The Engineer also Muses

There is an ongoing conversation, mostly in the media, about Carbon Capture and Storage, as part of the more major Clean Coal Phenomenon. Here’s a song to put you in the mood:

Let me put this to you now. Clean Coal is a myth. Clean Coal still requires mining the coal in the first place, as well as transporting it. Both of these use energy. When the Coal is used, admittedly, it is gasified, which does ensure more of the energy from the coal can be used, but much of the coal cannot be gasified, so it is sent to landfill, and what is burned still produces CO2 which needs to be dealt with.
Here’s how the Department of Energy in the US puts it together, with beautiful images, pictures of trees, my word, I feel like masturbating over the beauty of our Energy system:

Even when you start to look into the process, it seems brilliant, look, this one produces a wonderful superfuel! *Masturbates some more*

Oh, we’ll just ignore that there are still carbon emissions, and all that sulphur, not to mention the ammonia, nitrates, and other impurities. Oh, and we’ll ignore the energy that goes into producing this. Oh, and we’ll ignore the necessary quantities of cooling water required for all this. No worries, really.
Any engineer, scientist, or even pleb worth half a grain of salt can see that this is not a solution for anything other than explaining why we should MAINTAIN our devotion to coal. Coal is, especially in Australia, one of our major exports. According to the Australian Coal Association, coal exports in 2006-7 was about $22.5B, more than any other raw material we wrestle from the ground and pump onto a ship. In 2004, Australia produced 28% of the world’s coal supplies, more than the whole of Europe and North America, or equivalent to the whole of Asia.
Australia will continue to worship at the temple of Coal until such time as it can be shown that we don’t need $22.5B or any of the 37 coal-fired power stations. If each one runs as efficiently as Munmorah Power Station, Australia produces more than 200M tonnes of CO2 from power stations alone. Of course, that’s not the case: Earing and Bayswater, both in the same region of the Hunter, each produce 20M tonnes of CO2.
According to CARMA (the Carbon Monitoring for Action Group), Australia is the 8th largest carbon emitter in the world from power stations; And Maplecroft reported in September 2009 that Australia is the largest per capita with 20.5 tonnes per person. Australia produces 1 tonne of carbon for every MWh of power (leaving two 60W light globes on for a year is roughly 1MWh)
I’ve gone off onto a rant about carbon emissions now, I apologise. Let me bring this back to the point: Australia is addicted to coal, which provides for more than half of our annual carbon emissions.
But clean coal will change all of that, you cry. Hopelessly.
Clean Coal failed when I first brought it up because it still uses energy to use, produce, quarry, transport, etc. But, the real kicker, the absolute goal scorer, is in sequestration.
No, not that sequestration. The storage kind. Go on, click on that first link there. Have a read. I’m patient, I’ll be here when you get back. It’s only Wikipedia.
So, basically, they (being the gods of coal and energy, and usually politicians) believe that rather than pumping out ALL of the carbon emissions from a coal-fired power plant into the atmosphere, a portion can be captured and stored, as it were. Like it was before we raped the earth. (For more on this, see the Carbon Cycle). Sequestration comes in three basic forms:

• Biosequestration (sometimes called terrain sequestration) meaning to store the carbon into plants and trees and things. Algae. Yeah, that stuff.
• Geosequestration, meaning using rocks and holes in the ground, and the like
• Aquatic storage. Because pumping more CO2 into the Ocean seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Let’s take these one at a time:

Biosequestration

The average healthy tree absorbs 13lbs (or about 5kg) of CO2 in a year. Pretty good. Except, that at current levels, Australia would require 4.48 billion trees – about 220,000km2, or 18 times the size of Greater Sydney, or nearly 1470 Royal National Parks. So, trees might be out.
I did a report in 2007 for a course I was doing where an algal pond was considered for biosequestration. Taking Munmorah again, if the whole of Lake Munmorah was covered in algae, I seem to recall less than 10% of carbon would be absorbed.
Of course, both trees and algae have benefits. Trees provide recreational areas, can provide wood if grown in a sustainable way, and only burns to a crisp every other year in a bush fire, undoing the goodness of storing…. oh, never mind. Algae can be harvested and used as their own fuel source, usually by… burning… them… oh, never mind.

Geosequestration

Look at that. Isn’t it beautiful? It would make strong men cry. All those thousands of tonnes of CO2 being pumped into the rocks, where they shall just sit peacefully and never ever escape or do harm to anyone again. Lake Nyos was just a fluky weird chance thing caused by nature.
To me, the concept of pumping CO2 into the ground is flawed for many reasons. First off, CO2, when placed in water, causes the formation of a highly acidic solution, making the soil around it acidic, and polluting the ground water. Whilst scientists promise the carbon dioxide will be more than 1km below the surface, gases have a nasty habit of moving, especially if they get into ground water. Ground water also provides the oceans, further acidifying the oceans which is not a good thing. Whilst “they” maintain that there is no chance for leakage, another major flaw in the plan is that you will eventually fill each site and need to find a new site. Some scientists believe they have found enough storage for more than 500 years of carbon dioxide.

Aquatic Sequestration

This one just makes me mad. The Oceans are already struggling to survive absorbing all the excessive crap we pump out, and now we’re going to cut out the middle man and just push it straight in. One idea was to form like a lake, a layer of the ocean which would be liquidified CO2. Never mind the fish who might swim into it. Oh, and the atmosphere and oceans will eventually equate back, so the oceans will begin “producing” the CO2.

What people miss out from all of this is that Carbon Sequestration is labelled time and time again as MITIGATION. Delay, put off, deal with in the short term, if you will. It does not solve the problem. It’s like that boss at work who just keeps giving you the shit jobs to do. The other issue is that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas, it is not the only thing that is produced when burning coal. Methane is worse, for example, but it can be burned for more fuel and the production of more CO2.
Any solution proposed by a government is not going to solve all the problems of the world. But, when I read that Australia is investing $120M into pre-feasibility assessments for four CCS sites, and then turn the page to see Britain investing 75B Pounds in wind turbines to produce 25% of power needs, I know who is further ahead, and who needs to pull their head in. Australia cannot continue to work on this coal culture.