Coal fired | Claverton Group

(IGCC) Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle for Carbon Capture & Storage

Abstract

This paper endeavours to give an objective account of the background to gasification based processes for power generation with carbon capture. Such processes are a development of IGCC plant designs in which coal or heavy fuel oil is first gasified and to produce a fuel gas for a CCGT unit. Although the IGCC concept does lend itself, very well, to high levels of carbon capture, and could lead the way to the hydrogen economy, it does create some important technical challenges. In particular, it restricts the type of gasifier that can be used to the high temperature entrained flow type. Furthermore, because the fuel gas that is produced in an IGCC consists of over 90% hydrogen, this will reduce the efficiency of the plant. Given that the hydrogen economy is some decades away, a more reasonable gasification-type option would be to produce natural gas from coal. This substitute natural gas could be used as a fuel gas in standard gas turbines (with no efficiency penalty) and can be used to supplement the UK and EU fast declining reserves of natural gas. The main drawback is that only about half as much carbon would be captured as in the IGCC “clean coal” systems currently being envisaged.

Chris Hodrien's CCS / Carbon Capture and Storage prediction comes true in US

Chis Hodrien told us all at the October Claverton conference at Wessex Water Bath. that gasification-CCS was poised to become reality! It is interesting that the States are all legislating in favour of gasification IGCC (having recognised its many advantages for new-build), the very opposite of the British Gov’ts post-combustion CCS bias. They also recognise […]

New Study Puts The Generation Costs For Power From New Nuclear Plants Triple Current U.S. Electricity Rates

A new study puts the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour — triple current U.S. electricity rates.

see: http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/05/study-cost-risks-new-nuclear-power-plants/ rel=no follow

Current CSP costs (still substantially less than nuclear):
Vinod Khosla gives current CSP at 16 cents kWh (and note PV far higher at 22.4 cents kW/hr – see slide 124 onwards at http://www.slideshare.net/guest76ed37/khosla92507 rel=no follow
Also, good summary of costs can be found here: puts current CSP at 13 – 17 cents kWh: http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2008/04/concentrating-on-important-things-solar.html/ rel=no follow
Makes CSP look very attractive indeed at 11 cents per kWh by 2011 (cf Ausra & Bright Source CSP plants signed up with PG&E in South West America) – compatible with gas prices, and estimated to reduce to 4-6 cents per kWhr by 2020. Nuclear costs unlikely to reduce, but instead are on an upward trajectory.

Nuclear energy can only make small impact by 2050 according to New Scientist report

Reporting on a communique from the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, published on 16 October New Scientist reports that nuclear power output could be quadrupled by 2050 rising to 1400 gigawatts from present 370 GW and supply roughly 12.5% of total world power use. This high projection assumes that renewables and CCS don’t […]

Blackouts could hit Britain by 2015, says National Grid chief

Reported in The Daily Telegraph by Jon Swaine 22 Dec 2008, Steve Holliday, National Grid chief executive, said that Britain faces a severe shortage in power generation due to crumbling coal and nuclear plants being taken out of service and that the Government needs to cause the investment of Pounds 100 billion in new power plant.

This is the legacy of the deluded economic “thinking” of the Thatcher era which instituted the not widely admired market for electricity which was supposed to use market signals of supply and demand to cause an optimal delivery of the cheapest sources of power.

The NASA Climate Scientist James Hansen – urgent warning

The NASA Climate Scientist James Hansen and an international team of researchers have very recently completed a paper for the Open Atmospheric Science Journal, concerning an in-depth analysis of Climate history at the Earth’s Polar regions, relating it to today’s warming conditions.

Published on 7th November 2008, the peer-reviewed research paper shows, by careful calculations on proxy data for the very distant past, that we should expect high Climate Sensitivity, the warming signal of the Earth in response to Greenhouse Gas accumulation above ground.

The team looked at the relative changes in Carbon Dioxide concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere and showed that the rate of change showed strong negative “radiative forcing” clearly associated with the formation of the polar ice caps, and used that as a basis for calculating the Climate Sensitivity.

2008 Claverton Energy Group Conference Papers Available

Those that have been forwarded in text format have been published as News Articles. Those in PowerPoint or PDF format have been uploaded to the website, and can be downloaded for reading at:

Squaring the Circle on Coal – Carbon Capture (CCS)

By Chris Hodrien

2008 Claverton Conference Paper Synopsis: Huge global reserves of coal remain, well-distributed among relatively stable supplier nations, and its production is increasing. With the recent rapid increases in oil and gas prices, especially in the UK, it is again becoming the minimum cost option for power generation and heavy industry. Large thermal (steam turbine) powerplant is also the global utilities’ preferred generating option because of its predictability/reliability, operational characteristics, retrofit to existing powerplant sites and “fit’ to the existing grid structure.

IGCC plus CCS: An Objective Analysis

By F.Starr

2008 Conference Paper Synopsis: The paper briefly describes the technology of conventional IGCCs for electricity generation and shows how such “precombustion plants” need to be modified to capture CO2. The main difference is that the raw gas from the gasifier has to be treated to produce a fuel gas containing more than 90% hydrogen. This adds to the complexity of the plant. But the main reason why the large scale construction of such plants is unlikely in the near future is the absence of a large domestic and industrial market for hydrogen. The paper therefore advocates the production of substitute natural gas, with CO2 capture, as being a more realistic option which can use the existing infrastructure

Electricity Prices In The United Kingdom – Fundamental Drivers and Probable Trends 2008 to 2020

Fundamental Drivers and Probable Trends 2008 to 2020

Hugh SharmanThe mindless and self-congratulatory drift and chatter in the UK’s energy area during the last fifteen years, in particular the last ten, has the UK sleep-walking into brown-outs and/or severe energy rationing in less time than it takes to plan, engineer, license, procure, build and commission more than 30 GW in new, “clean coal” or nuclear plant by 1st January 2016.

Some gas capacity is on its way but this will be commissioned just in time for a World gas-supply crunch, sparked by the serial failure of Indonesia to meet its Far East contractual commitments, continued decline of gas production in Russia and Canada, the cap on new LNG exports from Qatar and exports from Norway and the continued reluctance of Iran to develop any gas export business at all. Most seriously of all, for UK (and Europe), it is the deliberately contrived investment policy of Gazprom to remain very tight on upstream capacity far into the foreseeable future, while dominant in down-stream infrastructure.