Dear Reader,
Carbon Capture & Sequestration (CCS) may save the global coal-fired generation business – over the long-term. Coal-fired electricity is cheap, but it is also dirty. Therein lies a conundrum that flashes through the minds of policy-makers worldwide.
Should we outlaw coal? Should we mandate CO2 capture for coal-based power generation? Should we implement a tax on coal-generated power? All good questions.
Also, what does one do with captured CO2? If a coal-fired power plant happens to be reasonably close to an older oilfield that can use a little CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR)…well, that could be a good use of captured CO2. There are some CO2 pipeline systems that currently are used for EOR. Perhaps more are on the way.
Another CO2-capture technique is geological sequestration. In this issue, we discuss some developments and some controversy on that subject.
The coal industry "conventional wisdom" is CO2 from coal-fired plants, once captured, can be stored safely and securely (in geological formations) for a really long time – hundreds of years.
However, some scientists dispute the viability of CO2 geological sequestration. We discuss the debate in this issue.
Entities in Norway and South Africa are cooperating on advancing CO2-capture techniques. We report on those developments.
In Sweden, there is news about dimethyl ether (DME) being used as a transportation fuel. There is a remarkable BioDME facility under construction by Chemrec.
What about the sun? A research team at Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) in Albuquerque, N.M. is developing a process to generate some of the components for synthetic fuels (synfuels) from carbon-containing gases by using a solar-powered device called the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor.
The U.S.Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a report entitled Next-
Generation Biofuels: Near-Term Challenges and Implications for Agriculture.
It is fair to say that biofuel progress in the U.S.is not on schedule – though there are one or two happy developments.
Read on.
Regards,
The Editor
Zeus Technology Magazine