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Chapter 7.
1.  "Clean Coal" Technology Background Information
 Modifying coal power plants to reduce their CO2 emissions.  What is being done with coal.
 2.  W = I2R (Ohm's Law):  Why "Smart Grids" are a stupid idea.

Clean Coal's Technology.
Part 1      Clean Coal's Technology.
Part 2      Convert to burning biomass such as wood pellets, municipal waste.
Part 3      Convert from burning coal to burning Natural Gas.
Part 4      Convert by adding natural gas burning turbine generators, use turbine's exhaust to make steam, drive old steam turbine.
Part 5      What this web site is suggesting.  Convert from coal to nuclear.
Part 6      "Peak Coal" crisis.  "Clean Coal" is estimated to increase coal consumption about 30% to power the additional equipment.
Why "Smart Grids" are a stupid idea.
Part 7      How one well-placed small H-EMP nuclear bomb can destroy the grids of the United States, Canada, and Mexico in a flash.
Part 8      Starving ourselves strong: Energy Efficiency and Conservation have earlier and more dangerous limits than you may think.
Part 9      Second Law of Thermodynamics:  Everyone wants to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
 

Part 1:  Clean Coal.  Clean Coal's Technology.

Modifying coal power plants to reduce their CO2 emissions

# 1.   Convert to "Clean Coal's" CO2 capture and storage (CCS)

Coal CO2 Capture and Storage - CCS.  The only long-term hope for the coal industry.  Billions of tax dollars are being spent worldwide for research.  Only cynical advertising by coal companies to date to mislead and confuse public.  A long, strong supporter of coal, Obama even made a TV ad advocating 'Clean Coal'.

'Clean Coal' Made As Simple As Possible: The Swedish company, Vattenfall, have prepared an excellent set of explanations covering the three major coal CO2 capture and sequestration technologies developed so far.  Vattenfall recently designed and built the world's most advanced CCS demonstration facility in Germany.

Oxyfuel Combustion Capture:  http://www.vattenfall.com/www/co2_en/co2_en/399403facts/399433captu/399529oxyfu/index.jsp   $50 to $60 per ton CO2.

Precombustion Capture:          http://www.vattenfall.com/www/co2_en/co2_en/399403facts/399433captu/399496pre-c/index.jsp   $25 to $50 per ton CO2.

Postcombustion Capture:        http://www.vattenfall.com/www/co2_en/co2_en/399403facts/399433captu/399463post-/index.jsp   $25 to $75 per ton CO2.

Postcombustion Capture is being looked at as the technology best-suited to bring the world's existing 60,000 fossil fuel-burning power plants under control.  Its a tough job, only about 10% of the stack gasses are CO2 and the stack can be as hot as 800°F.  A leakage of 25% of the CO2 slipping past the capture system and a 25% loss of electricity output due to powering the CO2 capture equipment is being spoken of as acceptable.  The captured CO2 gas would be compressed to about 1,000 pounds per square inch to liquefy it and then the liquid CO2 would be piped to an underground disposal well, ultimately to be injected into the ground for disposal. 

Bottom Line:  A laboratory experiment, still trying to figure out how to make it happen on existing full-size power plants.  Mostly talk of a "Manhattan Project-Size" effort financed with your tax dollars for coal's benefit.  Zero power plant CO2 has actually been captured so far, may or may not also capture coal toxins, an estimated 25% leakage of CO2 with a 25% loss of electricity output due to powering the CO2 capture equipment will increase electricity's coal cost at least 1.5 times.   Clean Coal Myths  pdf   U.S. News and World Report:  Why Clean Coal Is Years Away.pdf

CO2 Capture and Storage Has A Big Possible Danger:  A potentially dangerous technology (10% CO2 leakage will kill you.)  CO2 is heavier than air, slow to disperse, and flows to the ground's lowest surfaces such as lowlands and basements.  Since only a 10% concentration of CO2 is lethal to humans, CO2 sequestration creates a deadly leakage risk for nearby residents.  Although a landslide triggered the Lake Nyos CO2 incident which blanketed a 25 square mile area killing over 1,700 people and several herds of cattle by suffocation in Africa in 1986, there is concern of a Bhopal-sized sequestered CO2 leakage accident due to small earthquakes opening tiny blowholes.  Lake Nyos is cited as an example of the potential asphyxiation hazard geologically trapped CO2 creates if released.

Check out what I'm saying at:  http://www.Biology.lsa.UMich.edu/~gwk/research/nyos.html  and   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos

Google:     Sequestration + Lake Nyos      to get the latest buzz on this environmental hazard.  The EPA and the Sierra Club have it on their radars.  This is a common occurrence.  Ground leakage of natural gas, either spontaneous or as a consequence of drilling for natural gas, is surprisingly common, with several mini-disasters occurring around the world every year.  http://www.abc.net.au/nature/news/NatureNews_1686353.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_Disaster  A link to a description of the Bhopal disaster.

