ThomC
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- Name: ThomC
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India
It also appears that India is looking to source more power from coal. Tata power has stated in its annual report that it plans to install a further 10 GW of power in the next five years of which >80% will be from coal fired power.
Tata are also buying up coal resources abroad to sure up supply.On China to increase coal production 30 percent by 2015 posted 10 months, 1 week ago 28 Responses
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Gasification
Producing Biochar can have a nice offtake in the form of syngas. The syngas could be used for power generation and if sourced from agricultural waste such as crop residues could offer substantial GHG reduction.
The likely cost effective scenario would be a central gasifier processing agricultural residues within a 50 km radius.
Alternatively instead of gasification one could go the pyrolysis route and capture the volatile which would happily run in a diesel. On Biochar: magic bullet? posted 10 months, 4 weeks ago 14 Responses
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CCS is a fantasy
I am sorry to inform you Jonas but Hansen is wrong on CCS. There are numerous reasons, i will list the main ones:
- Most areas around power stations are not geologically suitable for storage therefore you need to build up a nationwide infrastructure of gas pipelines to transport the CO2 to the storage sites. This network would be required to be financed and built in a decade.
- The energy required in capturing and transforming CO2 into a sequestrable state requires that you basically drop a retrofitted power station output significantly(http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/sdissues/energy/op/ccs_egm/ ...). Consequently you need to build more power stations just to maintain the existing electrical output.
- There are issues surrounding leaks and potential for ecological catastrophe if a CO2 reservoir "burped".
- To date i am not aware of anyone that has demonstrated the complete process of CCS. I know that the O&G boys have been doing the storage part for EOR and that CO2 has been captured before using amines. Futuregen is a project that is looking to construct a demonstration facility but i think there are funding issues.
- There are issues surrounding leaks and potential for ecological catastrophe if a CO2 reservoir "burped".
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Fundamentals
Saluki,
Models used to predict behaviour of complex systems such as climate or particle physics will continue to be in a state of flux. Observations such as a lower than predicted warming trend over the past few years are no justification to discredit the theory, but should be used to further the understanding of the dynamics at play.
On a fundamental level the presence of IR absorbing gases in ever increasing concentrations in the atmosphere will effect the heat flux between the earth and space.
I would look to the equilibrium position of water in its different phases as a likely explanation for the plateau in observable warming. On Reflecting on (and fact-checking) the VP debate posted 1 year, 1 month ago 27 Responses
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While your doing the R&D
If society is considering CCS, they should also seriously consider how coal is transformed into electrical energy. A lot of the cost involved in CCS is in the quantity of gas required to be sequestered. I believe there should be equal emphasis on reducing the amount of gas generated in the first place. This can be accomplished by looking to technologies that have very high thermal efficiencies like carbon fuel cells and micronised coal/water slurry as a diesel fuel.On Is coal with carbon capture and storage a core climate solution? posted 1 year, 1 month ago 24 Responses
- Most areas around power stations are not geologically suitable for storage therefore you need to build up a nationwide infrastructure of gas pipelines to transport the CO2 to the storage sites. This network would be required to be financed and built in a decade.