A North Dakota Utility Wants To Build the World's Largest Carbon Capture Facility At a Power Plant (ieee.org) 69
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: The Milton R. Young Station, close to the town of Center in North Dakota, is as unremarkable as coal-fired power plants come. But if its owner Minnkota Power Cooperative has its way, the plant could soon be famous the world over. The Grand Forks-based electric cooperative has launched Project Tundra, an initiative to build the largest power plant-based carbon capture facility in the world, with construction commencing as early as 2022. If Minnkota Power raises the US $1 billion the project requires, it plans to retrofit the station with technology the cooperative claims will capture more than 90 percent of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from the plant's larger generator, a 455-megawatt unit. The effect will be the equivalent of taking 600,000 gasoline-fueled cars off the road.
To sequester CO2 from the Young station, Project Tundra will make use of technology similar to that employed at the only two other existing carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities operating at power plants in the world -- Petra Nova in Texas and Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan, Canada. The CO2-removal process begins by passing the flue gas through a scrubber to remove impurities and lower its temperature. The gas then enters an absorber, which contains a liquid-based amine solution that binds to CO2. Heat is applied to release the gas from the amines and the extracted CO2 is then compressed. Project Tundra plans to pump the liquid CO2 into sandstone rocks that lie just over a mile beneath the nearby lignite coal mine, where it will be stored permanently.
To sequester CO2 from the Young station, Project Tundra will make use of technology similar to that employed at the only two other existing carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities operating at power plants in the world -- Petra Nova in Texas and Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan, Canada. The CO2-removal process begins by passing the flue gas through a scrubber to remove impurities and lower its temperature. The gas then enters an absorber, which contains a liquid-based amine solution that binds to CO2. Heat is applied to release the gas from the amines and the extracted CO2 is then compressed. Project Tundra plans to pump the liquid CO2 into sandstone rocks that lie just over a mile beneath the nearby lignite coal mine, where it will be stored permanently.
What cars? (Score:4, Insightful)
This 600,000 cars - are they SUVs or Teslas
How many tons of Carbon?
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In 2019 ND ranked #10 in the US for production of total wind energy, and #4 for production by percentage, and was expected to increase output by 24% by the end of 2019, putting it in 7th place (I could not find information on if that target was met).
Solar power is not a good fit for North Dakota, as it is too far north. Higher latitudes are worse for solar energy due to the weakening sunlight during the winter months. Solar farms give much higher energy outputs as they get closer to the equator, so it makes
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Solar power is absolute crap in ND. Sure, it'd be acceptable in summer, but in winter there's extremely weak sunlight due to the tilt of the Earth, only about 10 hours a day the sun is even above the horizon, and enough snowfall to constantly be coating the solar cells. (And a note about that snowfall - you can't just sweep that off, it would have to be removed and trucked out, which can be difficult with how close together the solar cells are constructed.)
Put the same solar cells in SoCal or Texas and you'
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Nonsense. Germany is at about the same latitude as North Dakota and it has the highest solar panel capacity of all countries and even the highest solar panel capacity per capita. Even during the winter, solar provides a pretty good contribution.
There's no way a carbon capture solution is going to compete with solar+wind+storage in the long term.
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Even during the winter, solar provides a pretty good contribution.
Perhaps it works better for Germany, but there are significant differences between Germany and ND. For example, Germany has less snowfall and significantly higher average temperatures in the winter. In ND wind energy works much better for a variety of reasons, so that's the renewable that's getting the traction here.
There's no way a carbon capture solution is going to compete with solar+wind+storage in the long term.
Long term, no. This is intended as a short term solution to the pollution the coal plant produces while the long-term solutions are being built up. Coal is going away (as evidenced by the fact t
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Umm not according to the article cited in the abstract. Carbon Capture would increase the costs of coal power plants.
"a coal plant that is coupled with CCS technology may actually be more expensive to run because of an increase in parasitic load,"
"adding carbon capture, an energy- and water-intensive process, pushes this parasitic load up to much as 33 percent, he says. "
"According to IEEFA estimates, that more th
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It's pure stupidity, it will never happen. It's the carbon-burning industry in its last straws.
