What if we found a system to transform one of our big "enemies" into a fuel again, and then, when produced, re-transformed again? This is the aim of a project made at University of Nottingham's Centre for Innovation in Carbon Capture and Storage (CICCS), in the UK, directed by Mercedes Maroto-Valer. They have successfully completed a cycle of transforming CO2 into natural gas (CH4). This could lead to making most carbon capturing processes obsolete while also powering cars we already have. According to Ms. Maroto-Valer, the CICCS group tacked the problem by studying what plants do - capturing CO2, water and solar light and transforming it into carbohydrates - and then replicated the process to create methane instead of carbs. However, it's still unknown what the energy balance the system is - we can't defeat the laws of Thermodynamics, after all.
Greenpeace is quite unhappy with recent proposals to use carbon capture technology (CCT) at power plants that burn coal. According to the environmental group, CCT is like burying money. Their reasons? First and foremost, the technology is not yet 100 percent ready, and won't be until 2030. Meanwhile, the need to reduce carbon emissions is quite immediate. Secondly, Greenpeace claims that CCT wastes energy: about 10 to 40 percent of the energy produced by the power plant where carbon is captured is used to store that carbon. This offsets 50 years of development in power plants, Greenpeace says, and guess who is going to pay for that? Final users. Of course, Greenpeace states that this can be fixed if we all change to renewable sources of energy, like solar or wind turbines.
The X-Prize foundation was established help spur developments in a variety of areas including space travel, medicine and genomics. We've had plenty of coverage here of the Automotive X-Prize where the target is to develop a production viable car that can achieve the equivalent of 100mpg. The foundation is now establishing what it calls the Energy and Environment Prize suite that includes the Automotive Prize. The suite will include a number of prize competitions that go beyond just transportation to include clean energy sources. A Biofuels X-Prize has already been created to inspire breakthroughs in next generation sustainable liquid fuels. The biofuels prize competition will officially launch later this year with a prize of at least $10 million. Other categories that will be attacked in the next couple of years include solar power, water, sustainable housing and carbon capture. In total the energy and environment prizes are will give away up to $100 million.
Two companies, Holcim and Aurantia are starting a new project to reuse CO2. They take the CO2 produced by a cement plant in Jerez de la Frontera in Spain and "feed" it to microalgae which then turn around and produce biodiesel. The results of this project will be tested to assess if the carbon dioxide supplied by the cement plant is suitable for the algae. The two companies will also select the best type of algae for the project as well as assessing the viability of the project. The test will be performed on an-almost industrial scale, so once the final green light is given, it could start working immediately.
Despite the drubbing some of us are taking this winter there are still the same CO2-induced global warming predictions being made and so reducing the amount of carbon that's emitted to our skies appears to remain necessary. One of the ways that has been touted as the most promising has been carbon capture and sequestration. While there have been many papers written and plans made for this technology, not a lot has actually been accomplished and so, as with every scheme that takes a substantial period of time between ideation to implementation, skepticism is bound to arise.
And risen it has. The Energy Tribune, a publication that bills itself as, "Leading the debate. Beating the streets," has a particular abundance of articles on the subject including one entitled, "Carbon Capture in the U.S. Faces Hard Realities" that focuses on the American experience with particular attention paid to the de-funding of the FutureGen project which was to be, through carbon capture and sequestration, the world's first zero-CO2 emissions coal-fired power plant.
And it's not just The Energy Tribune that is cooling to the future prospects of this tech. Germany's Spiegel Online has just published an article that asks, "Is Carbon Capture a False Hope for Coal Power?" It seems people are coming to the realization that making sequestration work is going to be very expensive.
As I read these articles I can't help but ponder the question, why do we have to spend billions and billions of dollars chasing technology that, even when perfected, is not nearly as perfect as the renewable trifecta (wind, solar, geothermal) in creating energy that gives us the added benefit of saving our environment and, indeed, our lives.
Repsol, one of Europe's biggest oil companies, has decided to store half a million tons of CO2 under the Mediterranean Sea. The plan is to capture CO2 at its refinery in Tarragona, Spain, and move it 43 km through the pipeline that connects it to an old "Casablanca" oil platform.
This system will not only serve as a carbon capture project but will also help finish the extraction of crude from the old well, which is only producing 2,800 barrels per day.
The method Repsol will use involves capturing the CO2 before it comes out the chimneys, liquefying it and pushing it though the aforementioned pipeline. Once it reaches the offshore rig, it would be pushed 3,000 meters down. According to Repsol, the CO2 becomes stable in liquid form below 800 meters.
