DOE Makes First Awards from $1.4B for Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage Projects
03 October 2009
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has selected 12 projects for the first round of funding from $1.4 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the capture carbon dioxide from industrial sources for storage or beneficial use. The first phase of these projects will include $21.6 million in Recovery Act funding and $22.5 million in private funding for a total initial investment of $44.1 million. The remaining Recovery Act funding will be awarded to the most promising projects during a competitive phase two selection process.
Projects selected include large-scale industrial carbon capture and storage projects that capture carbon dioxide emissions from industrial sources—such as cement plants, chemical plants, refineries, paper mills, and manufacturing facilities—and store the carbon dioxide in deep saline formations and other geologic systems.
The initial duration of each project selected is approximately seven months. Projects will be subject to further competitive evaluation in 2010 after successful completion of their Phase 1 activities. Projects that best demonstrate the ability to address their mission needs will be in the final portfolio that will receive additional funding for design, construction, and operation.
| Secretary Chu on Carbon Capture |
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| Energy Secretary Steven Chu wrote an editorial for the 25 September 2009 special issue of the journal Science on carbon capture, in which he addressed the magnitude of the challenge. |
| Noting that coal accounts for roughly 25% of the world energy supply and 40% of the carbon emissions. Chu said that it was highly unlikely that the US, Russia, China and India, which account for two-thirds of the coal reserves, “will turn their back on coal anytime soon.” |
| ...for this reason, the capture and storage of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel power plants must be aggressively pursued. |
| ...The scale of CCS needed to make a significant dent in worldwide carbon emissions is staggering. Roughly 6 billion metric tons of coal are used each year, producing 18 billion tons of CO2. In contrast, we now sequester a few million metric tons of CO2 per year. At geological storage densities of CO2 (0.6 kg/m3), underground sequestration will require a storage volume of 30,000 km3/year. This may be sufficient storage capacity, but more testing is required to demonstrate such capacity and integrity. |
| ...We should pursue a range of options for new coal-fired power plants (such as coal gasification, burning coal in an oxygen atmosphere, or post-combustion capture) to determine the most cost-effective approach to burn fuel and reduce the total amount of CO2 emitted. No matter which technology ultimately proves best for new plants, we will still need to retrofit existing plants and new plants that will be built before CCS is routinely deployed. Each new 1-gigawatt coal plant is a billion-dollar investment and, once built, will be used for decades. |
| ...Public support of CCS R&D is essential, and for this reason, $3.4 billion of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money is being invested by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in CCS R&D...There are many hurdles to making CCS a reality, but none appear insurmountable. The DOE goal is to support R&D, as well as pilot CCS projects so that widespread deployment of CCS can begin in 8 to 10 years. This is an aggressive goal, but the climate problem compels us to act with fierce urgency. —Dr. Steven Chu, Science |
Large-scale industrial carbon capture and storage selections (by amount of DOE award) include:
ConocoPhillips. ConocoPhillips will demonstrate new advancements that improve conversion efficiency and economies of scale for carbon capture systems at a petcoke-based 683-megawatt integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant adjacent to its existing refinery in Sweeny, Texas. About 85% of the CO2 from the process stream will be captured and over 5 million tons sequestered into a depleted oil or gas field. (DOE Share: $3,014,666)
C6 Resources. Objective is to capture and transport by pipeline approximately 1 million tons per year of CO2 streams from facilities located in the Bay Area, Calif., to be injected more than 2 miles underground into a saline formation. C6 Resources, an affiliate of Shell Oil Company, will conduct the project in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. (DOE Share: $3,000,000)
Shell Chemical Capital Company. The objective of this project is to capture, condition, and transport by pipeline approximately 1 million tons per year of by-product and off-gas CO2 streams from facilities located along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans for geologic storage. (DOE Share: $3,000,000)
