[Greenbuilding] Carbon Capture

[Lawrence Lile]

I was just reading an article in Engineering News-Record on Carbon
Capture in Power Plants.  (wish I had a link to share)  

 

It looks like they are building a 5MW pilot plant (5MW would be a lot of
power in any other context!) in Wisconsin that can capture 90% of the
CO2 in the flue gas, plus 97% of fly ash and 95% of sulphur dioxide.
Alstrom Power Inc is installing the pilot project in Pleasant Prairie,
Wis.  (Ironically probably a very good wind power site)

 

American Electric Power is installing two carbon capture systems on two
existing power plants, about 30MW worth, still chicken-feed in the power
industry.

 

MIT experts are saying that retrofitting a power plant isn't cheap, it
isn't bolt-on technology, it is much better to build it in from the
ground up.  There was no mention of the energy penalty for the carbon
capture.  Most of the carbon is being injected into the ground, either
being used by the oil industry to extract more oil from wells (more
irony) or injected into saltwater aquifers underground, where presumably
it makes a sort of salty coca-cola down there.  MIT estimates that
carbon capture would add 50% to 80% to the cost of producing power from
coal, not a cheap option.  

 

It's hard to believe that this is really going on, and power companies
are getting on board, but they see the writing on the wall, and know
that if they don't do something voluntarily about cleaning up coal
emissions, they'll eventually be forced to do something.  

 

Wind power is a great idea, and we should use it as much as we can, but
the wind doesn't blow all the time.  Somebody is going to want to turn
on the lights on a still summer night, and that's why we are stuck with
coal for quite a while.  I certainly hope they do develop a good
technology for cleaning it up, and then we find a way to make it
mandatory.  

 

 

 

 

 

Lawrence Lile, P.E., LEED AP