Comments on: The Dilemma Over Coal Generated Power
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- so far no one has anything better - including Hansen.
Posted by RealistII
But there is something better. Oil Companies have been using it for years. I do not know if they are being dense or if they do not realise the potential they have in their abandoned well sites. When the Oil companies use salt water extraction on wells, they pump the water out place it in holding tanks, when they have enough they mix it with sand and inject it back into the empty well. The particles of oil and salt left in the water cling to the bedrock and the water filters out through the sand and bedrock. If they ran the exhuast from these plants through a salt water filter, they could do the same thing. the carbon in the CO2 and the sand would cling to the bedrock and the water would filter out. There are thousands of these abandoned sites across the US. Why not use them for something worthwhile. It traps the CO2 below ground, which is what they are spending millions trying to figure out ways to do. - Reply to this comment
- In regrades to the coal burning ,CO2 article aired this evening, I have a simple solution for reducing the amount of energy used in our "modern civilizations". We use too much wattage at night ...in our empty office buildings, lighting our quite roadways, unattended laptops and burning televisions. All of this is a toxic waste of electricity.
The Electric Companies need to go to "Brown Out" status every night at let's say...midnight until dawn. Obviously we as consumers are like selfish children and unable to regulate our needs. So, give the power back to the power plants and cut back the available juice. - Reply to this comment
- The US really missed the boat walking away from neuclear generation.
France didn't and guess who has the lowest utulity bills in the western world?
You got it.
France. - Reply to this comment
- In your 60 Minute program aired on 4/26/09 I think a solution to the issue of Coal burning for the generation of power is to bottle the CO2 and transport it to Mars. This solution will lead to lower CO2 levels on Earth and provide a basis to speadup the colonisation of Mars
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- This was the worst case of 60 Minute bias I ever remember seeing - makes me ashamed to be a fan of the show. What's up with Scott Pelley anyway? Rogers is the only CEO that's being realistic about the importance of coal generation to the economy. While coal might generate half our electricity, the real importance of coal generation is the base load capacity it offers. Modern coal generation can load follow - something nuclear plants can't legally do. The best nuclear plants can do is block load and turn down to maybe 50% depending on the fuel condition. Rogers didn't have a change to say the new coal he is building replaces mostly old, dirtier and less efficient coal plants. Nor did he get a chance to discuss what the alternatives are - none. That NASA global warming "expert", James Hansen, didn't offer his own CO2 mitigation program for comparison purposes. I wonder why not since he's been an out spoken critic for some time now. The fact is Rogers plan will bridge us to the low carbon economy over forty years and so far no one has anything better - including Hansen.
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- Mr. Rogers at Duke Energy...endorsed Pres. Obama....and has warned that utility bills will go up 40% if Pres. Obama`s carbon tax goes into effect.........How is it possible that this was not brought up???????????????????????? Climate change has very HARD choices for all of us to make.....................I am just getting exhausted of crooked refs/bias reporters not giving fair info to public, but biased left wing views...........
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- Capturing CO2 from these plants is easy. Run it through water. Take that water mix is with sand and pump it into the thousands of empty oil well sites across the country. Once the well is full cap it. Quick simple no mess. And a whole lot cheaper than anything else they have come up with at this point.
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- 1/8th of arizona, given over to solar thermal collectors, generates enough electricity to power all of America, no other power source needed. And thats base power, not 'when the sun is shining' power, cuz molten salt can be stored underground.
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- Coal is cheap, but its not cheaper than wind.
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- One early post talks about making methanol from CO2, there is another process that can make methane (natural gas) using conventional electrolytic cells with archaea (single celled organisms) on one of the electrodes. This is 80% efficient according to the researchers that discovered it. Producing natural gas this way solves the 'storage' problem for wind turbines and solar panels: make gas when electricity production exceeds demand.
If a house is using 1000 kilowatt-hours per month it is using 30Kwh per day, or on average 1.25 Kwh per hour. 100 million homes times 1 kwh = 100 gigawatts. Since people use most power during the day, and there are business and industrial users as well, the 'real' number is closer to 1 trillion watts during, for example, a summer afternoon.
1 trillion watts divided by 1 gigawatt power stations is 1000 power stations. 1 trillion watts divided by 1 megawatt wind turbines is 1 million wind turbines. A 'farm' of 1 million turibines is 1000 x 1000 turbines, arranged over, for example, a 500 mile x 500 mile land area, such as Montana, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, etc.
Making natural gas during the 'off-peak' hours makes it possible to run combined-cycle gas/steam turbines when demand is high or RE resources are slack. The methane can also be used for people's stoves and water heaters, and in cars with appropriate tanks and fuel injection. Using Fischer-Tropf synthesis, it can be used to make gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The sum of these technologies removes nearly every material source of non-renewable CO2 emissions.
At $1 per watt, this is $1 trillion, or 1/13th of our present GDP. The $1 trillion is for the turbines or solar panels, then there would be follow on costs for the gas synthesis, and for transmission lines and management systems. We're currently spending about $600 billion a year on energy, so spreading even $3 trillion out over five years would represent little material change in long term energy costs. Rates would go up somewhat during the initial deployments, and then decline more or less forever afterwards. - Reply to this comment
