Is "Clean coal" an oxymoron like "negative emissions"?

[Tom Goreau]

Robert,

 

A comment on your statement:

Calling clean coal “an oxymoron” is not necessarily true. If all power station emissions could be converted to algae, clean coal would be possible.

 

The MIT power plant used to bubble all of its waste gases through two huge translucent tanks on the roof, one filled with a beautiful green microalgae, and the other with a lovely golden brown species. These had been genetically engineered to produce high oil content chemically suitable for biodiesel. I doubt they were ever able to achieve the 100% carbon capture you propose above for “clean coal”, but I’m pretty certain they must have excellent numbers on how much carbon capture could actually be achieved!

 

They formed a company to produce algal biodiesel from fossil fuel carbon and save the planet from global warming, and set up a huge project on a huge power plant in the Southwest of the US. The algae from MIT died, the project and the company failed, and most sadly, they removed those lovely tanks from the roof of the power plant  visibly showing carbon capture 10 minutes from my house.

 

I’m not sure where MIT is stuffing their dirty CO2 now, but I’m sure they’re busy purchasing “green” offsets wherever they can find them.  

 

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance

Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.

Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK

37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)

 

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

 

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

 

Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change

 

No one can change the past, everybody can change the future

 

It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think

 

Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away

 

“When you run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting, when you run to the sea, the sea will be boiling”, Peter Tosh, Jamaica’s greatest song writer

 

 

 

 

[Bhaskar M V]

This type of algae projects are just bad engineering.

The attempt to marry a Natural solution with a Engineering problem is WRONG.

A Coal fired Thermal Power Plant is a Engineered system to burn massive amount of coal in the smallest space possible.

Algae grow best in a diffused manner, i.e., in ponds, lakes, oceans, etc.

Maximising algae production in PBRs Raseways, etc., is trying to engineer nature to increase productivity per area. This can't be done beyond a point.

So the simple solution is to grow Algae in large tanks, lagoons, ponds, lakes, and oceans, at the natural pace and allow CO2 emissions to take place as at present, this can result in Net Zero in a simple manner.

Regards

Bhaskar

Director

Kadambari Consultants Pvt Ltd

Hyderabad. India

Ph. & WhatsApp : +91 92465 08213

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaskarmv/

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[Tom Goreau]

They were intensively bubbled to ensure mixing, but algae densities were so great that these were dense opaque solutions in which algae were light-limited in the interior and so unable to take up much CO2.

 

From: Ye Tao <t...@rowland.harvard.edu>
Date: Monday, September 11, 2023 at 7:23 AM
To: Bhaskar M V <bhaska...@gmail.com>, Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Cc: rob...@rtulip.net <rob...@rtulip.net>, Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>, CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>, Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Is "Clean coal" an oxymoron like "negative emissions"?

I agree with Bhaskar's assessment.  There is no way for the MIT demo setup to significantly sequester power plant level fluxes.  One would be limited by photosynthetically active photon flux very very quickly.  Real estate in 2D is everything when working with the sun.

Ye

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[rob...@rtulip.net]

Clean Coal would need algae farms located in the ocean, possibly modelled on the NASA Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae (OMEGA) project, gradually developing capacity to utilise CO2 from coal fired power stations as feedstock together with NPK nutrients from deep ocean water.  HTL could separate hydrocarbon and aqueous fertilizer streams. The fact that the previous MIT and other algae biofuel experiments have failed does not at all show that the concept is intrinsically infeasible or uneconomic.  Most carbon burnt for electricity could eventually be transported in the equivalent of LNG tankers and recycled by photosynthesis in closed loop industrial algae farms at sea, making fossil fuels a renewable energy source.

 

Robert Tulip

 

From: noac-m...@googlegroups.com <noac-m...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ye Tao
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2023 9:46 PM
To: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>; Bhaskar M V <bhaska...@gmail.com>
Cc: rob...@rtulip.net; Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>; carbondiox...@googlegroups.com; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Is "Clean coal" an oxymoron like "negative emissions"?

 

Fiber optics could help distribute the light into the bulk, before thermal constraints kick in.    This is very similar to the hype about vertical farming;)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/noac-meetings/3eff6644-d809-b7dd-e77d-924bc4811e1c%40rowland.harvard.edu.

[James Bowery]

I spent several years investigating algae offset of coal CO2 with a cofounder of the DoE's EIA. Most of that was attempting to get numbers on performance of various algae cultivation technologies.  The only remotely credible numbers I found came from Algasol's membrane technology that people confuse with OMEGA. Because of that confusion, no one has done due diligence on that tech and almost all of the capital in that company has gone into international patent lawyers.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/noac-meetings/0b2101d9e4bd%245b510ad0%2411f32070%24%40rtulip.net.

[Sarnoff, Joshua]

On behalf of patent lawyers everywhere, thanks. ☺

 

Josh

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[Bhaskar M V]

ALL current solutions are fundamentally badly engineered. 

Algae should NOT be 

- grown in any sort of closed containers such as bags, pipes, raceways, PBRs, etc.

They should be grown in large open tanks, ponds, lakes, ocean, etc.

- harvested. 

