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Los Alamos Developing Process for CO2 Capture and Stripping from Air for Synthetic Fuels Production
13 February 2008
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| Process flow diagram for CO2 capture and recovery based on the Green Freedom electrolytic stripping process. Click to enlarge. |
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a process—called Green Freedom—for large-scale production of carbon-neutral, sulfur-free fuels and organic chemicals from air and water. The primary targets for the Green Freedom fuels are vehicles and aircraft.
Green Freedom consists of two major components: syngas (synthesis gas) production and syngas conversion. The innovation of the new process resides primarily in the method for the production of the syngas; Green Freedom relies on commercially available technology to convert the resulting syngas into product.
The primary components of Green Freedom’s syngas production are:
Carbon-dioxide capture and recovery. A newly-developed process for capture and recovery of atmospheric carbon dioxide that also produces hydrogen as a byproduct is the core of Green Freedom. The new stripping process requires about 96% less energy than a conventional thermal-stripping process.
Supplemental hydrogen production.
Carbon-neutral power source.
While the chemistry of capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere can be straightforward (CO2 is readily absorbed into a potassium carbonate solution where it forms bicarbonate ions), the challenge in developing a practical system lies in the large volumes of air that would need to be processed to capture sufficient amounts of CO2 for useful application. Furthermore, according to the Los Alamos team, the conventional processing can only capture 73% of the carbon dioxide from the processed air on a single pass.
By contrast, Green Freedom uses a newly-developed electrolytic stripping process that can capture production quantities of air; capture more than 95% of the carbon dioxide on a single pass; and produces hydrogen as a byproduct that reduces supplemental hydrogen production requirements by 33%.
The new electrolytic stripping process consumes about 410 kJ/mole CO2 of electricity and about 100 kJ /mole CO2 of low-level heat energy. Taking a credit for the supplemental hydrogen production avoidance, the net electrical energy consumption is about 55 kJ/mole CO2 recovered.
The supplemental hydrogen production can be based on any water-splitting technology. For the baseline process design, the team chose water electrolysis. Green Freedom also assumes a carbon-neutral power source to assist production. The Los Alamos studies used nuclear power in its analysis.
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| Conceptual diagram of the production of gasoline from air and water. Click to enlarge. |
For the baseline conversion process, Los Alamos used methanol synthesis and the ExxonMobil MTG (methanol-to-gasoline) process. (Earlier post.) However, Green Freedom can also use other processes, such as a Fischer-Tropsch process to produce jet and diesel fuels.
Initial system and economic analyses indicate that the prices of Green Freedom commodities would be either comparable to the current market or competitive with those of other carbon-neutral, alternative technologies currently being considered.
—F. Jeffrey Martin, principal investigator
In addition to the new electrochemical separation process, the Green Freedom system can use existing cooling towers, such as those of nuclear power plants, with carbon-capture equipment that eliminates the need for additional structures to process large volumes of air. The primary environmental impact of the production facility is limited to the footprint of the plant. It uses non-hazardous materials for its feed and operation and has a small waste stream volume.
The concept’s viability has been reviewed and verified by both industrial and semi-independent Los Alamos National Laboratory technical reviews. The next phase will demonstrate the new electrochemical process to prove the ability of the system to both capture carbon dioxide and pull it back out of solution. An industrial partnership consortium will be formed to commercialize the Green Freedom concept.
Several other CO2 to fuel projects have been announced recently, including:
A UOP and USC partnership to develop a process for the production of methanol, DME and other chemicals from carbon dioxide. (Earlier post.)
A Sandia National Laboratories effort on extending the work on the development of a device for the solar thermochemical production of hydrogen from the splitting of water to recycling CO2 into liquid hydrocarbon fuels—“Sunshine to Petrol” (S2P). (Earlier post.)
A Georgia Tech concept for the mobile on-board capture of carbon dioxide and the subsequent centralized reprocessing of the carbon dioxide to synthetic fuel. (Earlier post.)
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February 13, 2008 in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), Climate Change, Fuels | Permalink | Comments (64) | TrackBack (0)
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Just how much water is used for this? And whose drinking water will we be using to do this?
Posted by: | Feb 13, 2008 5:40:56 PM
"Just how much water is used for this?" ... just do the stoichiometry. 2 hydrogen from every water molecule.
Posted by: Neil | Feb 13, 2008 5:44:27 PM
wow. Excellent development. and no future science. it can be built and deployed now.
but why not just co-locate this with eisting Coal and other Fossil fuel power plants. Surely if it can pull CO2 form the air, it can pull alot of CO2 from an exhaust stack, and likely much more efficiently. As an interim step, it would allow you to burn coal cleanly for electricity, and produce a functional fuel that works within the eisting infrastructure.
And it would likely be much easier and safer to implement than Carbon capture and sequestration.
i am betting this will be a major source of future liquid fuels.
Posted by: | Feb 13, 2008 8:22:48 PM
Neil brings up a very good point. Building the Green Freedom plants next to smokestacks would make for a far more efficient production of fuel. There would be a bigger fanfare welcome by the public , if it were made known that a beneficial way to filter all those belching smokestacks were to be responsible for continued cheap power from coal. The recent public outcry against the TXU coal plants proposed across Texas would be a distant memory if the local goverments that turned against new coal plants , could be led to serve as a cheerleader for the integration of truely clean energy. This technology offers a viable fuel of the future. The system in place is too big to re-work , and too much is at stake to continue in our lathargic do nothing way , so this is the time to act , and now we have another solution. Go , man , go!
Posted by: coldhitz | Feb 13, 2008 9:34:01 PM
Neil brings up a very good point. Building the Green Freedom plants next to smokestacks would make for a far more efficient production of fuel. There would be a bigger fanfare welcome by the public , if it were made known that a beneficial way to filter all those belching smokestacks were to be responsible for continued cheap power from coal. The recent public outcry against the TXU coal plants proposed across Texas would be a distant memory if the local goverments that turned against new coal plants , could be led to serve as a cheerleader for the integration of truely clean energy. This technology offers a viable fuel of the future. The system in place is too big to re-work , and too much is at stake to continue in our lathargic do nothing way , so this is the time to act , and now we have another solution. Go , man , go!
Posted by: coldhitz | Feb 13, 2008 9:36:46 PM
I ask experts to clarify what is happening here.
