Carbon Capture at Power Plants: Some day soon, but not here

While the U.S. Congress has evidently shelved any legislation dealing with limiting carbon dioxide emissions, the rest of the world is investing billions of dollars in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies (IHS Chemical Week May 7/14 2012, Pp. 27-29). It’s only the U.S. that acts as if carbon dioxide emissions are no problem. Interestingly, even ExxonMobil Corporation, up to recently a renowned doubter in the area of global warming and the effect of greenhouse gases, has strongly come out in favor of a carbon tax. I personally favor a carbon tax over “Cap and Trade”, because it is simpler and keeps it out of the realm of speculation and bankers. In any case, a snowball in hell would have a better chance than any legislation offering a new tax or Cap-and-Trade legislation, both of which would raise electricity rates. So, any advances in CCS in this country are being made in the private sector: not in large power plants but at industrial boilers where CO2 is needed for tertiary oil recovery,

The best chance for CCS in power plants would be EPA rulemaking for new coal-based power plants to install “clean coal” technologies, but that’s a non-starter currently, because even the proposed stricter rules on nitrogen and sulfur oxide emissions are meeting with stiff resistance from the coal industry. But let’s peek into the future, for the U.S. probably a distant one, but also for China, which is becoming a lot “greener” in its attitude and approach to coal-based electricity generation, given the  horrible pollution in Beijing and other parts of the country and the fact that China does not have a glut of natural gas (like we do) to use instead of coal.

But it is not only pollution that is driving China to move towards “clean coal” technologies and alternative energy generation. Scientists there have concluded that global warming is already showing serious effects, for example in sea water levels rising quite remarkably in Shanghai and Tianjin and in rapid melting of snow and glaciers in different parts of China. President Hu said that China would set targets to cut carbon emissions per unit of GDP by a double margin by 2020. A 1000 megawatt  “clean coal” plant using gasified coal is being built in Inner Mongolia and a 250-megawatt plant using similar technology is being constructed in Tianjin.

There are basically three ways to reduce or eliminate carbon dioxide from a power plant using coal. All of them raise the capital cost and production cost of electricity generation, though monetising the captured CO2 would in part offset that. But it will be difficult to find markets, particularly near power plants, for the huge amounts of CO2 generated.  The three alternatives are (a) scrubbing the flue gases emanating from the boiler with a solvent such as amine and then separating and storing the CO2, (b) Gasifying the (powdered) coal with oxygen in a high temperature gasifier, where the fuel produced is fed to a combined cycle (gas turbine and steam turbine) installation to generate electricity and the CO2 is collected and stored and (c) Using oxygen instead of air in a relatively conventional boiler so that the product of combustion is essentially only CO2 (no nitrogen, since no air). This requires recycling much of the CO2-rich flue gas to control the combustion temperature, with the net CO2 withdrawn and stored.

Process (a) treats massive amounts of flue gas (because of the nitrogen from air-based combusion), requires huge scrubbers and a whole chemical plant, and will probably not be used for large power plants. Process (b) relies on maintenance-prone coal gasifiers and has an expensive flowsheet.  Process (c), which is also suitable for retrofits, may be the best approach.(see flowsheet below). A 30-megawatt plant using that technology, designed by Linde, is in operation in Vettenfall, Germany.

If carbon dioxide indeed causes global warming and we need to limit future emissions, we only have two choices: Switch as much power generation as possible to non-carbon-emitting sources: nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, tides, etc or install carbon capture facilities in existing and/or new plants.

Source: Babcock and Wilcox

Natural gas: Coming transportation fuel

T. Boone Pickens and others have for some time been pushing vigorously for using natural gas to fuel trucks and cars. While Pickens has apparently lost a bundle investing in wind farms, he is definitely onto something here, particulerly since natural gas is now even much less expensive than when he started advocating it. Information offered by DOE shows that natural gas, even in 2009, had a substantial economic advantage over gasoline in the California market.

Gasoline, Diesel and CNG Retail Price Comparison

There are two issues standing in the way of opting to buy a car fueled by natural gas. The big one is the need for a nationwide infrastructure of filling stations dispensing compressed natural gas (CNG). The other issue is the initial higher cost for the car. Dealing with that one first, CNG-fueled vehicles cost from         $ 2000 to  $ 10,000 more than gasoline- fueled cars. (Today you can buy a Honda Civic fueled by natural gas for about $ 26,000.) The payback period for the extra investment to use natural gas as a fuel is 4-5 years, depending on your projection of future natural gas and crude prices.