They can't even compete with renewables on the price alone, much less if they would have to do THIS to avoid carbon taxes.
OTOH Beer and Soda companies need liquid CO2 right now and would pay a lumpy sum for it.
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This 600,000 cars - are they SUVs or Teslas
How many tons of Carbon?
How many Olympic-sized swimming pools is that? Or football fields?
Mile under rock.... (Score:3)
Re:Mile under rock.... (Score:5, Informative)
wouldn't it potentially just leak right back out?
No. Geologic formations can hold methane for millions of years. CO2 is much less geologically mobile than CH4.
One way to economically sequester CO2 is to use it for enhanced oil recovery [wikipedia.org]. Pump high-pressure CO2 into a depleted oilfield. The CO2 displaces and mobilizes the oil, which is then pumped out. The amount of CO2 that does down-hole is far more than the amount of oil that comes up-hole, so it is a big win, yet the oil covers the cost.
Re: Mile under rock.... (Score:2)
Pump CO2 into the ground in order to extract more oil, which when burned is going to release new CO2 into atmosphere. Great idea.
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Pump CO2 into the ground in order to extract more oil, which when burned is going to release new CO2 into atmosphere. Great idea.
People are going to use gasoline anyway. So the oil isn't adding to emissions. It just means fewer barrels of expensive and dirty oil will be produced elsewhere.
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Re: Mile under rock.... (Score:2)
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Great, if they capture and use it. Bad if they don't.
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One way to economically sequester CO2 is to use it for enhanced oil recovery [wikipedia.org].
And we don't even need to burn those fossil fuels and release that CO2 right back into the atmosphere, either; we can just manufacture toxic, endocrine-disrupting shit with them... you guys have seen "The Graduate," right? Plastics are the future.
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Re:Mile under rock.... (Score:5, Informative)
430 bar is well above the critical point of CO2 [researchgate.net]. So it will remain a liquid or supercritical fluid depending on the temperature. Granted it will be less dense than the surrounding rock so will tend to percolate up as the rocks bend and shift. But rocks tend to be stable for hundreds of millions of years - it's why all the oil and water underground hasn't just percolated up to the surface already. So the CO2 will effectively be sequestered, as long as you don't tap into it with a new well and for a CO2 geyser [wikipedia.org].
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I refuse to believe that any accessible space down there for taking carbon dioxide through a pipe is going to be sealed against leaks. It's bullshit.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Wow! You better get in touch with the engineers working on this project, stat! I bet they haven't considered the pressures involved!
/s
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Obviously? Have you done the maths then, have you discovered that fracking doesn't make any money because it costs too much to pump the chemicals they use down there? The fracking industry may be surprised to learn that.
I'd rather they replaced the whole thing with clean energy but since they aren't likely to do that this is better than nothing. In the longer run it might be useful if we can find a reasonably cost effective way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere.
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Re:Mile under rock.... (Score:5, Informative)
They're storing it in sandstone. It actually reacts with the sandstone itself and ends up becoming a part of the rock, pretty much locked away forever. This has been tested extensively, google it for a ton of references.
I'm curious as to the economics... (Score:4, Interesting)
Which means the 455MW plant this is being tested on would cost about $1.6B to build (yes, they're not building one, they're just adding the scrubbers to an existing plant - bear with me). Adding a billion to the $1.6 billion cost of the coal plant pushes the cost per Watt up to about $5.7 (a 60% increase in the cost of producing electricity).
How do they expect to actually pay for this, when investors can look at it and say "you can't sell electricity for 60% more than everyone else is selling it for and make money"?
Or is their fund-raising aimed at people who are looking for a tax break when the investment loses money hand over fist?
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1. It is a cooperative. So they don't really have "investors" other than their customers.
2. You are only looking at the capital expenditure part of the cost. You also need to look at fuel costs.
2. This is a pilot project to prove a concept. If it is successful, then there may be future regulation requiring all FF power plants to sequester CO2 and/or purchase offsets.