As nearly as I can determine the important part is the improvement - apparently quite an improvement - in the CO2 capture stage.
Also the H2 coming out of the capture stage reduces energy demands downstream.
The other three blocks: methanol synthesis, electrolysis, and methanol to gasoline are more or less available commercial technology.
Posted by: K | Feb 13, 2008 9:43:10 PM
No experts here but this is my estimation.
"Initial system and economic analyses indicate that the prices of Green Freedom commodities would be **either comparable to the current market or competitive with those of other carbon-neutral, alternative technologies currently being considered*."
—F. Jeffrey Martin, principal investigator
Even so this "Green freedom" **costs** about the same as other "carbon neutral technologies" Costs may refer to carbon emissions or $ costs. As such the public release is too simplistic although It may claim to have a feel for the technology.
But some of the other C neutral technologies are renewable, sustainable, low tech or appropriate, Indeed the ones we are interested on this site are truly carbon negative. Solar - 1000% returns, wind, algae.
Sorry if yours isn't included here..
What does this all mean? pulling a rabbit from thin air?
Not wanting to give too much away here, The Nuclear industry is not known for plain speaking.
I suspect the substantial electrical inputs and claims of viable stripping from atmosphere are important aspects.
Surely the public interest angle being promoted shouldn't be dependant on Nuclear power generation to be viable?
Much of the rest relies on proven technology MTG etc.
The bottom line is efficiency , not bigger power stations.
It is wrong to say that Nuclear power has no carbon footprint. Of course if one were considering all mining, construction, refining and disposal runs on solar voltaic or some such?
I have heard that the carbon footprint of nuclear as much as 40% coal equivalent owing to refining, mining and construction costs. Disposal and containment of waste are somewhat harder to calculate for emissions, but the $ costs are substantial. In a petro or carbon based economy it is valid to equate costs with emissions for estimates.
Better accounting would show nuclear as replacing the addition of fossil carbon to the extent this can be claimed.
This technology will be of interest to big Nuclear power providers as there is a guaranteed market for as much as they can produce but the more produced, the shorter the life expectancy.
To imply that it (or any other) power source is seen as "Free", on this basis is akin to suggesting that water coming from the sky and landing in my cup has no greater value than the some other water on the next continent .
Dazzle us with science by all means. Kilojoules per Mole may be familiar to some but I doubt many readers here can easily conceptualize this.
Posted by: arnold | Feb 13, 2008 10:42:03 PM
Capturing CO2 out of the atmosphere is a great idea, but it would't be my first choice. Current coal plants or future IGCC can provide massive amounts of carbon, which at some point will need to be dealt with. Recycling it back into the existing trasportation system using liquid fuels is a sound concept.
It seems the atmospheric carbon capture part of this could be very useful in a PR context, but providing a valid alterative to CCS for coal generation is far more important and practical.
Los Alamos also should't be so bashful about the use of nuclear energy to power the whole thing, shoulda been mentioned in the headline...
Posted by: NorOre | Feb 13, 2008 11:13:29 PM
I' m still no expert but using the lower 55kj/mole number, (not including the + 100kj waste heat? and the impressive reclaimed 465kj from hydrogen), Inputs are hopefully 1/3 Kilowatthour per kilogram CO2 removed.
My reading suggests that is what we get for our 1/3 KWH.
Doing something with that kilogram will require the next energy input.
The waste heat is not factored in so add 20-25%
The hydrogen bonus is also used up so no longer available.
I hope my babble is some use.
Posted by: | Feb 14, 2008 12:03:34 AM
INTERESTING! YOU MUST SEE: http://www.spymac.com/details/?2343829
Posted by: Linda Magdalena Procetta | Feb 14, 2008 1:40:40 AM
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Posted by: | Feb 14, 2008 2:13:12 AM
Assuming the data provided is correct, removing 1 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere in this way would indeed require 0.35 kWh of energy. However, the objective is to convert that carbon back into synthetic fuel, which requires additional hydrogen, because the capture process covers only 33% of the demand. Producing the balance requires (410 - 55)*2 = 710kJ/mole CO2 or 4.5kWh/kg CO2 of additional electricity. Much of the chemical energy stored in the syngas is released as heat in the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. About 40% of that can be used to drive a steam cycle to supplement the nuclear energy driving the whole process. Even so, depending on well-tuned the F-T process is, you're looking at perhaps 6-7 kWh of electrical input to convert 1kg of CO2 plus 0.41 kg of water into synthetic diesel (or gasoline). Add to that perhaps another kWh for pumping the water and distributing that fuel, for a total electricity input of around 8 kWh.
An average US passenger car will emit approx. 300 gCO2/mile, so figure those 8kWh will yield enough fuel to propel that vehicle for approx. 3.3 miles. Compare that to the 40 mile all-electric range GM claims its Volt E-REV will deliver on 8kWh of electricity stored in its battery pack (depth of discharge 50%) - a factor 12 better!
This sounds to me like yet another example of the nuclear industry desperately trying to revive its flagging fortunes by generating bogus demand for vast quantities of electricity. The environmental and national security issues raised by nuclear power, e.g. the as-yet unsolved problem of long-term storage of radioactive waste and the potential for terrorist attacks, are once again glossed over.
If you want to capture atmospheric CO2, please figure out how to safely grow algal biomass with minimal fossil fuel input - preferably out at sea. Photosynthesis may only capture 2% of the energy contained in sunlight, but it's cheap and can be applied to vast areas to compensate.
If you want to reduce oil imports from hostile or unstable regions, please convert those algae into biofuel (e.g. biomethane). The alternative is to reduce emissions of fossil carbon by covering more of your annual miles directly on renewable electricity (e.g. E-REV/BEV, rail, electric bicycles).
Posted by: Rafael Seidl | Feb 14, 2008 3:36:02 AM
it should be noted that if you capture at a flue and convert that carbon to fuel, you are at most reusing the carbopn once, after which it gets into the atmosphere. of course, you could then use the fule to power the power plant, and keep recycling the carbon, but you need an additional energy source - green or nuclear. nevertheless, even re-using the carbon once or twice will signifincalty reduce the net release of carbon into the atmoshpere.
so if you look at two types of deployments, one taking carbon from the flue, and one from the air, you will evenutally win. but, it still needs alot of additional power.