Do you hate the idea of your car spewing exhaust? There might be a way to stop it without using any expensive batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. According to the New York Times, a pair of scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) are working on a way to trap exhaust fumes (by blowing them over a liquid solution that contains potassium carbonate) and recycle the trapped carbon into either methanol, gasoline or jet fuel. F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr. have named their process Green Freedom and a press release by the LANL says the recycling could be done on cars or planes. The fuel generation doesn't take place on board - the carbon needs to be brought to a facility where the CO2 would be turned into the fuel - and the carbon transformation process is itself energy-intensive. Kubic and Martin are working on a way to streamline this step of the dream (possibly using nuclear reactors), but they're not there yet. Oh, and what is the dream? Recycled gasoline that costs $1.40 a gallon to make. Can't hate that.
EESTech Inc., a company based in Brisbane, Australia, owns the Asia-Pacific rights to a system called the Purenergy CO2 Capture System (CCS). This is supposed to be the world's first pre-engineered, modular CO2 capture system that can be retrofitted onto existing power plants or any large industrial greenhouse gas emitter.
The CCS is going to be installed in EESTech's Hybrid Coal Gas Turbine (HCGT) system which produces electricity using waste coal dust, and fugitive vented methane. This allows coal facilities to utilize these byproducts from coal mines to efficiently generate the necessary steam and electricity for the CO2 capture process. The whole process is claimed to reduce the cost of carbon capture by 40 percent.
Graeme Lynch, Chief Operating Officer of EESTech Inc., believes that the carbon capture technology will position EESTech Inc as a leader in the industry. "Solutions like the Purenergy CCS, when installed in scale on one 750 megawatt power plant, will capture the carbon dioxide equivalent of two million cars and trucks," Mr. Lynch added.
The Government of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain has just announced that they aren't going to accept the installation of any CO2 storage facility in its territory until further notice.
Castilla-La Mancha might accept an exception in case of a broader consensus among all the administrations, including local municipalities. But the default answer for such a proposal will be "no."
The Spanish Ministry of Industry, in collaboration with the European Union, had announced plans to install such a facility in the province of Ciudad Real, together with the existing project in Cubillos (Castilla-León). Castilla-La Mancha has asked for a total interruption of this project and has demanded more information on the projects as well as taking them in consideration for such projects.
A group of American scientists have unveiled a new type of foam-like substance which they claim captures CO2 up to 83 times its volume. The best part is that this foam is able to work at high temperature and pressure conditions, which makes it suitable for use in vehicles and power plants.
The new crystal-like pores that form the foam, named ZIFs, have been obtained with metal atoms such as cobalt or zinc and are linked to organic molecules. Since ZIFs may have different types of links, they can capture more CO2 than any other equivalent substance.
The idea is using this foam on tailpipes or chimneys, where they would capture CO2 that results from combustion. This foam could be treated afterwards in a low-pressure chamber where CO2 would be removed and then sequestered. This group of scientist is also optimistic that a large amount of this foam can be created in the next two to three years.
What, motoring without polluting? That sounds like a good thing to me. But before we take our champagne bottles out to celebrate, let's see what this means.
According to a group of researches at the Georgia Institute of Technology, pollution-free transportation is possible. While major projects in places like Europe are focused on using emissions-free technology at power plants to generate electricity, people from Georgia Tech are thinking about automobiles, transportation vehicles and industrial power generation applications (e.g., diesel power generators).
The team's target is creating a closed-loop carbon circuit system. This means burning a liquid fuel in the engine and trapping the carbon emissions at the tailpipe to be stored until the next refueling. At that point, the carbon would be transformed again into liquid fuel and reused to power the cars.
The researcher's current strategy is trying to capture carbon from gasoline (or any fuel) using a fuel processor to separate the hydrogen in the fuel from the carbon. The hydrogen will be used to power the vehicle and the carbon would be kept stored on board in liquid form. This process is not unlike DECARBit's project, to separate carbon before combustion. This rich-in-carbon liquid would be disposed at the fueling station and taken to a centralized site. First to sequester it (as explained here) or, as a long-term strategy, transforming it into another fuel.
