The main question is how the thermal efficiency of the Vattenfall conversion to oxyfuel compares to the thermal efficiency of the coal plant it is replacing.

I believe that technology exists, such as NETL’s HIPPS technology, to increase the thermal efficiency of the conversion sufficient to pay for the conversion costs in increased fuel efficiency, and pay for the parasitic losses due to the CCS.

Commercial industry has been very, very slow in technological innovation to increase the efficiency of coal plants. This is because they have been profitable as they are, IMO, and as a strategy to limit government regulation.

HIPPS does have one crucial technological challenge, though. That challenge is to create a high temperature heat exchanger that can operate in the very corrosive coal flame environment at temperatures of 1200 degrees C or so.

United Technologies has, however, apparently solved that problem, with development of a hybrid ceramic lined alloy heat exchanger.

For more on the HIPPS (aka Indirectly Fired Combined Cycle) idea, see the following link, or visit the NETL (National Energy Technologies Laboratory) website.

http://www.ms.ornl.gov/ FEM19/ Proceedings/ papers/ Session%20III/ Hurley.pdf

Laboratory and pilot-scale tests of a very high-temperature heat exchanger (HTHX) that could be used to produce pressurized air at up to 2000°F for an indirectly fired combined-cycle (IFCC)power plant were performed while three coal–biomass blends were fired. An IFCC using this type of heat exchanger has the potential to reach efficiencies of 45% when firing coal and over 50% when a duct burner is used to additionally heat the gas entering the turbine.

Because of its high efficiency, an IFCC system is the most appropriate power concept for employing oxygen enriched combustion in order to make carbon dioxide removal more economical

http://www.treehugger.com/ files/ 2008/ 05/ more-carbon-capture-at-german-coal-plants.php

Sweden’s state-owned Vattenfall is almost as eager as Norway’s state-owned energy monopolies to see CCS accepted as a bona fide fix for CO2 belching on the part of both coal-fired and gas-fired plants. Vattenfall said it would build a demonstration 250 MW CCS at one block of the 3,000 MW brown-coal Jänschwalde plant, to be ready by 2015. The cleaned-up CO2 would be piped to a nearby empty natural gas field. The CCS will be built on the so-called oxyfuel technique, which Vattenfall is also using at its CCS demonstration pilot at the Scwarze Pumpe plant. Schwarze Pumpe’s 30 MW installation is estimated to cost 70 million Euros, and is set to open this summer. Jänschwalde’s price tag: 1 billion Euros ($1.57 billion). Internally, Vattenfall hopes to halve its CO2 emissions by half by 2030. Via ::Newsdesk.se

Run such a plant on biochar or biomass co-firing, and it would be a carbon negative power plant.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-srv/ politics/ documents/ vop_chu_transcript.html

SECRETARY CHU: Well, so the issue here is that if you consider, for example, the countries that have coal, two-thirds of the known coal reserves lie primarily in the United States, China, India, and Russia. The United States actually has the most known coal reserves in the world, and over 50 percent of our electricity is generated by coal. Even if the United States turns its back on coal, China and India will not, and so, given the state of affairs, I would prefer to say let’s try to develop technologies that can get a large fraction of the carbon dioxide out of coal. Start with 70, 80 percent, and build up to over 90 percent, but start now, and try to get it out.

If we didn’t do that and if Europe didn’t try to develop those technologies, China and India will continue to build coal plants and continue not to sequester it. So I think it’s–it’s up to the developed countries, especially, to take a lead in developing the technologies that can capture the carbon.

MS. ROMANO: So is it a little unrealistic for Vice President Gore to think that he can end coal production by protesting these plants?

SECRETARY CHU: Well, Al Gore is a friend of mine, and let’s just say that–I’ll go back to my original statement that we really have to take the lead, the technological lead, and see if this can get done. personally think that there’s a reasonably good probability we can figure this one out.

The UNDP 2007/2008 Human Development Report also emphasized this international view of CCS.

In their chapter 3 “Avoiding dangerous climate change: strategies for mitigation”, they noted that coal was “40% of the world’s electricity generation and CO2 emissions”, and they predicted that “the share of coal in world energy generation is likely to rise over time”, even in the face of what was then known about climate change. They then said “CCS is widely acknowledged to be the best bet for stringent mitigation in coal fired power generation”, and warned that rapid development of CCS by developed countries such as the US is going to prove to be necessary in order for international agreement to limit CO2 emission to succeed:

“In the absence of a coherent international strategy for finance and technology transfer to facilitate the spread of low-carbon energy, developing countries will have little incentive to join a multilateral agreement that sets emission ceilings.”