I agree with Rafael that electrification of the auto is substantially more efficeint. no dount. but transport based CO2 is a small % of the overall GHG problem.
so why not deploy something like this to provide additional CO2 benefit?
and even if you don't use nuclear, this is an interesting way to convert renewable electricity into an easily stored and transported fuel.
Posted by: | Feb 14, 2008 5:39:55 AM
Arrgg.... guys, the point is not to try to clean up the CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants, it's to provide a *net reduction* of atmospheric CO2 while providing hydrocarbon feedstock for chemical industry, and car, truck, ship, and construction equipment fuels which can be used in the existing fleet and distribution infrastructure. This is an enormous advance. It allows us to stop using petroleum altogether! and with no nonsense about tar sands or coal-to-liquids.
Yes, plug-in hybrid cars are probably the wave of the future, but replacing a significant fraction of the existing fleet will take decades. Also please note that there will never be plug-in hybrid commercial aircraft; aircraft will need kerosene for the indefinite future. The new process allows us to economically *make* the kerosene, which means that aircraft will be truly carbon neutral. (I expect the developers will apply for Richard Branson's prize...)
As for the water required: that is a second order problem, and a smaller problem than exists for biofuels (plants need to be, wait for it: watered). The waste heat from the nuclear reactors which power the fuel manufacture can be used to help drive desalination to provide the water feedstock.
Posted by: richard schumacher | Feb 14, 2008 6:53:05 AM
Algae as a biofuel means farming the sea. Farms may look superficially pretty, but they are highly structured machines which displace and disrupt whatever ecosystem would otherwise exist in the same space. And their inherent low power density and low conversion efficiency means that they would have to be enormous to supply all of our fuel needs. The production of artificial fuels from carbon-free and intense power sources (for example, nuclear fission) will have a vastly smaller footprint.
Posted by: richard schumacher | Feb 14, 2008 6:58:54 AM
Excuse me but there is no free lunch here ...
Burn coal, then capture the CO2 and turn it into fuel and burn the fuel ... sounds good but the net energy is negative.
Still, putting an algae greenhouse *(sunlight, the energy has to come from somewhere) on the roof & lawns of each power plant for CO2 capture might be better than full pollution.
Posted by: John Taylor | Feb 14, 2008 7:21:10 AM
I find it very unlikely that this process will be more efficient that algae and plants evolved over a billion years. The inherent energy costs, the marginal energy costs, etc. all look prohibitive for ground transportation fuel. Burning 1 gallon of gasoline creates, what 18 pounds of CO2?
They seem to be working on a way to create jet fuel...which won't be replaced by batteries or fuel cells any time soon.
Maybe there will be a future date where we have so much renewable energy that this process would be preferrable to importing oil or making microbes that create light sweet crude grade bio oil...but I doubt it.
Posted by: Healthy Breeze | Feb 14, 2008 8:40:02 AM
RS has the correct analysis in my opinion. 8 kwh is a huge amount of electricity for what you end up with. They added the air carbon capture as a way of saying that we can reverse the damage done. Interesting science, but misleading marketing.
Posted by: sjc | Feb 14, 2008 9:10:19 AM
What interests me the most is the big picture question: How viable is this as a long-term carbon neutral method of producing hydrocarbons.
I would therefore shelve the issue of whether the thing is powered by nuclear or solar or whatever.
Also, it then makes sense to assume the thing needs to rely on CO2 from the atmosphere.
So here is the big picture question:
Is this approach a viable long-term means of producing hydrocarbons for those essential uses that there is every reason to believe hydrocarbons will always be needed. e.g. plastics, jet fuel.
Aside from all the issues of whether the processes will actually work, it seems to me that the key issue is the EROEI.
Now here we are not looking for a EROEI > 1. Indeed, that is an impossibility.
What we are looking for is whether a reasonable fraction of the electrical energy input into this system comes out the other end in the form of hydrocarbon energy.
I would think what we are looking for is a fraction of perhaps 0.3 or at least 0.2.
If the fraction is too small then we would need a massive build-out of electrical generating facilities in order to produce a small amount of hydrocarbons.
Since they claim the economics seem to work, I would hope that implies that fraction isn't too awfully low.
Presumably if one takes the energy per mole CO2 and factors in an estimate for the energy needed to produce hydrogen also then one could come up with that fraction.
I'm not sure how to translate moles of CO2 into energy equivalent so I don't know how to do the calculation.
But it seems to me that is the central issue.
Posted by: lance | Feb 14, 2008 9:24:34 AM
@ Lance,
I see the issue differently. This method has to compete with every other bio-fuel and synthetic fuel approach. Biofuels also take CO2 from the air, but without requiring so much electricity. There are many competing approaches for the best algal/enzymatic/syngas/other approach to extracting and organizing those hydrocarbons. It would be astonishing if this electricity-centric approach won out in terms of efficiency, net CO2 reduction, and cost effectiveness.
Posted by: Healthy Breeze | Feb 14, 2008 11:34:56 AM
It will take a long time for us to build enough carbon-free power, like nuclear or wind, to replace our coal plants. Using power in this way will always be a much cheaper, more efficient, more effective way of using this power to reduce CO2 than synthesizing fuel.
Further, using electricity directly in Extended Range EV's like the Chevy Volt is about 20 times more efficient: there's a 75% loss in synthesizing the fuel, and a 80% loss in the Internal Combustion Engine. So, we'd get 20x the bang for the buck with EV's.
Finally, we'll have domestic oil for a long time, in slowly diminishing quantities, for residual uses like long-distance ground travel, air and the DOD.
This makes no sense.
Posted by: Nick G | Feb 14, 2008 11:50:33 AM
Having read the report the final cost of delivered gasoline would be $4.60. Each proposed plant would require a $10 billion investment. Each plant would only supply 18,000 bbl/d so we would need about 700 of these gasoline factories.
Posted by: tom deplume | Feb 14, 2008 12:06:26 PM
Tom, any clue how they calculate $4.60/gallon?? I can't imagine it includes taxes...
Posted by: Nick G | Feb 14, 2008 12:19:14 PM
" Each proposed plant would require a $10 billion investment. Each plant would only supply 18,000 bbl/d"
Wow. Assuming 30 year life, and 7% interest, that's $2.92 per gallon for just the capital cost. Electricity, even at $.05/KWH, would have to be at least $5 per gallon (34 KWH/gallon divided by 33% efficiency x $.05/KWH).
