Homestead mailing list

[Jerry B <liberty AT kaballero.com>]

EarthNSky wrote:
> Lynda wrote:
>   
> > What are everyone's thought on the coal industries latest ads?  For
> > those that haven't seen them, to paraphrase, their goal is to have
> > everyone using coal produced electricity.  *New* cleaner burning coal
> > AND the biggy is that they are going to "store the CO2."
> >
> > Ah, and do what with it?  Store it where?
> >     
>
>   
TWO FICTIONS – CLEAN
COAL AND CARBON DIOXIDE
SEQUESTRATION

Very good questions to ask. You are not the only one asking them. Here 
is some what Yeoman's, an agriculturist/engineer/designer/manufacturer 
has answered, published in 2005. Perhaps there have been new 
developments since then, and I ask the same questions you ask when I 
hear the adds. Here is a quote about just a few aspects aspect of this 
question thoroughly addressed by Yeomans. The material did not cross my 
eyes and provided much food for thought.

btw, if the industry indeed has overcome these challenges, more power to 
them. I hope Yeomans' abilities to read the future are weak on this 
score. To be able to use coal responsibly would be a great boon, at 
least on the surface of things.

-------------

The list of schemes for sequestering carbon
dioxide is only exceeded by the list of companies
seeking government grants to study their own
touted solutions. As far as the fossil fuel producers
are concerned, the more the merrier; it keeps
people believing an answer is imminent. And
when people feel that, Global Warming fears can
again be put on hold. But no matter how good
any carbon dioxide sequestration system might
be, (or how good they are claimed to be), we
finally have to ask the obvious question; “What
do we do with the carbon dioxide after it has
been collected?”

Carbon dioxide by itself has a variety of
industrial applications. When it is frozen it
becomes the substance we know as “dry ice”. It
is used to conveniently keep ice cream and
similar products at low or below water freezing
temperatures. Carbon dioxide gas is used as a
flux in electric welding. It is also a raw material
in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.
And of course carbon dioxide is the gas in the
bubbles in carbonated drinks. However, the
worldwide industrial use of carbon dioxide for
such applications would barely exceed the carbon
dioxide discharged from a power station
supplying one single world city. As a product in
itself, the reality is that carbon dioxide does not
have a big market. And after it is used in the
market it does have, it still finally ends up in the
atmosphere.

So where can it go? Consider our one million
people coal-fired power station with its power
output of 1,000 megawatts. Let’s assume the coal
is delivered to the power station by rail. That power
station would need a rail train five miles, that’s six
kilometres long, full of coal and delivering twice
a week. That’s what they use.

Today the coal is more likely to come from an
open cut mine than from an underground mine.
Underground mining is more dangerous and more
expensive. Digging holes underground is not
cheap, which is in itself relevant to sequestration.
Now to simplify the carbon dioxide problem,
let’s imagine the carbon dioxide produced from
the power station is compressed to the equivalent
volume, or frozen to the volume of dry ice. Coal
and the dry ice, roughly speaking, weigh about
the same. Remember two trains a week brought
the coal in. With carbon dioxide sequestration
in operation, every day from our power station,
including weekends and holidays, out comes a
rail train, five miles long, with every freight truck
filled to the rails with dry ice.

Is that right? Yes it is; coal is mostly pure
carbon and carbon has an atomic weight of 12.
So let’s say we have 12 train loads of coal coming
in. Coal burns to become carbon dioxide or CO2.
Oxygen has an atomic weight of 16. So carbon
dioxide weighs 12 + 16 + 16. We therefore have
44 train loads of dry ice coming out.
The next problem; all that dry ice has to be
dumped somewhere. You can’t sell the stuff. You
can’t even give it away. There is just too much of
it. And it keeps coming. Pump it into old oil wells
they say? That’s no solution. The carbon dioxide
produced from the world’s power stations would
fill all the world’s empty oil wells in months.
Naturally, any future oil wells are most definitely
not available, as every barrel of oil that comes from
them also becomes another two and a half barrels
of dry ice. Oil wells can’t handle their own CO2
waste. There are simply no holes, natural or manmade,
anywhere in the world that could ever handle
the quantities of dry ice or CO2 involved.

Another suggestion is to pump it into
underground sand beds and hope it won’t ultimately
seep back to the surface. Out of the question;
power stations are built as near as practical to
coal deposits. With all their tunnels, these are not
even hypothetically leak proof carbon dioxide
repositories.

The money involved in such schemes, were
they possible, is so ludicrously high it would be
cheaper to run a power station on sugar derived
ethanol, or even peanut butter. Safe carbon
dioxide disposal is a problem thousands of times
more difficult than nuclear waste disposal. Carbon
dioxide is a hard to contain gas and unlike nuclear
waste, carbon dioxide lasts forever.

The concept of continuous carbon dioxide
sequestration is pretense. The idea has only one
plausible objective and that is to have us believe a
technological solution is not only possible but
also probable. It is simply a means to keep
responsible people placated. It is to prevent people
from acting decisively to halt Global Warming.
It’s simply to maintain sales of fossil fuels.
With Global Warming causing such havoc
there is just no conceivable way that coal should
ever be used as an industrial fuel in any human
society, now or in the future.

From chapter 9,

STRATEGIES, GUIDELINES,
TACTICS AND PLOYS FOR
MARKETING AND PROMOTING
FOSSIL FUELS AND
PETROCHEMICAL PRODUCTS

http://www.yeomansplow.com.au/docs/PRIORITY-ONE-Chapter9.pdf

jerry (Gerald Brittell)