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Wouldn't sequestering the CO2 generate huge carbon credits/offsets for the company^W co-operative? Was that taken into consideration when counting costs?
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It is NOT going to cost less to run a coal plant with carbon capture tech than it is going to cost to run with carbon capture.
So, they're increasing base capital cost by 60%, and at best keeping fuel costs the same as before (since capturing carbon requires energy, it's pretty much certain that fuel costs are going to be higher as well).
So, again, how are they going to pay for this without increasing c
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"Under the scheme, investors will receive $50 for every metric ton of CO2 sequestered and stored. The plan is for Project Tundra to capture 3.5 million tons of CO2 annually and the subsidy will last for 12 years. “So that’s $2.1 billion available in tax credits for this project, and it’s going to cost around a billion dollars to build,” says Greeson."
And
“So the ratepayers of the entities that buy the p
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Wouldn't it be cheaper to put up a wind farm? The cost of renewables is sometimes equal or less than the power produced at a fossil fuel plant. Coal no longer makes economic sense, and it makes even less sense when you try to sequester the waste. I bet you can buy a lot of windmills for $1B.
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Yes ... and no.
ND is already putting wind turbines up at a pretty fast rate (estimated 25% increase in capacity across 2019), but there's a finite amount of space you can put them on. When you consider the footprint of the generators compared to the footprint of the coal plant, the coal plant generates more energy on the same amount of land. We're just not at the point we can shut down the coal plants yet and keep up with energy demands. Making the coal plants cleaner may be our best option for now, as it m
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"According to IEEFA estimates, that more than triples the cost of electricity generated at a coal plant, from $30 to $96 per megawatt hour (MW/h). As a result, coal becomes even less competitive against solar and wind-generated electricity, which can be purchased today for as low as $35 and $21 MW/h respectively."
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No, I'm talking about speed of implementation of the alternative energy sources, and the fact that solar turbines (which is the major renewable ND is investing in) may hit saturation here soon.
The unfortunate fact is that coal will still be used for ~50 years before being completely replaced. Once you accept that fact, doing what you can to make coal "cleaner" until it's totally phased out makes sense. Short-term $$ pricing isn't the only thing this project has in mind or it'd never be done - I'll guarantee
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I believe that what a lot of the investment analysts are predicting is some kind of carbon costing. Either through some kind of regulation, a tax break for clean energy or an actual cap and trade scheme ... eventually there will be a cost to producing CO2. And these aren't green pipe-dreams either, this is coming out of international investment bodies like Deloitte, Lloyds, Schroders ... there is an almost universal message from money managers that there is substantial financial risk involved in not reducin
You're mixing up units (Score:5, Informative)
It's $3.50 per watt of capacity, not output
Coal plants have an operating lifespan of about 50 years, and a capacity factor (generation / capacity) of about 0.50. So
So adding the sequestration will (over the lifetime of the plant) raise the cost of electricity generation by 1.0 cents/kWh. Electricity in most of the world costs 20-30 cents/kWh, so this is an almost trivial surcharge. And 1.0 cent/kWh is actually less than some of the proposed carbon taxes on coal [wikipedia.org].
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That's the capital cost. There is also an operating cost, which according to TFA:
"... more than triples the cost of electricity generated at a coal plant, from $30 to $96 per megawatt hour (MW/h)."
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Your numbers are way off.
Everything from the cost per kwh of the sequestration tech (for example it takes almost 30% of the plants power to separate the gas and pressurize it up to the point they can pump it underground which dramatically increases the cost).
All the way to the cost of electricity in the US, which excluding Hawaii and Alaska where prices are exorbitant (because power is generated with diesel generators) the average US electricity cost is around $0.10/kwh on average.
This will go the same way
600,000 cars (Score:3)
Nope, sorry. It's actually equivalent to adding 66,000 cars to the road.
Re: 600,000 cars (Score:2)
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Only if they are building a new coal plant. They aren't.
Why bother? (Score:5, Interesting)
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It makes no sense to build new coal plants with CCS.
But it may make sense to retrofit CCS onto operating plants to keep them going. That is what is happening in this case.