“the additional cost of electricity with capture is approximately 2-5¢/kWh, with costs of the range of $35-70/tCO2 avoided.”

This is in the range of estimates for the mature technology I’ve been reading for years. There is the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage, the McKinsey report, MIT etc. You’ve taken the statement of these Harvard authors that the very first plants are going to cost a lot and tried to make it sound like that confirms the technology is a dead end.

[JR: "Confirms" is not the word I'd use, though it is OK. Is the 10th nail in the coffin, maybe. I guess you don't read my links or even the one key link -- CCS has a myriad problems of which cost is only one. If you swallow all the optimistic assumptions and it turns out to be five cents/kWh more expensive, that just about prices it out of range through 2030 I'd guess.]

We aren’t going to see CCS except if government throws billions at each plant. The IPCC is wrong, McKinsey lost their marbles a long time ago, the people at MIT wouldn’t know what carbon is, and as for Harvard, well, as you say, we should only pay attention to what you say is correct in what they’ve come up with, and ignore the rest of what they are saying.

Chu may say he supports CCS, but you know for certain he believes, what, the billions he’s allocated for it at the DOE are just so much more confetti thrown into the air?

[JR: Uhh, Congress allocates money, not Chu -- that's how the US funding government works.]

If Chu is as certain as you say that CCS is a gold plated non solution, why, in the IAC “Lighting the Way” report, did he as chair endorse its development? “Technologies should be developed and deployed for capturing and sequestering carbon from fossil fuels, particularly coal” – page vi

[JR: I agree they "should be developed." I agree we should spend money seeing if they could be a plausible post-2030 solution. I just seriously doubt they will be a low-cost or practical solution for at least the next two decades -- and I have little doubt Chu believes the same.]

Is Chu that cynical, that he would blithely ignore the mission statement of the IAC, which was created by “all of the world’s science academies… to mobilize the best scientists and engineers worldwide to provide high quality advice to international bodies”? Did he mobilize to spread BS around instead?

[JR: What precisely is cynical about aggressively pursuing all options including the ones you are skeptical of, particularly in the near term?]

According to you, we should disregard the conclusion of this recent paper which is: “The range of estimated costs for NOAK plants is within the range of plausible future carbon prices, implying that mature technology would be competitive with conventional fossil fuel plants at prevailing carbon prices.”

[JR: Wow. I count only 6 hedge words in one sentence -- that could be a record. And again, you misstate my position.]

In other words, it seems to me, the authors of this “Harvard stunner” that you take as confirming your conviction that CCS is an expensive sham are saying that at the price a reasonable person can expect carbon emissions to be priced at in the future given that even the US is moving now on CO2 emission control, if anyone was going to build a fossil fuel plant, they’d design it to capture its carbon emissions. Isn’t that the point of putting a price on carbon in the first place, i.e. to make it economical to build generating facilities that don’t emit carbon?

[JR: Tell me, what percentage of CO2 will be captured by this hypothetical FOAK or NOAK of yours? How long will coal supplies last? The point of putting a price on carbon is both to get off of carbon as quickly as possible and to get on to sustainable sources of clean energy as quickly as possible. Coal with CCS ain't sustainable. But CCS is definitely worth pursuing, in part because it can be used in conjunction with biomassas I have said many times.]

Other technologies can move in to a greater or lesser extent, if they can produce electricity for less than a fossil fuel plant that has a carbon tax imposed on it, or that has CCS fitted to it.

Personally, I don’t care what technology prevails, as long as CO2 is not emitted from it.

Abstract: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/ publication/ 19185/ realistic_costs_of_carbon_capture.html

Article: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/ files/ 2009_AlJuaied_Whitmore_Realistic_Costs_of_Carbon_Capture_web.pdf

Then any utility facing growing demand will likely pick a competing power source (renewables, efficiency, natural gas, nuke) if the price of a new coal plant with CCS is just too high.

And if they want to continue to operate some existing coal plants, then they would need to retire other plants, to get down to an average zero net emission on the plants that remain in operation.

That means at least a 50 percent reduction in emissions for the existing coal plants, or purchasing effective offsets for those existing emissions. For the latter case, you’d have to show, for instance, that your investments in efficiency reduced emissions equal to what you’re emitting by keeping the existing coal plants open.