Wolverine Power Supply Cooperative Inc. Investigators will demonstrate advanced amines and additives supplied by Hitachi and Dow to capture 300,000 tons of CO2 per year. Wolverine Power Supply Cooperative will be building a 600-megawatt circulating fluidized bed power plant near Rogers City, Mich. (DOE Share: $2,723,512)
University of Utah. More than 1 million tons of CO2 per year will be captured from various industrial sources, compressed, and transported via two new intra-state pipelines for CO2 enhanced oil recovery and deep saline sequestration research in Kansas. Beneath each enhanced oil recovery target, a major saline aquifer spanning most of the State of Kansas will be used for CO2 injection. (DOE Share: $2,696,556)
Praxair Inc. Praxair will partner with BP Products North America, Denbury Resources, and Gulf Coast Carbon Center to demonstrate capture and sequestration of CO2 emissions from an existing hydrogen-production facility in an oil refinery into underground formations for CO2 enhanced oil recovery. This demonstration will be performed at the BP refinery, and a lateral pipeline will be built to connect to Denbury’s Green Pipeline to transport 1 million tons of CO2 per year. (DOE Share: $1,719,464)
Archer Daniels Midland Corporation. Archer Daniels Midland Company, a member of DOE’s Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium, will partner with other research organizations to demonstrate Dow ALSTOM’s advanced amine process to capture CO2 from industrial flue gases and sequester the CO2 in the Mt. Simon Sandstone reservoir. (DOE Share: $1,480,656)
CEMEX Inc. CEMEX USA will partner with RTI International to demonstrate a dry sorbent CO2 capture technology at one of its cement plants in the United States. CEMEX will design and construct a dry sorbent CO2 capture and compression system, pipeline (if necessary), and injection station. This commercial-scale carbon capture and sequestration demonstration project will remove up to 1 million tons of CO2. (DOE Share: $1,137,885)
Air Products and Chemicals Inc. A system to concentrate CO2 from two steam methane reformer waste streams will be designed, constructed, and demonstrated at Port Arthur, Texas. More than 1 million tons of CO2 will be delivered per year via pipeline for sequestration into the Oyster Bayou oilfield for enhanced oil recovery by Denbury Onshore LLC. (DOE Share: $961,499)
Leucadia Energy LLC. Leucadia Energy and Denbury Onshore will demonstrate advanced technologies that capture and sequester CO2 emissions from an industrial source. Mississippi Gasification LLC, a Leucadia affiliate, is building a petcoke-to-substitute natural gas plant in Moss Point, Miss., to demonstrate large-scale recovery, purification and compression of 4 million tons per year of CO2. (DOE Share: $840,000)
Leucadia Energy LLC. Partnered with Denbury Onshore, Leucadia Energy will demonstrate advanced technologies that capture and sequester more than 4 million tons of CO2 emissions at the Lake Charles co-generation petroleum coke-to-chemicals (methanol) project to be located near Lake Charles, La. The project will transport compressed CO2 through a 12-mile pipeline that connects to Denbury’s Green Line pipeline system in Louisiana so that it can be used for enhanced oil recovery in the Hastings and Oyster Bayou oilfields in Texas. (DOE Share: $540,000)
Battelle Memorial Institute, Pacific Northwest Division. Battelle researchers will partner with Boise White Paper LLC and Fluor Corporation to demonstrate geologic CO2 storage in deep flood basalt formations in the State of Washington. Fluor Corporation will design a customized version of its Econamine Plus carbon capture technology for operation with the specialized chemical composition of exhaust gases produced from combustion of black liquor fuels. (DOE Share: $500,000)
Additionally, the Department has also made conditional selections of 16 projects that demonstrate innovative concepts for beneficial carbon dioxide use. These conditional selections are subject to additional merit reviews and technical evaluation.
Resources
Science special issue on carbon capture
As usual, public $$$ have to be used to clean up after our marvelous free market enterprises have created an environmental mess.
The time may have arrived to make the culprits pay? A national GHG fund could collect enough fees/funds to cover similar investments.
A progressive GHG penalty (carbon tax?) applied to all emissions could do it. If started at a low $10/tonnes and raised an extra $10/tonne every year for the next ten years, it should be enough to do this type of essential clean up over 2 or 3 decades.
Posted by: HarveyD | 03 October 2009 at 08:55 AM
Lots of spent oil and gas wells in many places. If the well can contain natural gas for a long time, it stands to reason it can hold lots of CO2 for a long time. Some will say that it could leak and kill people, I doubt that. In fact, in the future a use could be found for the CO2 and you sure know where to find it at that time.