The key issue is to have enough natural gas-based filling stations to make it possible to drive around the country without worrying about running out of gas (Yes, that gas). Obviously, trucks and buses can have their own fleet filling stations, certainly locally and around the country if desired. To address the problem of trucks, Pickens and other investors created the Clean Energy Fuels Corporation with a partner, the Pilot Flying J, which is allegedly the largest truck stop operator in North America. Natural gas fuel is or will be available at these truck stops. Clean Energy is also committed to build 150 natural gas truck filling stations around the country.

A trade organization (NYTimes, April 10th, 2012, “Natural Gas signals a ‘Manufacturing Renaissance’) says that 40 percent of new garbage trucks and 25 percent of new transit busus can run on natural gas. Also, Ford, GM and Chrysler have introduced “bifuel” trucks that can run on either gasoline or natural gas.

As for cars, the situation is precarious. A map showing CNG filling stations can be accessed on the web. I looked at a drive from New York City to Miami Beach and found 19 filling stations, many far apart (Example below). Driving around the NYC Metropolitan area would be less stressful.

Rare Earths: China still in control

Rare earths mining

In a post late last year I pointed out that China developed what amounted to an essential monopoly on the manufacture of these unusual elements (usually sold as oxides) as a result of the fact that the only American producer (Molycorp) had some years earlier shut down its mine and processing facilities due to a supply glut and ruinous pricing. But the situation changed quickly due to a demand surge for these materials, which have a number of key alternative energy applications. A large amount of Chinese rare earths production came on the market from a number of very small producers who scoop up surface clays containing mixtures of these oxides and separate them for export sales. China has

clamped down on these operations, in part because they are environmentally disastrous, and also to restrict world supply, which has led to an enormous jump in pricing and a yawning supply gap. In less than two years, the price of Neodynium oxide jumped from $ 5.64/lb. to $ 77/lb. and Disprosium oxide from $31/lb. to  $295/lb.

Molycorp restarted it operations in 2010 and is ramping up its production, in part via acquisitions, but its current total production of 6,000 metric tons of different oxides, being rapidly expanded, is not likely to end China’s stranglehold on these vital products any time soon. The global situation is to some extent helped by the startup of a new separation plant by Linas in Malaysia, based on Australian rare earth ores, that was held up by local concerns about ore radioactivity.

The global demand for a number of the important rare earths is, however, ballooning due to their ubiquitous applications in a variety of products (wind turbines, catalytic converters, energy saving light bulbs, batteries, flat screen TV’s, electronics, etc).

I was privileged at a recent luncheon at Philadelphia’s Chemical Heritage Society to introduce the speaker, Steve Deutsch, an executive at Rhodia Rare Earth Business, who

drilled down into the supply-demand of the specific oxides and therefore the need to look

Source: Rhodia

at these individually rather than as a family.  It turns out that Cerium, Lanthanum and Neodynium account for over 80% of current global demand. All of these are so-called light rare earths and of the three only Neodynium, used for superstrong magnets in wind turbines, is facing a shortage. Dysprosium (magnets, lasers) and particularly Terbium(green phosphors, lasers, fluorescent lamps) and Europium(red and blue phosphors, lasers, mercury vapor lamps, NMR relaxant agents), all heavy rare earths, are on the critical list with pending serious supply shortages. This highlights the fact that while there is no shortage of worldwide rare earth deposits, each differs from the other in terms of specific rare earth elements, technologies needed for separation and the problem of radioactivity usually encountered in rare earth ores (presence of thorium and uranium) which can seriously hamper processing plans.

I  should put in a plug for the so-called Joseph Priestley Society monthly luncheons at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, located at 315 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. For people interested in the history, present and future of the chemical industry, attending these luncheons and visiting the extraordinary museum added a couple of years ago will prove worthwhile.