If it’s politically too difficult initially to focus on the existing coal plants — then focus first on proposed coal plants and implement this requirement at the margin with new generators only. Then, move against the ‘grandfathered’ plants and progressively increase the pressure to wind them down too.

Seems simpler than a economywide cap and trade regime. However, I’m for that too if we can get it passed.

Well the amines I used to analyze at the lab I used to work at were used to scrub hydrogen sulfide, rather than CO2, and they did tend to get kind of degraded and cruddy (that’s a technical term…:)) over time. There are also irreversible losses of amines due to evaporation, I think, so you have to keep adding amine to the process, which is expensive. I’ve read something about a new class of amine-like scrubbing materials, though, which are said to have advantages over the old alkanol amines that I used to test.

If nitrogen degrades them, it’s hard for me to see how they could be so widely used in hydrogen sulfide scrubbers in oil refineries around the world. Perhaps you are right, but this is the first I have heard of this.

The reason I’m not too enthusiastic about amine scrubbers or post combustion CO2 capture in general is that it takes a lot of heat to run these processes, and this decreases the thermal efficiency of the power plant. Unlike oxyfuel, post combustion CO2 scrubbing doesn’t appear to offer any technological advantages such as higher temperature combustion leading to higher Carnot efficiency. So, there’s a parasitic loss with no particular efficiency advantage that I know of, although a HIPPS topping cycle could be added to these plants, too.

So it’s possible that someone will come up with some new improved amine process to replace the one used in the past, for post combustion scrubbing of CO2. But the real way to go, which opens up the possibility of paying for the CCS with increased efficiency due to higher temperature combustion, is oxyfuel combustion combined with a topping cycle, to substantially increase the efficiency of the combustion process, IMO. Increasing the combustion efficiency of these old dinosaur plants,, and paying for the oxyfuel/CCS energy costs with the increased efficiency, I think, is the way to get essentially free CCS.

[JR: Not my study, Harvard's. If your strategies are the common sense way to go, why does it not appear that anybody is doing it? I certainly want to cofire with biomass as much as possible, as I've said many times. Clinton-era estimates I'm afraid are likely quite out of date.]

Yes, I know it’s from Harvard. I also know that Harvard gets millions of dollars from the conservative foundations like the Scaife and Bradley foundations, the energy corporations, and the arms corporations, which already puts a question mark next to this study in my mind.

[JR: I should just delete the previous paragraph. It makes your other fine analysis less credible. This is NOT how anyone at Harvard works, certainly not at JFK school, which is typically viewed as LIBERAL, but is more like center-left.]

We swim in a sea of commercially motivated disinformation. We all think we can distinguish between the good stuff and the industry funded crap. Most often, we can’t.

As has been pointed out in the recent Senate hearings, before industry will actually bow to public and Congressional pressure and change, they trot out studies, perhaps like this one, to show that the cost of changing will be catastrophic. As has been pointed out, history shows that those cost estimates are generally wildly exaggerated. So with sufficient money, and our opponents certainly have that, it is possible to get studies published that make changing One’s industry seem almost arbitrarily expensive.

Is this study an outlier from other published studies? They appear to say that they are.

Regarding the Clinton era studies, these were real studies of the HIPPS idea by engineering firms like United Technologies and Bechtel, and are not so easily dismissed, I think. Regarding Oxyfuel, a small coal fired power plant has been retrofitted to oxyfuel combustion by the Jupiter Oxygen Corporation, and has shown efficiency gains of something like 6.5 percent even without a topping cycle, just from greater heat transfer. Also regarding oxyfuel, the pilot plant opened by Vattenfall in Germany uses oxyfuel and CCS.

Certainly, the physics has not changed, since the Clinton administration, and economics follows physics.

Like I say, thanks for publishing it. I will read it. I am skeptical of it.

What you have shown, more than anything, with your terrific blog, is that we have many energy options, and are not locked into the status quo. I believe this is true of coal power, as wells as alternative energies.

If biochar or biomass could be supplied at the same cost as coal, for example, combining this with CCS would already cut these estimates from Harvard at least in half, because they do not consider the use of carbon negative fuel sources like biomass or biochar, in their dollars/ton calculations.

As a rule of thumb, I think we can pretty safely assume that all changes are easier and cheaper than Industry makes them out to be.

Is there industry money behind this study?

Well, American big business funds Harvard, for one thing.