No new coal plants are being built in America and none are even being planned.
Many new coal plants are being built in India, China, Indonesia, and Africa. That is where the big challenges are.
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" a coal plant that is coupled with CCS technology may actually be more expensive to run because of an increase in parasitic load, he says. A coal plant uses between five and nine percent of the electricity it generates to run the equipment it needs to operate. But adding carbon capture, an energy- and water-intensive process, pushes this parasitic load up to much as 33 percent, he says. "
"According to IEEFA estimates, that more than triples the cost of electricity generated at a c
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coal is uneconomic compared to natural gas
But surely the scrubbers will work at least as well with natural gas.
surely in the near future will be uncompetitive with wind or solar with battery storage
That remains to be seen. Batteries are mighty expensive.
But I agree that carbon capture is a dumb concept, mostly because it can never reach 100% capture.
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It's North Dakota. So little sun light in the winter, (sun is above the horizon about 8 hours a day) and when it's 20 below zero, there is often no wind either. And the windless condition can last several days, so now your batteries are dead, assuming they even work at -20. In that situation fossil fuel starts looking pretty good.
You can look here to see how reliable wind really is. We have hydroelectric for load leveling. ND has a few dams, but not much elevation to work with. Wisconsin is in the same situ
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A decade or two ago it seemed essential to perfect and implement large-scale CCS, but at this point it's hard to see how it will ever make economic sense again
It makes economic sense to build a large-scale CCS for an existing coal plant that is still early in its life and would likely either run for the next 30 years belching CO2, or get shutdown if a government came an imposed some kind of carbon tax on the plant worth a damn and for that I can only say "LOL USA".
If your goal to prevent global warming is based entirely on only building new energy sources without managing the ones that already have billions of sunk costs you will fail, economics will make sure of
Umm (Score:1)
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Turns out that a CO2 well opened up and simply shot a lot of CO2 into the air afixiating all mammals, insects, etc.
Is that some new way to stick things to the ground where they don't move? Or did they asphyxiate, and it just looks like they were 'afixiated'?
There's a CO2 shortage! (Score:3)
How this compares (Score:2)
You know how this will compare cost-wise with renewables and the smart grid necessary to distribute their intermittent energy for a consistent demand?
Wind and solar are putting the squeeze on fossil fuels even not counting the cost of carbon capture. They don't have anything like the externalized costs of pollution and geopolitics full of oil wars. There's no Gulf of Mexico incidents on account of renewables. Any of their rough edges, like cobalt usage in some of the older technologies, are getting worked
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It's not a last gasp. It's a minimization of damages caused by the industry as it fades away.
At this point, the power grid would simply collapse if you tried to take the coal plants offline. Renewables are replacing them, but it's not going to happen overnight - we're talking decades. At this point, no new coal plants are being built anywhere in the US - all new construction is going to renewables - and eventually the existing coal plants are ging to be taken offline. However, meany of the existing plants w
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cheaper and better to go nuke (Score:3)
And yes, having CO2 pop up out of the ground, kills ppl.
2012 idea (Score:1)
What about cyanobacteria? (Score:2)
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I've got half an acre of them.
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I've got a yard full of them, some are in baskets hanging from the patio, even.
Not that they eat CO2 all the time, they emit it at night, but less than they take up during the sunlight hours.
Windy No.Dakota don't need carbon-capture (Score:2)
ND free-wind easily counter-offsets its coal dependency. Solar-battery farms would buffer grid anomallies.
Minot's outlier terrestrial hill-y operational problematic notwithstanding, they don't need to extend the life of the facility with CO2 capture. It would likely be uncompetitive in a falling price-competition with renewables and solar-battery farms found in AUS
Mine fire (Score:2)
I don't think there's any chemist worth their salt, who's thought this through:
CO2, in contact with coal, just needs a starting reaction (fire) to start turning into carbon monoxide (CO).
A mine fire can burn for decades, if not centuries, releasing vast amounts of carbon monoxide, which is highly toxic, making the area uninhabitable.
We already have an example of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]