That $4.60 figure is impossible. Add in operations & maintenance, and you're approaching $10/gallon.
Posted by: Nick G | Feb 14, 2008 12:31:46 PM
Ah. I've figured it out. This makes sense for the DOD in the field, where delivering fuel can cost $70/gallon. They have surplus nuclear power available from naval vessels. Now it all makes sense, though I don't know how they'll build the air-capture facilities in the field.
Posted by: Nick G | Feb 14, 2008 12:35:13 PM
The DOD angle also explains the emphasis on air-capture, which would have to be less efficient than flue-gas capture.
Posted by: Nick G | Feb 14, 2008 12:41:10 PM
@ Rafael,
If the numbers are correct, (we'll never know) but as your calcs show the capture stage requires ~1/3 KWH per Kilogram. This is only the 55Kj/Kg It does not include the other ~2/3 KWH in "waste heat" or the rather more substantial 465Kj captured hydrogen bonus which could be used for fuel feedstock or as in this example it is consumed in removing the carbon.
When the article describes this as supplying 33% of the required Hydrogen it is plainly misleading.
The 8.5 KWH of energy that is used gives us captured Carbon Dioxide nothing more and that will not work in any motor I know of.
The schematics don't show energy input or the energy required to "separate the waste Potassium"
At best this is an oddity dressed as saviour for the gullible. Sorry if this offends anyone, but you should know by now the world is full of ... (to be filled in by reader).
Posted by: Arnold | Feb 14, 2008 2:30:52 PM
3KWH would have looked much better in the above, It's 930am here, so the day can only get better
arn
Posted by: Arnold | Feb 14, 2008 2:36:58 PM
I see the point that the amount of energy required so make the synfuel is quite high and would be better spent sent to plug in vehicles. But I tend to think that and EV dominated system is very far in the future, if ever, wearas theere is much room for improvement within the current liquid fuel system. Batteries will get better but so will gasoline/diesel/designer fuel engines and hybrid powertrains.
Just ditching current liquid fuel based trasnportation will not be possible and even down the road there will always be a need for it; airplanes are the best example. Fruthermore, I think this type of approach could have a larger impact faster on actually reducing carbon emissions without too much pain, than jsut wishing for EVs to be made available.
Note: I think GM and others promote EVs and hydrogen so much precisely because they know they won't work, at least any time soon...
Posted by: NorOre | Feb 14, 2008 3:52:13 PM
It has long been the objective of Alchemists to turn substances into GOLD. In the mid-20th century we learned how to do exactly that.
The Recipe?
To make a pound of Gold, first start with a pound of Platinum, and then prodigious amounts of added energy in an accelerator...
This is another such project to getting Gold by starting with Platinum.
To make electrolysis practical, to provide the hydrogen, you need not waste heat but high-grade heat with a huge enthalpy. But we don't work with 850 degree C temperatures as that is only two hundred degrees or less, than the melting temperature of high grade steel, and long after most common steels have become as strong as stiff putty as it glows white hot.
Any current Nuclear or Coal Plant does not deal with such temperatures, except in the hottest area of the burners or fuel bundles.
Interesting but not practical.
Posted by: Stan Peterson | Feb 14, 2008 4:00:28 PM
This "GreenFreedom" thing looks like hype to me.
I read the entire LLNL PDF. I found several disquieting things:
- The 410 kJ/mol electric energy requirement figure is soft-pedaled.
- The ratio of CO2 to H2 production is not given.
- Figures for e.g. acid production are bandied about, without specifics.
The heat of formation of carbon dioxide is -393.51 kJ/mol, so this process requires more energy (as electricity!) to capture a molecule of CO2 than is produced by burning the carbon in the first place. A great deal of this is offset by hydrogen production if you need hydrogen, but it's obvious at first blush that this holds exactly zero possibility for carbon capture from fossil-fired plants; its only prospects are to use excess power from carbon-neutral energy sources, such as wind and nuclear. We'd make much better use of those with PHEVs than production of any kind of liquid fuel.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 14, 2008 10:37:01 PM
Engineer-Poet,
You read wrong.
Only 55 kJ/mol CO2 goes toward CO2 recovery and regeneration of KHCO3 to K2CO3. The rest of 410 kJ/mol is used up by the H2 production.
Posted by: Fifi | Feb 15, 2008 12:43:12 AM
But fifi, the h2 production amounts to the grand total of 0 by the time The whole 510KJ of energy flow is utilised to the carbon capture. And we are still 1/3 of a killowatt hour down.
Definately an interesting dance.
this equates to *? litres fuel?
next calc.
Posted by: Arnold | Feb 15, 2008 3:06:26 AM
Fifi, if you could get back the other 355 kJ/mol as electricity, this wouldn't be an issue. The problem is that there is no way to separate this process from the electrolytic production of hydrogen (a very costly process), and the figures themselves are vague (hydrogen yields about 295 kJ/mol, so we're not even given the ratio of hydrogen produced to CO2 captured).
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 15, 2008 5:54:02 AM
Again, this is *not* intended to clean up coal-burning power plants. The energy input to the process will certainly come from non-fossil sources, otherwise there would be negative benefit (both in total energy used and in CO2 produced) and no point to the exercise.
Posted by: richard schumacher | Feb 15, 2008 6:51:59 AM
even if the energy cost is 8 Kwh (or even higher) to create a gallon of gasoline using this process, and a gallon of gasoline stores 35Kwh, doesn’t that imply a net positive? in other words, the process is pretty efficient at converting electricity into a transportable liquid fuel, no? (if these numbers are wrong, perhaps someone out the can provide me a simple analysis of the energy cost in Kwh using the process, to create 1 gal of gasoline)
So, think of all of the location in the world where "stranded" renewable energy exists. geothermal in Iceland, wind in the trade winds, solar in the deserts, major hydro capacity in remote rivers in Siberia/canada, etc. by "stranded renewable energy" i mean renewable energy that could be efficiently developed except for the fact that it is located somewhere where the transportation costs make it impractical to develop (ie because of transmission line losses, cost of high power lines, etc). Why not use that energy to create transportable liquid fuel using this process??
at what point would it be cost effective is you had $0.015/Kwh clean new hydro energy available?
