Current coal fired power plants could recycle the CO2 emitted by their plants + some of the electricity produced, using this process.

CO2 could be stored temporarily and recycled during off peak e-energy demands?

The methane produced could be used to produce extra e-energy to meet peak demands?

Of course, this green process would be too clean, cost a bit more and would quickly be rejected by current 'Moneycracies' supporters?

In early 2012, Bullfrog partnered with Chevrolet Canada to launch the Chevrolet Volt Bullfrog Power Edition, Canada's first EV to come with emissions-free, renewable electricity.

http://www.gm.ca/gm/english/vehicles/chevrolet/volt/overview
http://www.autos.ca/general-news/chevrolet-volt-adds-bullfrog-power-edition/

I am wondering if it is possible to design a custom wind plant around a facility like this. Potentially, the costs may be significantly lower since the plant doesn't have to produce for the grid.

Coal plant exhaust is among the worst source of CO2 for this kind of system, because the high levels of sulfur and other contaminants in the coal-sourced CO2 stream poison the catalysts used for the hydrogenation reaction. Biogas can also have this problem, but most references indicate that coal has about four times more sulfur than biogas.

In addition, with biogas, you're looking at a CO2 source that is linked to the atmosphere via recent photosynthesis, unlike coal which comes from ancient fossil deposits - hence using biogas emissions results in no increase in atmospheric CO2, at any stage.

I can't seem to find the specific chemistry being used here, though - does the CO2 get converted to CO before being reacted with H2?

"Taking electricity and making methane is going backwards."

Well, if you're talking about using a natural gas plant to make electricity which is used to make methane, yes.

However, as Germany abandons coal and nuclear in favor of renewables, their problem is how to store intermittent flows of electricity from wind and sunlight for later use - and this way, they can use that energy to create a hydrocarbon fuel for which the infrastructure (storage, power plants and pipelines) already exists. That's not going backwards, is it?

This is about as dumb a greenwash idea as I have seen. You take renewable electricity and turn it into methane at some efficiency (~50% maybe). Meanwhile to generate electricity for other purposes, you burn coal and Germany is going to burn more coal as they shut down their nuclear facilities. Meanwhile Audi generates favorable publicity among the ignorant. It would be one thing to use renewable electricity to charge batteries for a plug-in vehicle as you would not be taking an efficiency hit on every step. With the Audi scheme you take a 50% hit generating the gas and then another 70+% hit turning the gas into mechanical power for an overall efficiency of 15% if you are lucky.

http://www.renewablesinternational.net/is-germany-switching-to-coal/150/537/56081/

VW is absolutely crazy against automobile electrification. This absolutely demonstrating that. Instead of using wind power for EV with at least 70% efficiency Audi is using expensive and complicated proces and finally getting wind power to wheels efficiency no more than 15% (average would be 10%).

The only relevant "efficiency" when talking about wind-energy is economic efficiency, not thermodynamic efficiency. The reason why we dont have 500% of our electricity renewable is not because there is not enough wind, but because there is not enough money for wind turbines.

THEREFORE : if renewable methane in a combustion engine is in 2013 cheaper per km drive than electric driving, it is more efficient ! It doesn't matter if it is 15% or 95% thermal efficiency.

And from an economic point of view, it is very hard to calculate the "cost" of the electricity, because they will use excess electricity when there is overproduction of wind energy. This overproduction will increase dramatically in the near future as ever more huge wind turbines are coming online (the big projects in the north sea are only starting), so we will probably have ever more abundant "free" electricity, since there is no one else to use it when the wind blows at night. Of course, it would be even better if there are millions of BEV charging at that moment, but the rise of excessive free wind power is steeper than the rise of BEV's. Whenever the number of BEV's becomes so high that they buy the electricity for a better price, the hydrogen plants will slow down. As long as no one uses the cheap electricity, I'd rather have it transformed to H2 or CH4 than seeing the turbines shut down.

I wish GCC had a comment rating. I'd give a Thumbs Up to HarveyD every time. Thumbs up Harvey.

“The only relevant "efficiency"…”

Nonsense, here is why. For example, say we can produce power at $50/MWh using $4MMBTU NG. With a good wind resource we can produce power at $40/MWh and therefore build lots of wind farms. The $4MMBTU NG not used for making power can be used for transportation or heating homes in winter.

Then we build more wind farms than we need. If the wind farm can make $4MMBTU NG, great but that poor thermal efficiency means that the NG cost $10 MMBTU to produce.

“so we will probably have ever more abundant "free" electricity …”

When Alain is willing to work the night shift for ‘free’ then maybe he will understand that the money to pay workers to make power is not free.

Even if Alain is willing to work ‘free’ I am not. I like my cheap electricity made with coal. Germany can do whatever they want. If Alain, Brotherkenny4, and Harvey want to come to my backyard to produce power cheaper with less environmental impact than my utility, then I will be happy to buy it from them. Of course, I will want to see the EIS that show that the impact of wind and solar is not huge.

@al:
Indeed.
It seems that most of those who critiqued the energy efficiency did so whilst ignoring the CHP technology used.

Economic efficiency may be a different matter, but the energy efficiency should be pretty good.

Kit P,

We seem to agree passionately that only the $ are relevant, not the thermal efficiency.

I never said the NG will be free, I only say the electricity often is (almost) free, because the production is higher than demand.

Of course, the ultimate cost of the synthetic CH4 is not only determined by the price of the electricity, but the discussion whether it is sound to produce synthetic H2 or CH4 should ultimately be based on $. And that evidently includes wages.
It is not because H2 is produced at night, that all the workers have to be there at night. Those elektrochemical facilities work almost "automatically" and just as in any powerplant or chemical facility, while there are constantly people at the facility, the necessary maintenance can be mostly performed at "normal working hours".

In general, the workers in the chemical industry are very well paid, so nobody has to work for free.

We even have to include another fact, and that is that Germany imports most of its fossil fuels, so even if the price is somewhat higher for wind energy than for fossil energy, macro-economically it is ultimately cheaper for the Germans to produce wind-energy than coal-energy, since the extra cost for wind-energy is more than compensated by the the fact that the money remains in the local economy, instead of disappearing to a foreign fuel supplier.