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Amidst all this enclosed article's dreary, non-productive blather about the wasteful concept of Carbon Capture and Storage - i.e., CCS, the costly collection of the potentially-valuable coal-use by-product, Carbon Dioxide, and the expensive pumping of it down geologic storage rat holes, sometimes to the benefit of Big Oil in their pot scraping efforts - are a few "enlightening" facts.
Some excerpts:
"CCS is broken down into four stages: capture (about 50% of the cost), which separates CO2 from other exhaust gases..."
and
"South Africa’s Sasol, and PetroSA synfuels plants are said to be in a prime position for CO2 capture, as they already produce a stream of almost 95% concentrated CO2 through coal-to-liquids processes, bringing down capture costs."
So, coal-to-liquid conversion facilities produce nearly pure, "95% concentrated" Carbon Dioxide as their waste gas stream, thus drastically reducing capture costs - which represent "about 50% of the cost" of "CCS".
Wouldn't it make sense to then send that nearly-pure CO2 to a Sabatier processor, and convert it into Methane, for further processing into valuable Methanol, and thus pay at least for the cost of capturing it in the first place, and obviating the need to spend even more money burying it?
Carbon Capture and Storage, and Cap & Trade, just haven't been thought out, or examined in the true light of Coal-to-Liquid conversion, and Carnol and Sabatier CO2 conversion, technologies.
Carbon Dioxide is a valuable by-product of our coal-use industries. We can make more liquid fuels and other useful chemicals with CO2, and we shouldn't be trying to "landfill" all of it, especially to subsidize Big Oil's squeezing of last drops, or trying to tax the producers of it out of existence.
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Herein we submit two reports from collaborative researchers, in Israel and Switzerland, documenting in even further detail the validity of proposals we earlier reported, that urge the actual capture and recycling, into liquid fuels and useful chemicals, from industrial exhaust, of Carbon Dioxide.
The article links and excerpts, with comments inserted and appended:
"Thermoneutral tri-reforming of flue gases from coal- and gas-fired power stations
M. Halmann and A. Steinfeld
Weizmann Institute of Science, Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research, Rehovot 76100, Israel
ETH-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Solar Technology Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232 Villigen, Switzerland
Abstract
The treatment of flue gases from fossil fuel fired power stations by tri-reforming with natural gas or by coal gasification (In other words, you don't need natural gas for this process. Syngas derived from coal gasification will work as well.) could become an attractive approach for converting the CO2, H2O, O2, and N2 contained in these flue gases via syngas processing into useful products, such as methanol, hydrogen, ammonia, or urea. (So, we can get both fuel and fertilizer by treating CO2-containing flue gas with syngas derived from coal gasification.) The present study determines the constraints for achieving such thermochemical reactions under conditions of thermoneutrality, by reacting the flue gases with water, air, and natural gas or coal at 1000–1200 K. (The overall process of reacting CO2 flue gas with coal-derived syngas and water is "thermoneutral" because some of the included reaction steps are exothermic and provide the heat energy needed to drive the rest of the process, as other research we've documented for you confirms.) The implications of such reactions are examined in terms of CO2without the addition of much, if any, of energy from external sources. The process is nearly self-sustaining.) emission avoidance, fuel saving, economic viability, and exergy efficiency.(Again, by "exergy efficiency" we presume them to mean that some steps of the reaction process produce enough heat energy to drive the entire system
Fuel saving, carbon dioxide emission avoidance, and syngas production by tri-reforming of flue gases from coal- and gas-fired power stations, and by the carbothermic reduction of iron oxide
M. Halmann and A. Steinfeld
Weizmann Institute of Science, Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research, Rehovot 76100, Israel
ETH—Zurich, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Solar Technology Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232 Villigen, Switzerland
Abstract
Flue gases from coal, gas, or oil-fired power stations, as well as from several heavy industries, such as the production of iron, lime and cement, are major anthropogenic sources of global CO2 emissions. The newly proposed process for syngas production based on the tri-reforming of such flue gases with natural gas (As noted above, syngas derived from coal will work as well as natural gas. - JtM) could be an important route for CO2 emission avoidance. In addition, by combining the carbothermic reduction of iron oxide with the partial oxidation of the carbon source, an overall thermoneutral process can be designed for the co-production of iron and syngas rich in CO. (In other words: This process could, as well as producing fuels from Carbon Dioxide by using syngas derived from coal, refine iron from iron ore. Talk about your useful by-products. - JtM) Water-gas shift (WGS) of CO to H2 enables the production of useful syngas. The reaction process heat, or the conditions for thermoneutrality, are derived by thermochemical equilibrium calculations. The thermodynamic constraints are determined for the production of syngas suitable for methanol, hydrogen, or ammonia synthesis. The environmental and economic consequences are assessed for large-scale commercial production of these chemical commodities. Preliminary evaluations with natural gas, coke, or coal as carbon source indicate that such combined processes should be economically competitive, as well as promising significant fuel saving and CO2 emission avoidance. The production of ammonia in the above processes seems particularly attractive, as it consumes the nitrogen in the flue gases."
