotly contested - ignorant people make straw-men arguments and conspiracy-theories persistently raise their ugly heads, while people who actually know what they're talking about shake their heads in amazement.
Again, from the article:
According to Dennis Minano, then-GM Vice President for Energy and Environment, "Is it what our customer wants?"[11] GM was not alone in its denunciation of electric vehicles as a viable alternative to the gasoline car; according to Robert J. Eaton, then-chairman of Chrysler, "The question is whether the market is ready for the product... if the law is there, we'll meet it... at this point of time, nobody can forecast that we can make [an electric car].
None of the automakers expected to create a viable electric vehicle by the set deadline, but they had no choice other than to try. If the EV1 had not been scrapped, it's possible that it may have found a niche-market, kinda like the Segway. Whether such a low level of sales would have been enough to justify development costs is debatable. Either way, it's clear that EV's weren't ready for mainstream use in the 90's - they didn't have the range, they cost too much, and they took much too long to recharge.
Hell, Tesla Motors is having problems making pure electric vehicles TODAY for mainstream use, and they have the advantage of better technology in general, and much better battery technology in particular. I like the idea of buying their sedan once it becomes available, but I'm not a big fan of forking over $50,000 for it. And their financial figures reflect the difficulty of the project - if the government hadn't bailed them out with $400 million, it's likely that the company would have folded.
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Re:who would object? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the numbers I've seen don't support the idea that there is enough Uranium in the ground to last, quite, that long, especially at current prices. However, there is that much uranium in small particles spread throughout the world's oceans. Should the price of uranium go up by a small amount, it will be cost effective to implement the more expensive technology needed to tap that source. Also, since fuel prices are a minuscule percentage of the total cost of operating a nuclear power plant, the price of the electricity should see, virtually, no increase.
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Re:who would object? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are all kinds of nasty things in coal. You're neglecting all the other (fun!) isotopes that are stored in coal (decay products from heavier materials that are nasty) as well as things that are chemically nasty (arsenic and mercury for one).
I'm not a member of the far left. I'm a physicist. I've worked at some labs with a significant amount of historical radioactive contamination and have had to read up a lot on the subject. It *is* bad. Really really bad. There are isotopes that are (chemically) remarkably similar to calcium. What happens if those chemicals get put into your bones?
Don't extrapolate information like that from wikipedia. Read one of the many articles on the subject. Anyone who has any bit of intelligence will agree.
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Re:who would object? (Score:5, Insightful)
Coal doesn't have to be produced by MTR. One can both object to MTR and support reducing the coal consumption of our existing plants. It's not economically realistic to phase out all of our existing coal plants, but if we can eliminate 4/5ths of their coal consumption, that'd be a huge victory.
Parent
Re:who would object? (Score:5, Informative)
Within the US, MTR mining is almost entirely an eastern thing, and for the most part, eastern coal has nastily higher sulfur levels than western coal.
Almost everything out west is either underground mines (as is true for the mine that feeds the Cameo plant in the article) or strip mines out in the middle of flat boring nowhere Wyoming. Compared with the destruction caused by MTR mining, neither of these is particularly objectionable.
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Re:who would object? (Score:4, Funny)
Well that depends. Wyoming residents are pretty divided on the issue.
On one side you've got the Rancher mentality, the people who would love nothing more than to wipe from the face of the earth every native species that competes with/preys on their cattle or someone else's cattle. Strangely enough I work with a couple, at the department of environmental quality.
These people have no problem lopping the tops off the land, be it stripmining, hills, or even the mountains.
On the other side you've got the NOLSies, comprised of NOLS students (who tend not to bathe), rock/ice climbers, and nature enthusiasts.
These people object to any sort of sullying of wyoming's natural landscape, usually because some friend of a friend did a study and found natural gas rigs cause a 2% decline in field mice populations.
Yeah, not much to do around here so people get pissy about the environment, either for or against it...
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Environmentalists (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would it not please them...if they are rational?
But maybe the answer is contained within the question....
Re:Environmentalists (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the article we're talking at best 15% less coal burned per unit electricity, with no way to scale beyond that. Great for the power plants where it is viable, but definitely niche. Doesn't change the fact that we should stop building coal fired plants and decommission the existing ones.
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Pre-heating good. Coal, not so much (Score:5, Informative)
It turns out that you can turn CO2 into fuel by exposing it to a titanium oxide catalyst in the presence of sunlight. In a closed cycle, this would be a carbon-neutral way to go. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/23/carbon-dioxide-fuel.html [discovery.com]
Re:Pre-heating good. Coal, not so much (Score:4, Informative)
It turns out that you can turn CO2 into fuel by exposing it to a titanium oxide catalyst in the presence of sunlight.
That's just another form of solar power, it's just you're using the sunlight to produce fuel rather than electricity. If it's more efficient than solar electrical generation (very possible) then it's a good idea, it's bound to be more efficient than biofuels, but whether it's more efficient than solar water heating, I don't know.
You'd probably need a concentrated source of CO2 for that, so it would either reduce efficiency, by using some energy to concentrate CO2, or would use existing power plants outputs, meaning it's not carbon neutral.