Posted by: | Feb 15, 2008 9:40:07 AM
even if the energy cost is 8 Kwh (or even higher) to create a gallon of gasoline using this process, and a gallon of gasoline stores 35Kwh, doesn’t that imply a net positive? in other words, the process is pretty efficient at converting electricity into a transportable liquid fuel, no? (if these numbers are wrong, perhaps someone out the can provide me a simple analysis of the energy cost in Kwh using the process, to create 1 gal of gasoline)
So, think of all of the location in the world where "stranded" renewable energy exists. geothermal in Iceland, wind in the trade winds, solar in the deserts, major hydro capacity in remote rivers in Siberia/canada, etc. by "stranded renewable energy" i mean renewable energy that could be efficiently developed except for the fact that it is located somewhere where the transportation costs make it impractical to develop (ie because of transmission line losses, cost of high power lines, etc). Why not use that energy to create transportable liquid fuel using this process??
at what point would it be cost effective is you had $0.015/Kwh clean new hydro energy available?
Posted by: AWB | Feb 15, 2008 9:40:40 AM
Engineer-Poet, Arnold
I maintain you read wrong.
It would not be a good process just to capture CO2. The point of the LANL exercise is not just to recover CO2 but to create syngas for liquid fuel synthesis. This is why electrolysis is a good approach. They are trying to figure out the cost of creating liquid fuel from non-carbon electricity, water and quite literally thin air.
If you read the LANL overview report, they get 1/3 of the hydrogen needed for methanol synthesis from that step. MeOH synthesis from CO2 requires 3 H2 per CO2 :
CO2 + 3 H2 --> CH3OH + H2O
So they get 1 mol H2 per captured mol CO2 on this step and they need to generate 2 mol H2 per mol CO2 on the side using more conventional electrolysers.
The CO2 recovery process takes 410 kJ/mol total.
- 55 kJ/mol CO2 for 2 KHCO3 --> K2CO3 + CO2 + H2O
- 355 kJ/mol H2 for H2O -> H2 + 1/2 O2
355 kJ/mol H2 is in line with typical electrolysers. A Norsk Hydro type 5040 electrolyser operated at 5150A per cell uses 4.3 kWh/Nm3 H2 that is 352 kJ/mol (1 Nm3 = 44 mol of gas). It's kosher. No hand waving there.
Tom deplume, where do you get your $10 billions plant for 18,000 bbl/d gasoline? The overview report says $5 billions for the gasoline plant and "only" $4.6 billions for just 5,000 t/d methanol (essentially, removing the MTG step).
Where is the 100% increase coming from? Inflation? I know the dollar is a bit shaky but the report was released just 3 months ago. I didn't know we had already become Argentina or Peru.
http://www.lanl.gov/news/newsbulletin/pdf/Green_Freedom_Overview.pdf
Posted by: Fifi | Feb 15, 2008 1:13:29 PM
A point I do not see anyone addressing is where the ~3 tons of K2C03 (potassium carbonate) per ton of atomospheric C02 will come from and cost.
Wikipedia says most of this material comes from electrolysis of KCl, which can be obtained from sea water, but that means more input energy, chlorine (in some form) as a waste, and a whole other infrastructure.
2KCl + 2H2O -> 2K0H + H2 + Cl2
2KOH + CO2 -> K2C03 + H2
To get the potassium carbonate, energy is needed and there are hydrogen and chlorine byproducts.
So this is not fuel from air and water. Potassium carbonate (or potassium chloride) is also needed in large quantities.
Posted by: Larry | Feb 15, 2008 3:14:31 PM
even if the energy cost is 8 Kwh (or even higher) to create a gallon of gasoline using this process, and a gallon of gasoline stores 35Kwh, doesn’t that imply a net positive?Only if it's better (cheaper, cleaner, faster to market) than the alternatives.
Here's a quote from the GreenFreedom pdf:The analyses estimated a capital cost of $5.0 billion for an 18,400-bbl/day synthetic gasoline plant.... For those keeping track, this is about $270,000 investment to get 1 bbl/day of product, or nearly 3 times what Alberta tar-sands cost.
Nuclear powe accounts for more than 50% of the total plant capital investment.That would be in the neighborhood of $3 billion then, or about what we'd expect for a 1 GWE plant (the reactor power is not specified in the PDF). If operated via the GreenFreedom process and feeding a vehicle fleet getting 30 MPG, its energy generation would allow 23.2 million vehicle-miles/day. If it instead supplied 1 GWE to PHEV's using 300 Wh/mile, you'd get 80 million vehicle-miles per day for perhaps 60% of the capital investment. Other benefits would include less air and noise pollution.
This is like the H2CAR scheme which I ripped apart last year; it appears aimed at preventing public sentiment from getting behind electric propulsion and sealing the fate of the oil companies and exporters.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 15, 2008 3:22:24 PM
@ AWB -
My back-of-the-envelope guesstimate of 8kWh energy input referred to 1kg of CO2 input.
1kg CO2 + 0.41kg H2O -> 0.27kg HC + 1.14kg O2
Yes, oxygen atoms really are that heavy. The HC would most likely be synthetic diesel, which has a density of ~0.83kg/liter. A US gallon is equal to 3.754 liters. So that 8kWh input would yield
0.27 / (0.83 * 3.754) = ~0.09 gallons
Put another way: producing a full gallon of diesel would require a much higher electrical energy input, on the order of 92kWh!
Posted by: Rafael Seidl | Feb 15, 2008 6:28:57 PM
Quoth Fifi:
It would not be a good process just to capture CO2. The point of the LANL exercise is not just to recover CO2 but to create syngas for liquid fuel synthesis.And what is the purpose of the liquid fuel? There is no point in making synthetic gasoline except to run vehicles. 18,400 bbl/day is 773,000 gallons/day; at $5 billion per plant, you'd spend about $6500 to get one gallon per day. At 30 MPG, that's about $220/mile/day.
Li-ion cells are down around $620/kWh (18650 cells, qty 50, retail). At 200 Wh/mile, that's $124 to get 1 mile/cycle; that's $124/mile/day at 1 cycle/day, $62/mile/day at 2 cycles/day. A 1 GW nuclear plant at $3 billion and 90% capacity factor costs about $46/mile/day. Electric propulsion costs as little as half the nuclear-synthetic gasoline system, plus it's quieter, cleaner and adds to the stability of the electrical grid through V2G.