Carbon fiber futures

It is a foregone conclusion that more and more plastics will be used in the construction of automobile bodies to reduce weight and make it possible for manufacturers to achieve the much higher fleet average MPG standards  mandated by the so-called CAFE regulations. Cars currently use 300-500 pounds of “conventional” plastics (polypropylene, ABS resins, nylon, polyurethane, polycarbonate) in various places (dashboard, bumpers, panels, windshield, etc). To get the dramatic weight reduction required, car bodies will have to be made from so-called structural composites, which are now used for advanced aircraft like Boeing’s Dreamliner.

Structural composites for aircraft and other critical applications are made using carbon fiber (ten times stronger than steel and a quarter of the weight), bonded together with special resins. This type of construction is very expensive and not economically practical for cars, though expensivive automobiles like Ferrari and others do use carbon fiber bodies.

Teijin and GM (see 26 March 2012 issue of The Chemical Daily) recently announced a “breakthrough” process that greatly reduces molding time and, according to the companies, is slated to be used in cars and trucks (no information, however, available on increased car price). But the real breakthrough, will come when carbon fiber with suitable strengh and durability characteristics can be produced from a feedstock other than (expensive) polyacrylonitrile (PAN), the current source of essentially all high stregth carbon fiber. This is the goal of the U.S. Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV). The goal is to produce a carbon fiber for around

Source: ICIS Business News

$ 3/lb. versus the current cost of $ 8-10/lb.  The Composite Materials Technology Group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is in partnership with fourteen companies (e.g. Dow, 3M, others) to develop a low cost carbon fiber, a promising candidate being lignin from wood, with others also being evaluated.

Cheap shale gas: Considerations

The International Energy Agency has created the term “Golden Age of Gas” to describe a scenario characterizing the potential of producing immense amounts of shale gas in the U.S. and in a number of other countries. Estimated shale gas resources in the U.S.  amount to 860 trillion cubic feet (equiv. to 40 years of gas consumption at current rates). China has somewhat higher estimated amounts, with Argentina and Mexico having amounts in line with but somewhat lower than those in the U.S.  Russia, Central Asia and the Middle East shale resources have not been estimated.

High crude prices juxtaposed against very low natural gas prices has created a situation where the energy value of gas is extremely attractive relative to that of crude oil. One barrel of crude oil has about six times the energy content of 1000 cubic feet(mcf) of natural gas. At that ratio, and at what might be considered reasonably typical relative crude oil and natural gas pricing the two lines on the chart would coincide. Currently, it costs about four times as much in terms of energy content to buy crude oil versus natural gas.

Source: The Rational Walk

The  strong positives of our domestic shale gas bonanza are by now well known: An abundance of natural gas at possibly very low prices for a period of time. Regained competitive advantage in petrochemicals production. Strong job creation in drilling and in supply of piping and other materials.

Nevertheless, we should maintain some perspective. So, here are some things to think about. First there is an overarching environmental issue. I am not referring to the “chemicals in drinking water” issue since that will be largely solved through regulation and supervision. The big problem relates to the massive quantities of water required for each well and the disposal of the spent water. With water resources slated to become scarcer, this will put brakes on exploitation in some areas.

The second isssue is pure supply and demand: (a)  With gas prices as low as they are, drillers are moving their rigs to formations where more oil and less gas is produced, since the returns are much higher with oil, (b) Coal-burning utilities are switching substantial generating capacity from coal to natural gas, (c) Several companies have already received permits for export of liquified domestic natural gas (LNG), slated to begin in 2016. (d) We can expect a big push for greater use of compressed natural gas in trucks and even cars, partly for direct use and partly in fuel cells.

Finally, states where shale gas is being produced are increasing the cost of regulation. Pennsylvania is considering a fee of $ 160,000 per well as additional cost to drillers as well as income for the state. Other states are bound to follow.

With water and state taxes/fees and (a) above acting to reduce supply, while (b), (c) and (d) are increasing demand, it is clear that natural gas prices will not stay at current levels of $2-3 per million BTU. and that our economic system will not allow a “glut” of cheap natural gas (as currently exists) to last forever.

On top of all this is the fact that “fracking” releases a not so small amount of gas to the atmosphere. Methane is an important greenhouse gas and it has been argued that the negative effect on this methane “leakage” will offset the gains in greenhouse gas emissions when some utlities switch generating capacity from coal to natural gas. If the EPA develops rules that inhibit fracking because of methane releases, the political implications will be dramatic during this election year.

Stay tuned…..

