Efficiency Upgrades and Partial Carbon Capture for Coal-Fired Power Plants PDF Download

Author: Deborah M. B. Adams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789290294702
Category : Carbon dioxide mitigation
Languages : en
Pages : 61

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Author: U. s. Government Accountability Office
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781479104666
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description
Coal power plants generate about half of the United States' electricity and are expected to remain a key energy source. Coal power plants also account for about one-third of the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2 ), the primary greenhouse gas that experts believe contributes to climate change. Current regulatory efforts and proposed legislation that seek to reduce CO2 emissions could affect coal power plants. Two key technologies show potential for reducing CO2 emissions: (1) carbon capture and storage (CCS), which involves capturing and storing CO2 in geologic formations, and (2) plant efficiency improvements that allow plants to use less coal. The Department of Energy (DOE) plays a key role in accelerating the commercial availability of these technologies and devoted more than $600 million to them in fiscal year 2009. Congress asked GAO to examine (1) the maturity of these technologies; (2) their potential for commercial use, and any challenges to their use; and (3) possible implications of deploying these technologies. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed reports and interviewed stakeholders with expertise in coal technologies. DOE does not systematically assess the maturity of key coal technologies, but GAO found consensus among stakeholders that CCS is less mature than efficiency technologies. Specifically, DOE does not use a standard set of benchmarks or terms to describe the maturity of technologies, limiting its ability to provide key information to Congress, utilities, and other stakeholders. This lack of information limits congressional oversight of DOE's expenditures on these efforts, and it hampers policymakers' efforts to gauge the maturity of these technologies as they consider climate change policies. In the absence of this information from DOE, GAO interviewed stakeholders with expertise in CCS or efficiency technologies to identify their views on the maturity of these technologies. Stakeholders told GAO that while components of CCS have been used commercially in other industries, their application remains at a small scale in coal power plants, with only one fully integrated CCS project operating at a coal plant. Efficiency technologies, on the other hand, are in wider commercial use. Use of both technologies is, however, contingent on overcoming a variety of economic, technical, and legal challenges. In particular, with respect to CCS, stakeholders highlighted the large costs to install and operate current CCS technologies, the fact that large scale demonstration of CCS is needed in coal plants, and the lack of a national carbon policy to reduce CO2 emissions or a legal framework to govern liability for the permanent storage of large amounts of CO2. With respect to efficiency improvements, stakeholders highlighted the high cost to build or upgrade such coal plants, the fact that some upgrades require highly technical materials, and plant operators' concerns that changes to the existing fleet of coal power plants could trigger additional regulatory requirements. CCS technologies offer more potential to reduce CO2 emissions than efficiency improvements alone, and both could raise electricity costs and have other effects. Most stakeholders told GAO that CCS would increase electricity costs, and some reports estimate that current CCS technologies would increase electricity costs by about 30 to 80 percent at plants using these technologies. DOE has also reported that CCS could increase water consumption at power plants. Efficiency improvements offer more potential for near term reductions in CO2 emissions, but they cannot reduce CO2 emissions from a coal plant to the same extent as CCS. GAO recommends that DOE develop a standard set of benchmarks to gauge and report to Congress on the maturity of key technologies. In commenting on a draft of this report, DOE concurred with our recommendation.

Author: Roland Ludovic
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers
ISBN: 9781631175909
Category : Carbon dioxide mitigation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Coal has long been the major fossil fuel used to produce electricity. However, coal-fired electric power plants are one of the largest sources of air pollution in the United States, with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from burning of fossil fuels believed to be the major contributor to global climate change. Regulations under development at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would impose new requirements on fossil-fuelled (mostly coal-fired) power plants (CFPPs) to control GHG emissions. This book focuses on efficiency improvements to power plants, and discusses retrofits, technologies, and other modifications to facility operations which offer the potential to improve power plant efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions.

Author: Detlef Stolten
Publisher: Wiley-VCH
ISBN: 9783527330027
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Carbon Capture and Storage is a key technology for a sustainable and low carbon economy. This book unites top academic and industry researchers in search for commercial concepts for CCS at coal power ploants. This reference focuses on power plant technology and ways to improve efficiency. It details the three principal ways of capturing the CO2 produced in power plants: oxyfuel combustion, postcombustion and precombustion, with the main part concentrating on the different approaches to removing carbon dioxide. Wtih an eye on safety, the authors explain how the three parts of the CCS chain work - capture, transport and storage - and how they can be performed safely. The result is specific insights for process engineers, chemists, physicists and materials engineers in their relevant fields, as well as a sufficiently broad scope to be able to understand the opportunities and implications of the other disciples.

Author: Dawid Piotr Hanak
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: U.s. Government Accountability Office
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781974411337
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description
"Coal power plants generate about half of the United States' electricity and are expected to remain a key energy source. Coal power plants also account for about one-third of the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2 ), the primary greenhouse gas that experts believe contributes to climate change. Current regulatory efforts and proposed legislation that seek to reduce CO2 emissions could affect coal power plants. Two key technologies show potential for reducing CO2 emissions: (1) carbon capture and storage (CCS), which involves capturing and storing CO2 in geologic formations, and (2) plant efficiency improvements that allow plants to use less coal. The Department of Energy (DOE) plays a key role in accelerating the commercial availability of these technologies and devoted more than $600 million to them in fiscal year 2009. Congress asked GAO to examine (1) the maturity of these technologies; (2) their potential for commercial use, and any challenges to their use; and (3) possible implications of deploying these technologies. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed reports and interviewed stakeholders with expertise in coal technologies. "

Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Science and Technology (2007). Subcommittee on Energy and Environment
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Carbon dioxide mitigation
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description

Author: Martin Jeremy Walsh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781109574289
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
New Congressional legislation may soon require coal-fired power generators to pay for their CO2 emissions and capture a minimum level of their CO2 output. Aminebased CO2 capture systems offer plants the most technically proven and commercially feasible option for CO2 capture at this time. However, these systems require a large amount of heat and power to operate. As a result, amine-based CO2 capture systems significantly reduce the net power of any units in which they are installed.

Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Innovation
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description

Author: James G. Speight
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119510139
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 784

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Book Description
Coal accounts for approximately one quarter of world energy consumption and of the coal produced worldwide approximately 65% is shipped to electricity producers and 33% to industrial consumers, with most of the remainder going to consumers in the residential and commercial sectors. The total share of total world energy consumption by coal is expected to increase to almost 30% in 2035. This book describes the challenges and steps by which electricity is produced form coal and deals with the challenges for removing the environmental objections to the use of coal in future power plants. New technologies are described that could virtually eliminate the sulfur, nitrogen, and mercury pollutants that are released when coal is burned for electricity generation. In addition, technologies for the capture greenhouse gases emitted from coal-fired power plants are described and the means of preventing such emissions from contributing to global warming concerns. Written by one of the world’s leading energy experts, this volume is a must-have for any engineer, scientist, or student working in this field, providing a valuable reference and guide in a quickly changing field.