Batteries are only going to get cheaper. There is no point in wasting nuclear power on complicated electrochemistry to run internal combustion engines. If we need to capture carbon for e.g. plastics, we can probably get it more cheaply from plants than nukes.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 15, 2008 10:13:35 PM
Engineer-Poet,
You need liquid fuel because your Chevy Volt has a 16 kWh battery, which is more than enough to achieve 100% EV daily commute between night-time recharges. But on long distance travels, the battery runs out of juice and the range extender kicks. Said range extender runs ... on liquid fuel.
I agree that with falling costs, batteries can get larger but battery limitation is not just a matter of cost but also of weight. You quickly reach a point where adding batteries doesn't get you more range as you expend more energy to move a heavier vehicle. So for a general use vehicle within foreseeable technology, you still need a range extender that gives access to the very high energy density and long range of liquid fuel.
Similarly, planes also are not going to fly on batteries. They need liquid fuel no matter what.
That's why you still need liquid fuel even in a Li-Ion world. You need a lot less - may be 20% or 30% of the current demand - but you still need some.
.
The other thing to consider is the physical footprint of the whole thing. 5,000 t/day methanol = 1,875 t/day carbon = 684,000 t/year carbon. So one plant can capture and transform 684,000 tonnes of carbon each year. Looking at typical nuclear power plants and GTL plants, I'd say the plant would physically use around 100 acres, safety perimeter and tankage included.
In land-constrained countries like Japan or Europe, the plant would use about that, 100 acres. In the US, the plant would typically stand on a larger domain of a few hundreds acres. Palo Verde in Arizona has a huge 4,000 acres domain. Most of it is just free land. The 3.75 GW generating station proper takes about 10% of that and the installations are very spread out.
To compare with biomass, a very generous estimate of dry biomass/acre/year yield is around 10 t/acre for grass or wood crops. Dry biomass is around 50% carbon so 5/t carbon/year. So it would take about 136,800 acres to match the capture capacity of one LANL plant, more than 210 square miles. If you take 100 acres for the LANL plant, that's a 1 to 1,368 ratio...
The bonus of biomass is the energy - 10 MJ/kg usable - that that you don't get through direct capture but the land use is enormous. It's possible to reduce that footprint and boost the biomass yields but it requires fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation, increases the risk for soil erosion and depletion and water table pollution.
Nuclear vs. "soft" renewables is always the same story : intensive vs. extensive. Nuclear concentrates the power and the nuisances in one place. "Soft" solutions - biomass, wind, etc. - spread over large spaces.
Posted by: Fifi | Feb 16, 2008 6:10:20 PM
on long distance travels, the battery runs out of juice and the range extender kicks. Said range extender runs ... on liquid fuel.We'll have plenty of liquid fuel for the short term, and the PHEV will be replaced by the EV in the long term. There is a serious danger of investing in plants with a 60-year lifetime to serve needs which may only exist for 20... or not at all.
If the PHEV cuts fuel requirements by 80%, a full replacement of the US fleet would cut gasoline consumption from ~140 billion gallons/year to ~28 Ggal/yr, or about 77 million gallons/day. The question is if you can get that for less than $6500 to produce one gallon/day (roughly $500 billion total capital cost). If we made 42 Ggal/yr of ethanol, it would require the carbon from roughly 140 million tons of biomass. This is a relatively easy amount to get; figures I've seen say the USA generates about 245 million tons/year of municipal waste alone, and we produce ~160 billion tons of corn stover per year. I doubt very much that Vinod Khosla would be investing in any ethanol schemes with capital costs anywhere close to $270,000/bbl/day.
There is also the question of time frame. Gen III reactors won't be coming on-line until 2016. Nobody has built even a pilot-scale plant to demonstrate this carbon-capture scheme (I'm assuming the chemistry is prior art), so figure the first production-scale plant no sooner than 2020 (grafted onto a plant already permitted today). But is there a point to this? Bio-fuels will be highly advanced by then, and GHG considerations will push more toward replacing coal than displacing the remaining fossil motor fuel.
batteries can get larger but battery limitation is not just a matter of cost but also of weight. You quickly reach a point where adding batteries doesn't get you more range as you expend more energy to move a heavier vehicle.The tzero tripled its range and cut its battery weight in half when it went to Li-ion. Increase the pack size by 50% and you have 400 miles range. There are Li-ion chemistries which can be charged in minutes. This is a full replacement for liquid fuels. Other possibilities include zinc-air fuel cells.
hat's why you still need liquid fuel even in a Li-Ion world.The question is if it makes sense to produce it by splitting atoms.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 17, 2008 7:41:16 AM
Make that 160 million tons of corn stover per year.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 17, 2008 8:22:52 AM
Engineer-Poet,
We'll have plenty of liquid fuel for the short term
And with brown coal, in-situ gasification and tar-sands, we have centuries worth of liquid fuel if we insist on dumping as much CO2 as possible in the atmosphere. Getting rid of fossil fuel is the problem. Not running out if. Don't move the target.
I doubt very much that Vinod Khosla would be investing in any ethanol schemes with capital costs anywhere close to $270,000/bbl/day.
Well, I'm afraid you are very wrong again.
Vinod Khosla and Range Fuels Inc. are plonking $225 millions in their Soperton Georgia plant, which will produce 20 millions gallons of ethanol a year.
And 225 10^6 USD / 20 10^6 gal/yr * 365 day/yr = 4106.25 USD/gal/day. Accounting for the fact that ethanol has 34% less energy per volume than gasoline and that there are no engines on the market to actually use the better compression that E100 or E85 could offer, the capital cost in equivalent gasoline = 4106.25 / (1-0.34) = 6221.59 USD/gal/day.
Or if you prefer 261,306.82 USD/bbl/day
So, to my own surprise (and thanks a lot to you, for pointing that out to me), the LANL plant is actually quite competitive with cellulosic ethanol in terms of capital investment. On top of that, the LANL proposal has the added benefit of not using biomass and has 0 land impact and very low sensitivity to fuel cost, contrary to biomass which will not come for free if cellulosic ethanol becomes widely deployed.
There is also the question of time frame. Gen III reactors won't be coming on-line until 2016. Nobody has built even a pilot-scale plant to demonstrate this carbon-capture scheme (I'm assuming the chemistry is prior art), so figure the first production-scale plant no sooner than 2020 (grafted onto a plant already permitted today).
It'd be really nice if you actually read the report. Really.