Everyone should read this http://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
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Interesting. I'd soulike to know how efficient this is in storing solar energy (any less than the 10-15% now possible via solar cells. Also, what are the production costs and can it be scaled up, or is this destined to remain in the lab?
Ultimately, nature has a million-year R&D advantage over us - plants are the only true carbon-neutral solar fuel collectors really over a full product life cycle.
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going to have to mine to get that titanium
But, being a catalyst in this reaction, it should be re-usable.
The important questions are how this type of generator compares with photovoltaics in terms of the energy it takes to manufacture, the environmental impact of its manufacture, operational lifetime, and energy output per unit of area.
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So? there is not power process that doesn't involve mining at some point.
Converting CO2 to methane and using it as a power source is frigging cool.
I hope this ramps up. We could actually take CO2 out of the atmosphere to return us to pre-industrial age levels.
If we can do that, then burn all the coal you want.
Why would it not please environmentalists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why wouldn't environmentalists be happy with this? I consider myself one and think this is great news. Too many people focus on 100% solutions. You don't need to eliminate 100% of coal in the short term. Reducing coal consumption by 80% or so by having solar provide heat during peak hours (daytime) would still be a huge benefit.
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Well, since the goal is to retrofit existing coal plants to make them more efficient, it sounds good to me.
Though it is hardly a replacement for building new nuclear or fully solar thermal plants in the long run.
Re:Why would it not please environmentalists? (Score:4, Informative)
>Reducing coal consumption by 80% or so by having solar provide heat
The article says:
"At the most, the contribution from solar power at existing plants will probably be no more than 10 to 15 percent of the electricity produced." "For the Colorado project, the share will be more like 3 percent"
Although I agree with the spirit of what you said, it is not THAT much contribution by solar :)
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Sometimes insisting on that last 20% means sacrificing the other 80%.
We can get the 20% later. In time these plants will be phased out, and by then, we should have a better long-distance transmission grid and cheaper power storage. And, in fact, that 80%-ish reduction in coal that this tech could bring about is actually a bigger difference than it may seem, because by reducing coal demand, we'll begin phasing out subbitumenous coal and lignite (the dirtier kinds). In 15-20 years, I hope to see fossil fue
Re:Why Would Environmentalists Not Be Pleased? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget nuclear. Be a fan of nuclear power if you want to be green. We need to start building new feeder/breeder reactors. They can use the waste of the previous generation of plants as fuel with a much reduced waste footprint. Combine that with the small area and resistance to adverse climate and it makes a good compliment for other "green" energy.
Wind IMO is not that great for large scale deployment, to unreliable. Though it would be quite acceptable over time for tasks that don't require constant power, such as water purification or hydrogen electrolysis.
Parent
Come on people... (Score:2, Insightful)
The solution is nuclear freaking power. Even China realizes this now.
We've been in the Atomic age for 60 years now and still don't have a majority of our energy from nuclear energy. It's such a disgrace.
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So Obvious (Score:2)
Displeased Environmentalists (Score:5, Insightful)
If it displeases environmentalists, it will be because it's still really bad for the environment. Using solar to preheat the water instead of more coal to preheat it just admits that solar is a more effective tech for generating energy than coal is. Any coal still burned is still polluting the Greenhouse, creating huge and unmanageable costs just a little down the road (and downwind, the typical "coal is clean" illusion).
They should just convert the entire plant to solar. But coal is too subsidized for them to abandon it, and its lobbyists have too tight a chokehold on the government for solar to have an equal shot at economic efficiency.
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No, if it displeases environmentalists, it will be because it displeases environmentalists. The correlation between things that are clean and good for the environment (such as nuclear power), and the things that please environmentalists is not very strong.
Uhmmm. No. (Score:3, Insightful)
still not clean (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been many attempts of late to greenwash coal, this solar project and the "clean coal" concepts being the most recent incarnation. Even if 100% of coal plants can be made 100% carbon neutral, where do they get the coal from?
in December 2008, a 40 acre ash pond in tennessee [nytimes.com] broke through its walls and flooded millions of gallons of coal ash, potentially far worse than the Exxon Valdez. This is one of the largest environmental disasters that has happened in the US, and there has been little to no national coverage about this accident.
There are a lot of heavy hitters in the coal industry that want to put the best possible face on coal (e.g. Montana), and it is alarming that 'mountaintop removal', the laziest way to get coal, is frequently not discussed when considering how green a coal plant can be.
Makes perfect sense (Score:4, Insightful)
When I make a cup of tea in the microwave, I can put in a cup of cold water and set the timer for 3 minutes, or I can fill from the "hot" tap, put in a cup of warm water, and set the timer for 2 minutes. Using solar to preheat the water means less coal burned for unit power. Even if you weren't trying to reduce your "carbon footprint", this is still an excellent thing to do.
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A coal plant has scads of waste heat
Let me fix that for you:
A coal plant has scads of low quality waste heat
Don't forget, your waste heat is what's necessary to condense the steam on the other side of the turbines. You *must* have some waste heat, otherwise there's no heat differential, thus no mechanical work can be extracted.
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The mechanical work comes from superheating the water and letting the steam turn turbines. In other words, you ADD heat - it makes no difference what the exhaust is used for as the work has already been done. There is no useful work being done by having the steam condense back to water