We'll attempt to summarize the gist of all this, as we understand it: We can, without the addition of much external energy, use Syngas, derived from coal, to convert Carbon Dioxide into liquid fuels and useful chemicals, and, at the same time, refine iron ore, the use of which helps to both chemically reduce the Carbon Dioxide and provide heat energy to drive the entire process, and, by involving the excess Nitrogen contained in the CO2-containing flue gases, we can make some fertilizer, as well.
How much more complete, how much more sensible and profitable, does all of this have to be before we stop whining about liquid fuel shortages and global warming, and just get to work solving the problems - with coal?
Yes, Coal can do that. Coal can do all of that. Heck, it ain't a triple play. It's a Grand Slam home run.
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There has been some misinformation recently published that China is having second thoughts about proceeding with their extensive Coal Conversion, to liquid and gas fuels and chemicals, industrialization.
Like much negative press about Coal Conversion in general, those reports are false; and, we would contend, deliberately false, as this very recent release, from China, might help to attest.
An excerpt:
"BEIJING, Aug 28 (Reuters) - China Datang International Power Generation Co has won government approval to build a 25.7 billion yuan ($3.76 billion) plant in Inner Mongolia to convert coal to gas, the China Mining News reported.
The plant, which would also produce liquid oil including naphtha, would be linked to a new 359-kilometre gas pipeline to Beijing, the report said."
"Naptha" is a term which might carry inaccurate connotations to non-technical readers. In the context of this news release, it conveys the following meaning, distilled from several web-based references:
"Naphtha normally refers to a number of different flammable liquid mixtures of hydrocarbons. Naphtha is used primarily as feedstock for producing a high-octane gasoline component."
As we have, from other sources, reported: It is feasible, on a practical basis, to produce replacements for both liquid petroleum and natural gas, from coal, at the same facility, in the same industrial process stream.
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We've cited quite a number of references documenting the technology that exists, and which is being developed and practiced, especially in China, to convert coal into the valuable liquid fuel, and gasoline and plastics raw material, Methanol.
Herein is additional information on the subject of Methanol manufacture, which will, we hope, serve as even more illustration and confirmation that coal, and the CO2 that arises from our coal use, can, on a practical and environmentally-beneficial basis, be converted into valuable products we urgently need, such as liquid fuel.
An excerpt:
"The typical feedstock used in the production of methanol is natural gas. Methanol can also be made from renewable resources such as wood, municipal solid wastes and sewage. The production of methanol also offers an important market for the use of flared natural gas.
(And, to beat the horse to death: Methanol can be manufactured from syngas derived from both coal and hydro-treated Carbon Dioxide, as well as materials noted in this report.)
In a typical plant, methanol production is carried out in two steps. The first step is to convert the feedstock natural gas into a synthesis gas stream consisting of CO, CO2, H2O and hydrogen. (Synthesis gas should by now be familiar to all our readers.) This is usually accomplished by the catalytic reforming of feed gas and steam. (Here, again, is another process wherein water, in the form of steam, supplies the needed Hydrogen to hydrogenate, to convert into hydrocarbons, the essentially carbonaceous raw material as would be derived from coal, or, by extension, Carbon Dioxide.) Partial oxidation is another possible route. The second step is the catalytic synthesis of methanol from the synthesis gas. Each of these steps can be carried out in a number of ways, and various technologies offer a spectrum of possibilities to suit most any desired application(s).
(The last statement bears emphasis, with a rephrasing, since it confirms what much of the earlier research we've reported to you indicates: There are multiple ways through which Methanol, liquid fuel, can be derived from synthesis gas, which itself can be extracted from coal, or made from Carbon Dioxide, in multiple ways.)
Conventional steam reforming is the simplest and most widely practiced route to synthesis gas production:
2 CH4 + 3 H2O -> CO + CO2 + 7 H2 (Synthesis Gas)
CO + CO2 + 7 H2 -> 2 CH3OH + 2 H2 + H2O
This process results in a considerable hydrogen surplus, as can be seen in the formula above."
(The Hydrogen surplus results from the use of pure methane, as the original Carbon source, combined with water (as steam). Synthesis gas, syngas, derived solely from coal might exhibit a Hydrogen deficit, which could be easily resolved through more H2O in the form of additional reactive steam, and/or the collateral conversion of coal with other, Hydrogen-rich, raw materials, such as saw dust, crop wastes and scrapped auto tires.)