Val Kilmer. You know him as Ice Man or Batman (shudder) or, perhaps, as Moses. Soon, though, we'll think of him at KITT. Thanks (or no thanks if you're Will Arnett, aka a star of Arrested Development and the guy who already recorded the KITT voiceovers) to some fighting between GMC and Ford, Kilmer was asked to step in at the last minute and work on the made-for-TV movie that airs February 17. See, Arnett has done voice work for the professional grade advertisers and the Knight Rider movie is sponsored by Ford. Arnett told Variety he was "very excited at the prospect of playing the part of Kitt in the new Knight Rider movie," but he had to "respectfully withdraw from the project." Why Val Kilmer? Who knows, but as Autoblog points out, there's an even better choice out there for the update KITT: the actor who voiced the car in the original series, William Daniels. Whoever voices the new solar-powered "hybrid" Mustang in the series, I just hope the car helps get the bad guys.
As we have explained before, Europe wants to become a green continent and is taking various actions to accomplish this target. One of these efforts is the widespread use of carbon capture technologies. According to EU figures, 40 percent of Europe's carbon emissions come from coal plants that produce electricity. Carbon capturing on-site, therefore, seems a reasonable way to reduce these emission as much as possible those and, consequently, reduce global emissions.
Now there is a new proposed Directive referring to CO2 storage in geological strati, either inland or in the sea, under continental platforms. It excludes water columns storage, since the risk of the gas leaving water is quite high (just think about carbonated beverages left open).
The EU wants to restrict authorizations for these storage facilities, and the maximum security will be demanded. Each request will have to wait for 6 months until the EU will give its opinion to the affected country.
The norm will also display a very comprehensive set of technical requirements and evaluation methods for the installation to be authorized. Moreover, it will also ask for constant analysis on the CO2 levels during transport, injection and storage of the gas.
Finally, the directive will also include rules on how to prosecute violators of these rules and what to do if the gas is released accidentally.
In 2008, if your factories aren't the cleanest in the world, you can always compensate with some kind of carbon-balancing intervention to fix things. Such is the case of tiremaker Yokohama Rubber Company (YRC), which just announced that it's going to plant half a million trees, which equal 25 acres of forest. YRC will plant these trees at seven facilities in Japan and 11 overseas. For Yokohama USA headquarters in Salem, VA, the estimated planted surface will be one acre.
This tree-planting initiative is part of Yokohama's "Forever Forest," a long-term project being carried out as part of YRC's environmental preservation activities. The company states that planting trees has a lot of benefits, from absorbing carbon from the atmosphere to provide shelter in case of an earthquake [sic].
The Federal Trade Commission held a public hearing Tuesday (Jan. 8) on how to regulate "green" advertising and they still want to know what you think. You can watch web-casts of the workshop and anyone is invited to submit comments before the January 25 deadline. Details on how to file a comment electronically, by paper or even confidentially can be found at the FTC website here.
As the New York Times reports, the FTC has not updated their green advertising guidelines or "green guides" since 1998. More than $54m was spent last year on carbon offsets, the Times writes, and there are growing concerns about about the level of "green washing" in paid media (i.e advertising that claims to be green or environmental but really isn't). The Times article on the FTC workshops includes many companies using carbon off-sets and the ad above for Volkswagen's Forest. The ad says VW will offset the first year of carbon emission of every car they sold for four months last year. What do you think about that ad?
For once, I am not going to ask you to post your opinion in our comments, tell the FTC what you think instead. Personally, I like Norway's system for regulating green ads but I doubt we would ever do that in the U.S.
What if we found a system to transform one of our big "enemies" into a fuel again, and then, when produced, re-transformed again? This is the aim of a project made at University of Nottingham's Centre for Innovation in Carbon Capture and Storage (CICCS), in the UK, directed by Mercedes Maroto-Valer. They have successfully completed a cycle of transforming CO2 into natural gas (CH4). This could lead to making most carbon capturing processes obsolete while also powering cars we already have. According to Ms. Maroto-Valer, the CICCS group tacked the problem by studying what plants do - capturing CO2, water and solar light and transforming it into carbohydrates - and then replicated the process to create methane instead of carbs. However, it's still unknown what the energy balance the system is - we can't defeat the laws of Thermodynamics, after all..jpg)
The Government of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain has just announced that they aren't going to accept the installation of any CO2 storage facility in its territory until further notice. 
What, motoring without polluting? That sounds like a good thing to me. But before we take our champagne bottles out to celebrate, let's see what this means.
Val Kilmer. You know him as Ice Man or Batman (shudder) or, perhaps, as 
_thumbnail.jpg "Beijing 2008: BYD e6")
