Germany will next week open the world's first "clean coal" plant actually ready to capture and store its carbon-dioxide emissions. The 30-megawatt, $100 million Schwarze Pumpe demonstration plant will burn coal in an atmosphere of oxygen instead of regular air, producing some 10 tons per hour of compressed CO2 that can be captured and buried under a depleted gas field. (Such "oxyfuel combustion" technology is different from the integrated gasification combined cycle systems being pursued in the U.S.) While the project is a step forward for "clean coal," a full-scale system is many years and many dollars away. By the by, "clean coal" is both oxymoronic and plain ol' moronic; as one Greenpeace activist sums up, "Our concern is that this technology is used to justify the construction of more coal power plants. It's too expensive, it will come too late, and it will divert money from the real solutions, renewable energies and energy efficiency." Not to mention that whole leveling-mountains thing.
source: Earth2Tech, Scientific American, BBC News, The Guardian
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Comments
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Delay And Deny Posted 11:37 am
05 Sep 2008
C02.
It's got 2 O's -- or oxygens and a C.
If we could strip off the C, we could use the O2 to burn more coal efficiency.
The C would just be...what? Black soot or something? That seems like it would be easy to bury.
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Pangolin Posted 11:52 am
05 Sep 2008
It's also a dang bit easier to implement on a global scale than CCS. And it would store more carbon in the ground for less money.
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Delay And Deny Posted 12:25 pm
05 Sep 2008
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/S2P ...
Scientists Use Sunlight to Make Fuel From CO2
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have found a way of using sunlight to recycle carbon dioxide and produce fuels like methanol or gasoline.
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BlackBear Posted 8:58 pm
05 Sep 2008
Back when I was in school we called that process photosynthesis.
Sorry, JB, I just couldn't help myself!
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Delay And Deny Posted 5:18 am
06 Sep 2008
Let's Do It.
Let's Photosynthesize CO2.
BlackBear, I was thinking the same thing last night as I rolled the whole CO2 issue around in my head. Of course, CO2 is a FOOD to one-half of the species taxonomy!
Seriously, couldn't genetic engineering be used to make a really fat, wasteful, sloth of a fern that sat around all day doing nothing but gobbling down CO2 and putting on a really thick coat of cellulose.
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Delay And Deny Posted 7:27 pm
06 Sep 2008
Europe Signs Up for Hydrogen Cars
The European Parliament has called for a rollout of a EU filling-station network for hydrogen-powered cars
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2008/gb2 ...
The European Parliament has called on the EU's executive to introduce measures to support the roll-out of a Europe-wide filling-station network for hydrogen-powered cars and develop common standards for the vehicles across all member states.
MEPs almost unanimously adopted a report on Wednesday (3 September) drafted by members of the centre-right European Peoples' Party grouping in the parliament on hydrogen-powered vehicles.
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Pangolin Posted 8:10 pm
06 Sep 2008
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:38 am
07 Sep 2008
And the fact that the entire European Union committed to building a Hydrogen Highway would seem to be significant in any discussion...
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