TED: I salute chemical engineers

Ideas Worth Spreading

In late March I was asked to speak at a TEDx conference hosted by the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. Although the theme of the conference was Sustainability,Professor Mike Ehrlich, who coordinated the event, said I should choose a topic relating to this blog. And so my TED speech was all about how chemical engineeers are leading the renaissance of our energy and petrochemical industries.

For those of you not familiar with TED, go to the websites TED.com and TEDx. com to learn about this organization. Many personalities much more prominent than I have given these  18 minute TED presentations on an incredible variety of interesting subjects. I referred to a TED speech in my blog post on algae several weeks ago.

In the event, which involved five other speakers, there also were interspersed videos of several famous speakers. My presentation followed a video of Bill Gates(!) speaking about how to solve our energy problems!  It was a tough act to follow.

You can see and hear my speech on Youtube or on the TEDx website. TEDx is a sort of subsidiary to TED which is approached by organizations worldwide interesting in hosting an event in accordance with the strict rules applying to these presentations.

Clarifying regional gasoline prices

By now almost everyone is aware that there are substantial price differences at the gasoline pump when you start travelling across the country. I decided to look into this.

Source: Econbrowser

The reasons why regular gasoline may sell for $ 3.40 in Wyoming versus $ 4.40  in California and $ 3.80 on the East Coast, can be explained in terms of (a) types of crude oil used to produce the gasoline, (b) availability and location of the refineries making the gasoline for a given region, (c)  differences in transport charges between producing regions and refineries located in various parts of the U.S., (d)  gasoline quality differences and (e) variations  in State taxes.

Low gasoline prices are realized when refineries run on domestic crude oil that can be sent to the refinery via pipeline. Thus refineries in Texas and in other states that produce or are close to crude oil production (e.g. in North Dakota, Wyoming, Iowa) will make gasoline that sells at the low end of the cost spectrum, unless the state has a particularly high state gasoline tax (e.g. Illinois).

Domestic crude oil, generally priced at or close to West Texas Intermediate (WTI), an industry terminology for a standard low sulfur crude, now sells for around  $ 100 per barrel, the price normally set by domestic supply-demand. Outside the U.S., crude oil prices are set by North Sea oil, known as Brent Oil. The price of this is currently much higher than WTI, now around $ 125 per barrel, a price set by global supply-demand. And there is even higher-priced oil that is “sweeter” (i.e. contains less or no sulfur) than Brent Oil – e,g, Lybian and some other West African crudes. Much of the world runs crude oil priced relative to Brent Oil.

Both WTI and Brent crude prices are now higher than a price set entirely by supply-demand considerations, because of a current premium associated with speculation regarding a possible oil crisis msy be created by International events.

Getting back to the U.S. regional situation, refineries on both the East and West Coast mostly run on imported oil at world prices(Brent Oil), thus starting with a 25% disadvantage relative to U.S. refineries running WTI crude.  Moreover, some U.S. East coast refineries were designed to run only ”sweet” (i.e. the most expensive) crude, at a time when all crude oil was relatively cheap and refineries running sweet crudes were less expensive to construct, using equipment and piping that would corrode if sulfur-containing crude (knows as sour crudes) were the feedstock.  Some East Coast refineries are already shut down and some like Sunoco’s Philadelphia refinery (see picture) will shortly also close (unless a buyer is found), as economics make its operation unattractive.

Source: National Geographic

 Why can’t those refineries on the East and West Coast that were designed to run on sour crude oils  ( e.g. the large refineries you see from the Jersey Turnpike just South of Newark)  receive domestic crude at WTI prices and thereby make less expensive gasoline? That is because pipelines are not available to transport the domestic crude from the Gulf Coast or the Middle West to these refineries so the shipment must be by tanker. Transport between ports in the U.S. must use U.S. flag tankers under the so-called Jones Act and these tankers are more expensive to operate than foreign flag tankers, making the landed domestic crude as expensive as Brent Oil. The same is true for North Slope oil shipped to U.S. refineries on the West Coast or elsewhere.

Then, there are big differences in state gasoline taxes, e.g. California-66 cents; New Jersey 33 cents.

Finally, California gasoline is also more expensive because the state’s Clean Air Act legislation requires refineries to make even ”cleaner” gasoline than that in the other states and that is more costly to produce; then add the high state tax.

Is everything clear?