Algae is the natural food for zooplankton and fish. So it should be allowed to be consumed and the larger zooplankton and fish can be harvested in a very simple and economical way. 

Zooplankton and fish grow in open tanks, ponds, lakes, ocean, etc.

Regards 

Bhaskar 

[Dan Miller]

Even if 100% of coal CO2 emissions were offset, coal would still need to be shut down. Coal burning leads to the deaths of over 8M people each year (18% of all deaths!), it is more radioactive than a nuclear power plant, releases mercury that gets into the fish we eat, and it’s extraction is an environmental disaster. Also, we need negative emissions to remove *past* emissions, not offset current emissions.

For every one ton of lithium we extract, we extract 100,000 tons of coal (and 50,000 tons of oil). Switching away from fossil fuels to clean energy would reduce total mining by over 99%.

Dan

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[Michael Hayes]

I have no comment concerning 'Clean Coal', yet offshore cultivation infrastructure is needed for many reasons. 

I'm using a double hull bioreactor architecture for a <$600K turn-key start-up offshore microalgae farm. A 'bare bones' Typhoon class sub illustrates the concept. 

The USDA has an equipment loan program at that funding level for new farmers. If offshore bioreactors can be produced at that price point, and the USDA likes it, billions of federal dollars can flow into offshore microalgae farms each year. 

Consultants on the relevant STEM, policy, and socioeconomics, are needed, as is additional funding sources.

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[James Bowery]

It would be most welcome if there were advances in green water aquaculture technology to make it more scalable.  That is one of the options I examined for carbon offsets, but part of the problem was the relatively low areal primary productivity. The Algasol PBRs had low areal CAPEX and had at 40° N insolation (Mediterranean) demonstrated annualized 35gm/m^2/day at biomass densities high enough to make OPEX (energy for nutrient pumping, mixing, centrifugal dewatering) economically advantageous as feedstock for algae grazers (tilapia, sockeye salmon etc).

If you have specific references with economics I'd be interested in reading them.

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[Michael Hayes]

James, et al.,

Below is the USDA equipment loan program:

Loans for Beginning Farmers and Ranchers https://www.fsa.usda.gov/Assets/USDA-FSA-Public/usdafiles/FactSheets/loans_for_beginning_farmers_and_ranchers-factsheet.pdf

Fitting the start-up costs to within this particular well established and well liked program can open the door to the largest single line item in the USDA budget.

The NOAA mCDR team already accepts that the USDA will largely oversee mCDR expansion once the NOAA team checks off on the STEM and socioeconomics. Confinement of the crop by using large 'forever' bioreactors makes the job of the NOAA team far easier, and thus the USDA can move rather quickly in approving mCDR equipment for the loan program.

Bio oil production needs to be a primary farming focus as the bio oil can be used to build more HDPE hulls. Doubling production capacity every 3-5 years is needed for rapid CDR scale up and mCDR farming economics.

I hope this helped answer your question.

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[Michael Hayes]

To add for clarification:

Using what are largely self replicating materials to build the bulk of the reactors creates a largely self-replicating mCDR infrastructure. Biorock and high density polyethylene can be considered as largely self replicating building materials. 

Triggering exponential growth in mCDR farming capacity is the goal.

What crops/coproducts get chosen is secondary to capacity building.

[James Bowery]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 1:29 PM Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com> wrote:

..

Triggering exponential growth in mCDR farming capacity is the goal.

That's the correct strategy for mCDR, just as it is with any economically self-catalyzing business growth.  

 

What crops/coproducts get chosen is secondary to capacity building.

It is probably reasonable to assume that some crops/coproducts will be at least initially profitable given the unique growth environment.  That may be all that is needed to start walking down the industrial learning curve.

As I earlier pointed out, the key here is to minimize the cost of due diligence.  This starts with back of the envelope calculations to see if the orders of magnitude are correct.

I use the sophisticated units calculator at calchemy.com for back of the envelope calculations.  I highly recommend people learn to use the ';' operator in that calculator to minimize their cognitive load -- letting the calculator solve by dimensional analysis for whatever system of units you provide.

This should help guide the next step of due diligence which is just plain old spreadsheets that support different scenarios.

The next step would be to flesh out details.  One approach is to document the cites and sources of assumptions via a "literate programming" wikimedia-style spreadsheet such as I produced for the clean coal to algae model.  I'd have to resurrect my modifications to the mediawiki software for that.  As an alternative, one might choose to go with a stock and flow tool like Insightmaker.com which supports system dynamics.  Insightmaker doesn't make it as easy to fully document everything but if system dynamics become critical then you'd probably choose that path.

Finally there are the emergent tools dealing with data-driven dynamical systems identification using machine learning that support decision support such as NeuroMANCER out of PNNL.  NeruoMANCER is, by the way, what Charles Sinclair Smith vaguely had in mind when he was founding the DoE's Energy Information Administration under Carter, and began looking for the most advanced dynamical systems modeling techniques of that time to model the energy economy and make sound predictions.  This is why he finance what is now known as the second neural network summer when he took over Systems Development Foundation.  Charlie is the guy who founded the Diogenes Institute and challenged me to come up with a macroengineering plan for clean coal using algae.

I'll help get you started if you give me the dimensions of the HPDE rigid hull.