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Friday, May 15, 2009

Environment - "Well project tests storage of carbon dioxide"

James Bruggers, environmental reporter for the Louisville Courier Journal, has a long and informative article today on testing of underground storage of carbon dioxide. This is the "carbon capture and sequestration" upon which "clean coal technology" is based. Here is a sample from the story:

With Congress and President Barack Obama promising to tackle climate change, coal-dependent states like Kentucky, along with the federal government and energy companies, are investing heavily in what's called carbon capture and sequestration.

It's billed as the way to keep Kentucky and the United States in the coal business if Congress or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits greenhouse gas emissions. Kentucky is the third-largest producer of coal in the United States and gets more than 90 percent of its electricity from coal.

But by all accounts, the challenges are daunting.

First, carbon dioxide would need to be captured in ways that people and businesses can afford.

Last month, a University of Kentucky-led consortium of government agencies, electric utilities and their research organizations, fueled by at least $24 million over 10 years, announced it was seeking ways to do just that.

But participants in that research said the most promising method to be studied -- dissolving carbon dioxide from power plant flue gas into a solvent, then boiling the solvent to separate the carbon dioxide for storage -- uses as much as a third of a power plant's electrical output and could add 60 percent to 100 percent to operating costs.

Then, the captured carbon dioxide would have to be permanently stored underground, and on a massive scale -- a volume each day at least equal to the total daily U.S. consumption of oil, according to the 2007 "Future of Coal" study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Sequestration works," said John Grasser, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy. "It can be done in the laboratory. It can be done on a small scale. But you can't build a billion-dollar plant and cross your fingers and hope it works."

The Department of Energy, which has been funding its own regional carbon sequestration research consortiums and is about to begin testing large-scale injections in Illinois, estimates that it will be at least 15 years before the technology can be put to full use, Grasser said.

The goal, he said, is to keep the extra costs to no more than 10 percent.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 15, 2009 01:06 PM
Posted to Environment