"If an external source of CO2 is available, the excess hydrogen can be consumed and converted to additional methanol. (In other words, if additional Carbon Dioxide can be obtained, such as from a coal power plant's flue gas, more Methanol can be made. That's a switch: More CO2 is actually wanted.)
The most favorable gasification processes are those in which the surplus hydrogen is “burnt” to water, during which steam reforming is accomplished through the following partial oxidation reaction:
CH4 + _O2 -> CO + 2 H2 -> CH3OH
CH4 + O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2
The carbon dioxide and hydrogen produced in the last equation would then react with an additional hydrogen from the top set of reactions to produce additional methanol. This gives the highest efficiency, but may be at additional capital cost.
Unlike the reforming process, the synthesis of methanol is highly exothermic, taking place over a catalyst bed at moderate temperatures. Most plant designs make use of this extra energy to generate electricity needed in the process. By employing even its by-products, methanol production proves its efficiency over other fossil fuels used in the world today."
As we've earlier referenced, some components of the Methanol synthesis procedure are exothermic, as affirmed above, and can themselves provide a portion of the energy needed to drive the complete process of converting carbonaceous feed stocks, including coal and some renewable materials, such as Carbon Dioxide and Cellulose (waste wood, Intelligencers and News-Registers, sewage plant sludge, etc.) into liquid fuel.
In conclusion, we'll note once more that Methanol is itself a liquid fuel of high worth. However, it can also be converted into the gasoline we all know and love, and serve as the raw material for manufacturing some other very useful things, such as certain plastics.
Methanol production, as the basis for manufacturing fuels and plastics out of renewable resources, such as cellulose, municipal waste and CO2, is well-understood and viable. Coal is the raw material for methanol manufacture, aside from natural gas, which actually enables the scale of such an industry that would allow the economically meaningful inclusion of those environmentally beneficial resources.
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Interestingly enough, there have been a number of other CO2 Conversion and Utilization Conferences sponsored by the American Chemical Society.
But, the latest one was held just this month, and we're left wondering why we didn't hear anything about it - much as we didn't hear anything in the popular media about the multiple Coal-to-Liquid conferences that have taken place in the past year.
In any case, we find it doubly interesting that our own, US, Navy is promoting and sponsoring this effort, just as the US Air Force is promoting and sponsoring, as we've documented, efforts to refine the process of converting coal into liquid jet fuel at, among other places, the University of Dayton.
The excerpt, with some comments interspersed:
"ACS Meeting Symposium Focuses on Conversion and Utilization of CO2 for Fuels and Chemicals
16 August 2009
Researchers at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) led off a day-long symposium on advances in CO2 conversion and utilization being held at the 238th American Chemical Society (ACS) national meeting, which began today in Washington, DC. The NRL researchers presented their progress in hydrogenating CO2 to jet fuel via a two-stage, high-yield and highly selective synthesis process."
("Hydrogenating CO2 to ... fuel". Remember, Sabatier won the Nobel Prize for demonstrating the feasibility of this technology almost one hundred years ago. And, we're still trying to tax our coal industries out of existence for generating this valuable raw material as a by-product.)
"Robert Dorner and his colleagues are looking at converting CO2 and hydrogen (both won from sea-water) over catalysts, using the CO2 as a building block to form synthetic fuel. This reaction is energetically not favored and thus a catalyst is needed, which will lower the energy barrier of the reaction and increase the rate at which it occurs. The energy utilized to convert CO2 and hydrogen is also harvested from the ocean, by taking advantage of the temperature gradient of the water with increasing depth, making the fuel CO2-neutral.
'CO2 conversion to hydrocarbons over catalysts has been known for several decades but has been shown very little research and development attention, as other technologies have been much cheaper and efficient in yielding cheap oil. However, with the increasing awareness of the impact CO2 has on the environment more and more attention is being directed at how to mitigate the effects CO2 has as a greenhouse gas. Most research to date however is focusing on the sequestration of CO2 in underground reservoirs.
Our research proposes the utilization of CO2 into fuel, recycling the gas and using it as a raw material rather than a waste product. In light of dwindling oil resources and the looming presence of peak oil, alternative fuels that are environmentally friendly and enhance energy security are of mounting importance. Our research is aiming at increasing productivity and selectivity of the desired products formed; thus reducing unwanted side-products and lowering costs, making this technology more economically feasible.'
—Robert Dorner"
("Our research proposes the utilization of CO2 into fuel, recycling the gas and using it as a raw material rather than a waste product." - We know it can be done. NASA is doing it now - using Sabatier's century-old technology.)
