Although better known for its consumer electronics business, Toshiba owns and operates a number of gas power plants and is also the parent of global nuclear energy giant Westinghouse.
The company said the pilot CCS plant will be finished by August and will use post-combustion capture technologies to remove up to 10 tonnes of CO2 a day from the gas flue, mix it with an amine solvent and remove it from the site. It has not yet announced where it will store the resulting carbon solution.
The company says it will install other test systems at coal-fired power plants in Japan and overseas before bringing the technology to market, hopefully by 2015.
The announcement is the latest move in an escalating arms race between many of the world's leading energy and engineering firms to develop commercial-scale CCS technologies.
Swedish utility Vattenfall began operations of what it claims is the world's first power plant to demonstrate end-to-end CCS technology last month in Germany, while earlier this week both BP and Shell made fresh investments in CCS R&D, respectively unveiling plans for a new research initiative in China and announcing the acquisition of Canadian emission capture technologies specialist CanSolv.
Dear Anonymous, Sorry to
Dear Anonymous,
Sorry to reply with a number of questions, however...
- Did you fail to see the words "pilot plant" within the body of the article?
- would you prefer that Toshiba did not invest in this trial instead prefer BAU
- if there is one thing that Toshiba has been committed to since inception is innovation - which you would hope would translate into a better system to be applied to the world market (not fogetting that the world will be run on coal for some time yet)
In finale, I fail to see your point that "If you can capture the CO2, then what do you do with it. Dumping it underground and hoping it doesn't leak out ("sequestration") is not a viable option."
in fact the GAO's conclusions were......
"Among GAO’s recommendations are that (1) DOE continue to place greater emphasis on CO2 capture at existing power plants and (2) EPA examine how its statutory authorities can be used to address potential CCS barriers. DOE neither explicitly agreed nor disagreed with the first recommendation. EPA expressed general agreement with the second recommendation"
So I fail to see how this is a clear or convincing argument against CCS.
CCS Failure Forecast
There are two problems: carbon capture, and carbon disposal. Ten tons a day is tiny. An average-size (250 MW) coal fired power plant emits 1.7 million tons a year, a volume approximately a cubic kilometer. It looks like Toshiba has committed to the amine scrubbing approach, which, although it works with natural gas, is doomed when applied to flue gas from coal plants.
CARBON CAPTURE: The National Energy Technology Laboratory run by the U.S. Department of Energy summarizes the problem of carbon capture from flue gas:
“The low pressure and dilute concentration dictate a high actual volume of gas to be treated. Trace impurities in the flue gas tend to reduce the effectiveness of the CO2 adsorbing processes. Compressing captured CO2 from atmospheric pressure to pipeline pressure (1,200 - 2,000 pounds per square inch (psi)) represents a large parasitic load.”
Translation: The presence of nitrogen ballast (N2) in the flue gas (about three-quarters of its volume) means that carbon dioxide is protected from compression or chemical contact by a cushion of nitrogen molecules. NOx and SOx (nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides) become heat-stable salts and corrosive acids during amine recovery, and along with the fine glassy dust (fly ash) of the flue gas these clog up and damage the equipment. The energy required is prohibitively wasteful.
CARBON DISPOSAL: If you can capture the CO2, then what do you do with it. Dumping it underground and hoping it doesn't leak out ("sequestration") is not a viable option. The clear and convincing case against carbon sequestration can be found at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081080.pdf .