The LANL report is not a new discovery assuming any new technology. It's explicitly a feasibility study based on components which are all available today.
All parts are known and in use. K2CO3/KHCO3 cycling is well known for low pressure gas scrubbing in place of MDEA for certain types of highly reactive mixes. But it wasn't used to recover CO2 but rather to get rid of it: that's the novelty. The carbonate thermo-cycle used in the back-end is also known quantity. Electrolysers have been around for a century. Methanol synthesis from syngas has been practiced on industrial scale for more than 50 years. The MTG conversion has been used on an industrial scale in NZ in the 80s. And nuclear power reactors have been around in large scale for 40 years and doing relatively fine in the West, except for some bizarre reason in the US.
Also, the LANL proposal explicitly excludes any optimization or optimistic cost assumption. In particular, you can read that electrolysers are costed using the current offer and account for 20% of the capital expense. I'm ready to bet they assume Norsk Hydro type 5000 electrolysers, which are very expensive. There's a lot of cost margin on the way down.
There is always risks and operational issues in every new chemical plants, even those which use well known technologies or even perfect replicas of other plants. But that's not specific to this one. It's true of any plant of any sort. It's always 10% more expensive and 10% late, no matter what the initial estimates were. That's one of the grand rules of chemical process.
As for the time frame of Gen III reactors, it's really purely a US issue.
For some reasons, it seems that nothing can get done in the US without enormous delays, gigantic cost overruns and loads and loads of hand-wringing and over-the-top histrionics. The US can't rebuild New Orleans. The US can't rebuild the World Trade Center. The US can't have a functional health care systems while spending twice as much as everybody else. The US can't prevent its bridges from collapsing in broad daylight. The US can't get anything done. USA, the can't do nation.
Meanwhile, in countries that have not yet been overrun by idiots and amateurs, things are going pretty well. Reactors are build in Japan on time and on budget by Toshiba, MHI and Hitachi. In Europe, Areva took its lump in Finland with an overbearing regulator and incompetent sub-contractors but the Flamanville EPR is going ship-shape (and may have a shot at going on-line before Finland, LOL). On the chemical plant side, the Oryx GTL plant in Qatar, a much more complex plant than what is proposed by LANL, is finally going on-track after one year of problems related to particulates in the syngas.
Plus, added benefit, if liquid fuel really becomes useless (fat chance), you still get 50% of the investment to generate electricity the old fashioned way while a cellulosic ethanol plant would be a 100% loss.
The tzero tripled its range and cut its battery weight in half when it went to Li-ion. Increase the pack size by 50% and you have 400 miles range. There are Li-ion chemistries which can be charged in minutes. This is a full replacement for liquid fuels. Other possibilities include zinc-air fuel cells
The tzero is a ultra-light concept car. Double its battery and you nearly double its mass. I'm not sure the frame is gonna take it nicely. And I would point to you that charging a 40 kWh battery in 2 minutes at 100% efficiency (let's be generous) takes a 1,200 kW connection to the grid. Just for the connector on a 1200V circuit, that's 1000 amperes. I know what a 1000 A medium voltage circuit looks like. I'm not gonna like it and the local utility neither :)
.
But now, I would point to you that large centralized thermal solar plants (the so-called utility-scale CSPs) have the same cooling requirements as nuclear power plants and same capacity for CO2 capture through cooling towers. So, the LANL proposal would also work for those and it would be all Mother-Nature, no evul nucular.
Is that ecologically-correct enough for you?
Posted by: Fifi | Feb 17, 2008 4:43:56 PM
It'd be really nice if you actually read the report. Really.Maybe you should read it yourself, then you'd know what it doesn't say. It doesn't state the reactor power, among other details I was looking for.
nuclear power reactors have been around in large scale for 40 years and doing relatively fine in the WestA point I've made many times. I just fail to see the value of the detour from work, to chemical energy through carbon capture followed by carbon release, and back to work in a heat engine. The capital expense is exorbitant and the efficiency is lousy.
Vinod Khosla and Range Fuels Inc. are plonking $225 millions in their Soperton Georgia plant, which will produce 20 millions gallons of ethanol a year.Must be a prototype, because they sure aren't going to make money that way.
Getting rid of fossil fuel is the problem.We've been around this circular claim of yours before. Let me list the questions you beg:
- Why is it important to use nuclear electricity to make chemical fuel, instead of using the electricity directly at 4-6 times the efficiency?
- Why should we pursue a program which has approximately twice the capital costs of pure EV's... even at today's ridiculous prices for batteries?
- How do we eliminate fossil fuels by maintaining a vehicle fleet which is built around the use of fossil fuels?
- Once we've dealt with the use of fossil fuels for electric generation and ground transport, what is the advantage of harvesting carbon from the atmosphere using nuclear power instead of taking it from e.g. garbage, where it is already fixed?
The tzero is a ultra-light concept car. Double its battery and you nearly double its mass. I'm not sure the frame is gonna take it nicely.Obviously you don't care about the truth. Here are the before-and-after figures on the tzero. Facts:
- The tzero's original lead-acid battery weighed about 1300 pounds (derived).
- The new Li-ion battery weighs 770 pounds (stated).
- Adding 50% would bring the weight up to 2355 pounds (calculated), still 150 pounds short of the original weight.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 17, 2008 10:13:49 PM
Engineer-Poet,
Ohhhhh, "lapdog". You forgot "shill".
Quoteth Asimov, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
I wish you a good day.
Posted by: Fifi | Feb 17, 2008 11:05:31 PM
"what is the advantage of harvesting carbon from the atmosphere"? To get it out of the atmosphere, of course! Have you not been paying attention? Carbon left in the ground does not contribute to global warming.
Posted by: richard schumacher | Feb 18, 2008 8:39:46 AM
Well, duh, Richard.
Now address the second half: why it's so much better to get it from nukes than tapping our garbage.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 18, 2008 3:59:56 PM
at 92kwh for a gallon of diesel it does not seem very practical.. but perhaps the idea could be used to absorb some of the non-peak power if we had an excess of nuclear power plants.. but we dont even have enough of those now.. then the excess power of the plants during the night could be used to make fuel to perhaps supplement the demand during the day, and so displacing coal burning and natural gas plants for power generation.