Posted by: SJC | 03 October 2009 at 02:24 PM
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What an incredibly irresponsible waste of tax payer money. Please bring back the separation of church and state. Dumping money into the Globalwarmism religion is certainly not Constitutional.
It's all about the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
CO2 is just as much a pollutant as H2O. Both should be regulated with equal religious idiocy.
Praise be unto Algore!
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Posted by: The Goracle | 03 October 2009 at 04:02 PM
It looks like some people post flaming non sense just to get people upset. Don't take the bait, those people are trying to spread hate and that is never a good thing.
Posted by: SJC | 03 October 2009 at 04:11 PM
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SJC: That was a very hateful comment that you made, falsely accusing "those people" of "spreading hate." Please point out exactly what is hateful about the separation of church and state?
Yes, if you can't discuss the merits go straight to name calling. Science!!! Tis is one of the main reasons that the Globalwarmist cause is failing.
Praise be unto Algore.
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Posted by: The Goracle | 03 October 2009 at 06:58 PM
This was also accidentally posted to another page.
The introduction of massive amounts of CO2 into the air is the direct result of the industrialization of nations and subsequently the whole world.
The ability to write about CO2 and Global warming issues has been made possible mostly by massive releases of CO2 in China to build computers and displays.
One of the reasons this is done in China is that China is willing to supply electricity at low cost to to the manufacturing facilities without much worry and delays caused by complaints and lawsuits by groups worried about CO2.
All computers now in existence could be used for internet communications such as these for the next 20 years without modification. Far more efficient software can be designed and programmed so that performance in accessing pages from the internet can be much accelerated from the present software.
One way to do this is to remove the present software from computers whenever Internet pages are being used.
Faster graphics and processing is only needed by computer games. We are far beyond the facilities needed for communication of webpages and their presentation. Computers that retain the ability to operate are now simply being destroyed when they could be used in large networks or used to assist the computers that replaced them.
We in these highly industrialized countries which also demand other countries to become highly industrialized to support our mere wishes, ignore the facts and cling on to pseudo facts to avoid actual learning and thinking.
The world can be seen to be actually now a far better place for humans from reading the statistics alone. There are a lot more of them than there were 200 years ago. Hurricanes and other frightfull storms that have been partially caused by global warming, have not made much of a measurable reduction of the human population. There is an underlying asumption that most other animal and plant inhabitants of the earth would be better off without humans on the planet, and this is true.
Ship, train and automobile transportation has eliminated famine and starvation where local and foreign governments do not promote it.
Massive amounts of coal and oil have eliminated much exposure to freezing temperatures and have reduced the need to eat a great deal to keep warm. They have also facilitated greatly the production, processing and transporting of foods. Most humans in industrialized countries would starve if they had to rely on foods produced within a five-hundred mile radius.
The forgoing was just to introduce the question: Was there ever a time on earth when there was more CO2 in the air than there is now?
The similar question also exists: Was there ever a time on earth when there was a greater greenhouse effect than there is now?
Yet another question is: When there was a lot of methane in the air prior to oxygen forming in the air due to plants, as is supposed by some, was the greenhouse effect far greater than it is now?
Humans have had the ability to build an independent civilization on the moon for about 40 years. The people could exist in tunnels. Adequate foods for survival can be produced from waste and newly found carbon, water and oxygen and other elements from the minerals of the moon. Carbon may be quite scarce and would have to be carefully recycled. The ability to produce iron, steel and other metals would be introduced so that tunnel boring equipment could be made instead of imported. We have the ability and knowledge to produce infinite amounts of nuclear electricity to support all of the operations of the moon civilization. There is no doubt that uranium will be found on the moon cheaper than it can be exported there from the earth. All of the energy for processing uranium can come from existing reactors and new ones will be built for more energy.
I now propose that such a civilization can exist on the moon, but also such a one can be built upon the earth. It should be built, in-order-to, remove all humans from the face of the earth to protect the plants and animals from their worst devastators, humans. ..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 03 October 2009 at 09:44 PM