"The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide. The NRL work was followed by a presentation of work being done at the University of Liverpool (UK) on the electrochemical reduction of CO2, focused on surface structures of copper electrodes and the role of solution-based copper species for their catalytic effect on the reaction.
'The scientific community has known for several decades the ability of certain metals, particularly copper, to convert carbon dioxide into small organic molecules by using electricity as an energy source. This conversion of carbon dioxide occurs only at the interface between the metal surface and carbon dioxide gas. Studying such interfaces is challenging and presents novel research opportunities because the region where the chemistry occurs is of only nanometer dimensions, and therefore identifying specific reactions is like searching for a needle in a very large haystack.
Our work is unique in that we are creating highly controlled reaction environments and using advanced spectroscopic techniques that could, in the needle-in-haystack analogy, provide us an extremely powerful metal detector. This provides an excellent opportunity to study exactly how carbon dioxide transforms into useful, carbon-based, products.'
—Scott Shaw
The University of Liverpool work received support from the European Union ELCAT (Electrocatalytic gas-phase conversion of CO2 in confined catalysts) project.
Other papers presented in the symposium included:
Methane-carbon dioxide reforming over Ni/CaO-ZrO2 catalyst.2 Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences are investigating the carbon dioxide reforming of methane over an Ni/CaO-ZrO catalyst derived from co-precipitation method. The catalyst shows both high catalytic activity and stability at the methane and carbon dioxide ratio of 1:1. The characterization confirms that the nano-porous framework of as-prepared support together with the Ni-support interaction enhances the dispersion of Ni, and then promotes the resistance to sintering under reaction condition. As a result, carbon deposition is prevented, which is important for the catalyst stability. (We'll suppose them to be "reforming" methane, with CO2, to produce methanol and other higher hydrocarbons, as we've documented to be feasible.)
Ni-based nanocomposite catalysts for energy-saving syngas and hydrogen production from CH4/CO2 and CH4/CO2/H2O.2, MgO and Al2O3) catalysts as nanocomposites consisting of comparably sized metallic Ni nanocrystals and nanoparticles of “support” oxides. Compared with the conventional oxide-supported Ni catalysts, the nanocomposite catalysts are found extremely stable in catalyzing the methane reforming reactions using stoichiometric CO2 and methane as well as steam (H2O) and methane. (Keep in mind that "Syngas", as above, can also be generated from coal. And, the use of CO2 to both make methane (CH4), and then to "reform" it, into the syngas precursor of liquid fuels, has also been previously documented.) Researchers from Tsinghua University (China) are investigating energy-saving catalysts for natural gas conversion. They developed nanostructured Ni-oxide (oxide = ZrO
Photoreduction of CO2 to CO in the presence of H2 over various basic metal oxide photocatalysts. Researchers at Kyoto University (Japan) are exploring the chemical fixation of CO2 in the presence of a heterogeneous photocatalyst as a method for converting it into other carbon sources such as carbon monoxide (CO), formaldehyde (HCHO), formic acid (HCOOH), methanol (CH3OH), and methane (CH4). (The Japanese researchers, and others, are, as we've documented, developing an artificial and industrial-scale photosynthetic process.)
Synthesis and characterization of ferrite materials for thermochemical CO2 splitting using concentrated solar energy. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are investigating the use of concentrated solar power to convert carbon dioxide and water to precursors for liquid hydrocarbon fuels (Sunshine to Petrol) using concentrated solar power. (We have previously documented for you this work at Sandia.)
Conversion of CO2 into methanol in a novel two-stage catalyst bed concept. Researchers from Shiraz University (Iran) are investigating a two-stage catalyst bed concept for conversion of CO2 to methanol. (Well, we really want an OPEC power to be getting the jump on us with this, don't we? Remember, once we have methanol, we can convert it to gasoline, as per Exxon-Mobil and their "MTG"(r) process, et. al.)
A number of other papers presented during the symposium focused on novel methods for carbon dioxide capture or adsorption of CO2 on a catalyst as a key step of the catalytic conversion of CO2 to liquid fuels."
The final phrase sums up the entire focus: "the catalytic conversion of CO2 to liquid fuels". And, the title of the conference should provide a catch phrase for all of us: Convert and utilize CO2.
Don't tax the producers of CO2 out of existence through Cap & Trade shell games; and, don't waste CO2 by pumping it all down geologic sequestration rat holes. Carbon Dioxide is a valuable by-product of our coal use, whether we employ our coal to generate electricity or, as we should, convert our coal into the liquid fuels and chemical manufacturing raw materials we desperately need.
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