Posted by: | Feb 18, 2008 6:09:09 PM
Hmm, we have met and passed peak oil. From now on, the price of the remaining oil will inexorably increase as demand exceeds supply. When gas and diesel is about $20/gallon, those technologies dependent upon transport are going to become very costly. How is that tractor going to till the corn? How is that biomass going to be trucked? Are we really going to use our agricultural might to grow biofuels and let the world (and ourselves)starve? The LANL CO2 capture process, with its relatively small footprint and use of multiple energy sources (I prefer nuclear, myself) is a move in the right direction. We don't have a long time to fiddle around before our choices become more bleak. We have to transition from an economy based upon carbon based mobility and wasteful growth of suburbia to one based upon self sufficiency and efficiency in the production of real goods (as in useful and nutritious) with minimal reliance upon the global economy. So, everyone, take a deep breath and look at the big picture.
Posted by: Geologist-Pragmatist | Feb 18, 2008 6:27:28 PM
How is that tractor going to till the corn?Crops such as corn produce more than enough non-grain matter to power tractors via gasogenes. Zebra batteries (sodium nickel chloride) and zinc-air fuel cells are other possibilities.
How is that biomass going to be trucked?Don't truck it. Process it at the scene, capture liquids (bio-oil for further processing via fast pyrolysis, ethanol as a final product via gasification/fermentation), use tankers.
Are we really going to use our agricultural might to grow biofuels and let the world (and ourselves)starve?Humans don't eat corn stalks, leaves and cobs. They don't eat wheat or rice straw. They don't eat logging slash and sawdust. They don't eat coffee grounds, waste paper or used plastic.
This nuclear scheme is supposed to be about eliminating fossil carbon. However, none of the proponents/defenders here has ever addressed the pertinent questions:
- Whether the nuclear-chemical path is worth looking at compared to nuclear-electric.
- Whether the remaining needs for carbon cannot be met more cheaply by other means.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 18, 2008 9:14:41 PM
This is a way to "store" excess power from wind and solar. If wind and solar are overbuilt, to be able to provide more power than is contracted for, then the excess is shunted into liquid fuel production.
Using CO2 from coal fired powerplants does not reduce total new carbon introduced into the earth's carbon cycle. Nuclear is another finite, mined fuel. But CO2 to synfuels could really make wind and solar (especially thermal-mechanical solar) take off.
Posted by: fred schumacher | Feb 19, 2008 12:25:27 PM
Fred, figure the per-gallon interest cost on such a plant used, say, 20% of the time and post it here for us, okay?
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 19, 2008 4:02:11 PM
At 92 kw-hr/gallon (if that is correct) one could do much better with synthetic methane, about 64 kw-hr/gallon-equivalent. About 2/3s the cost. With simple plant expenses as well.
If PHEVs can get working, the cost of fuel (liquid or otherwise) could rise considerably with little concern of the consumer. For the same reason, this also make EVs unlikely, as the added cost of the batteries (for that last 50 miles of range) are not cost-effective compared with an IC engine that's fueled.
There is always the possibility of the super battery, but such has yet to appear.
Posted by: Jim | Feb 21, 2008 11:33:27 AM
The PHEV is the incremental route to the EV. As batteries get cheaper and better, the engine and fuel supply become smaller and less important. At some point the cost and regulatory burden of having the engine and fuel supply isn't worth as much as the same price in batteries, and the PH part goes away.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 21, 2008 9:04:35 PM
Nuclear power plants like the AP 1000 have a 60 year lifetime and each unit cost between 1 to 2 billion dollars. But it would take well over a thousand nuclear power plants to replace all of the transportation fuel in the US. This would probably require the mass production of nuclear power plants at remote central locations which should significantly reduce capital cost which should make the gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel produced-- even cheaper.
Posted by: Marcel F. Williams | Feb 23, 2008 3:28:30 AM
You're not going to cut the cost by 6/7. That's what it would take to equal the savings you'd get by using electricity directly in vehicles, instead of losing 40% in conversion to gasoline and another 53% in internal combustion drivetrains.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 23, 2008 7:25:41 AM
Syngas produced from this process can directly be fed to Coskata's bio reactor by avoiding water electrolysis to produce ethanol at more than 90% efficiency, reducing the final price of the fuel further to meet the current gasoline price. I think we have solved two problems, source of energy and easy delivery and utilization of the energy unlike gaseous Hydrogen.
Posted by: Talks | Feb 24, 2008 8:51:18 PM
E-P,
It would be great if you were right, but I don't agree. The battery packs needed for a given range are LINEAR, that is, extending the range by 10% means a 10% increase in battery pack costs. But the cost of an engine plus tank for extending range is essentially a constant -- more range is simply a bigger tank. An IC engine can had for a few thousand bucks, it doesn't even have to be very efficient! And will provide all the additional range that would require heavy, expensive batteries.
It would be great if someone could develop a super battery, but I see no evidence of that happening anytime soon. Even the best Lithium ions still have a shelf life of only about 5 years.
Posted by: Jim | Feb 25, 2008 11:40:13 AM
The battery packs needed for a given range are LINEAR, that is, extending the range by 10% means a 10% increase in battery pack costs.Meanwhile, $/kWh falls with improving technology and manufacturing.
An IC engine can had for a few thousand bucks, it doesn't even have to be very efficient! And will provide all the additional range that would require heavy, expensive batteries.The electric motor is even cheaper, plus lighter and more powerful. The gas tank is cheap, but filling it is expensive and will be more so; filling the battery is far cheaper already. The future will lean more and more toward batteries, until someday the cost of the emissions controls and other regulations for the gas tank and its engine make them undesirable for most applications.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Feb 25, 2008 11:59:23 PM
It seems like their combining a useful innovation (carbon capture) with a dead donkey (electrolysis) and an old process (Fischer Tropf).
I'd be interested to see more information on the carbon capture element. If carbon can be captured from air, then this process can take place where storage facilities are available, rather than where flue gas is available.
How about replacing the water Antarctican sub ice lakes with liquid CO2?
Posted by: AlexT | Feb 27, 2008 1:42:12 AM
CO2 output is on CO2CLOCK.org for real time data in global
air.Please develop the milestone as required 360 PPM or
less than 300 PPM if possible.However global warming is
also with O3 hole in STRATOSPHERE resulting higher UV radiation which is in TOM NASA_Total O3 Management by
NASA.
Posted by: G.K.Patel | Jun 5, 2008 6:59:10 AM