CO2 Capture Using Rocket Nozzles .pdf

Rocket Nozzles Could Help Clean Power Plants.
Discovery News (7/6, Klotz) reported ATK, which builds the booster rockets for the shuttle program, "is working to turn rocket nozzle technology into a novel method for cleaning up the carbon-laced air emitted by coal-burning power plants." Under a program funded by the DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E), forcing the exhaust from a smokestack through a nozzle before it is released would eliminate the need for costly chemicals. ATK vice president Robert Bakos said, "Today's carbon capture technology adds 80 percent to the cost per kilowatt hour of electricity delivered. ... With our approach, we could knock that down to 30 percent." Meanwhile, "The company plans to demonstrate the technology in a laboratory within 14 months, then move on to a pilot program at a power plant."

According to Popular Science (7/7, Dillow), which references the Discovery News article, "the ability to effectively pull CO2 out of coal emissions could restore coal's place as a viable alternative to foreign oil and as a cleaner bridge to a renewable energy future. Of course, the technology has to work first."
 

Part 2:  Clean Coal.  Convert to burning biomass such as wood pellets, municipal waste.

# 2.   Burning BIOMASS Convert to burning biomass such as wood pellets, municipal waste. 

Excellent idea in that biomass is not a "fossil" fuel and is considered to be "carbon neutral."  Bottom Line: It is being done.  CO2 produced is "carbon neutral," toxins diverse but usually known, fuel sources tiny compared with coal or natural gas, cost probably higher per kWh than with fossil fuels.

 

Part 3:  Clean Coal.  Convert from burning coal to burning Natural Gas.

# 3.   NATURAL GAS Convert from burning coal to burning "Clean Natural Gas" 

Adding simple gas burners is a very quick and cheap conversion to make.  The down side of this is that natural gas makes 2/3 as much CO2 per kiloWatt hour as coal.  Bottom Line: It is being done.  Environmental benefit of 33% CO2 reduction, coal toxins eliminated, same amount of electricity, going from coal to natural gas substantially increases fuel cost.

[My natural gas CO2 data source:  http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/environment/co2emiss00.pdf  The DOE-EIA web page (Table 4) is saying 1.3 pounds of CO2 per kiloWatt hour (kWh) is made by natural gas-burning power plants.  Coal makes about 2.0 pounds of CO2 per kWh.]

 

Part 4:  Clean Coal.  Convert by adding natural gas burning turbine generators, use turbine's exhaust to make steam, drive old steam turbine.

# 4.   ADD NATURAL GAS TURBINES Convert by adding natural gas burning turbine generators. 

This combined heat cycle squeezes more electricity out of the fuel.  The gas turbine's hot exhaust is then also used to heat the heat recovery steam generators to make steam for the original coal steam turbines. (Right, right)  Bottom Line: It is being done.  More electricity usually makes even more total CO2, coal toxins eliminated, going from coal to natural gas substantially increases fuel cost.

In situations where grid-attached wind power is also involved, a turbine's quick power response helps to keep the grid stable as the wind dies and surges.  Turbines are much quicker than coal or nuclear.  The old steam part would follow along as best it could.

http://www.energysolutionscenter.org/DistGen/Tutorial/CombTurbine.htm   Source: TechPro DTE Energy Bob Fegan 2002

 

 

Part 5:  Clean Coal.  What this web site is suggesting.  Convert from coal to nuclear.

What this web site is suggesting:

# 5.   CONVERT FROM COAL TO NUCLEAR 

Upgrade from coal to nuclear.  The world's 5,000 largest coal-burning power plants would be the first to be converted from coal heat to nuclear heat by using small ship-sized underground reactors buried in the power plant's coal yard.  Nuclear energy causes about 1% the CO2 coal produces (this from uranium and thorium mining) so a huge environmental benefit is available with nuclear.  

Bottom Line:  Unknown idea, untried as a coal to nuclear conversion.   All technology and equipment exists.  Will provide maximum environmental benefit - zero emissions of any kind - zero CO2 and coal toxins, same amount of electricity, fuel cost about same as coal but well below gas.

 

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Part 6:  Clean Coal.  "Peak Coal" crisis.  "Clean Coal" is estimated to increase coal consumption about 30% to power the additional equipment.

Clean Coal is estimated to increase coal consumption
about 30% to power the additional equipment.

What If We Also Burn Coal To Make The Heat Needed To Make Oil?

 

"If peak oil production occurs, as seems likely, sometime during the next few years, then nations endowed with rich coal resources will turn to variants of the basic Fischer-Tropsch process to generate synthetic fuels to fill part of the resulting fuels gap.

But given the increased demand pressures on coal not only for synthetic fuels, but also for electricity generation. There just won’t be enough coal produced to go around.

The US is in a similar situation. Congressman Roscoe Bartlett used the EIA chart to the left to point out the same issue in his series of presentations on peak oil to the House.

Once one starts to factor in some ongoing economic growth, the reserve life of coal begins to drop dramatically from the multiple hundred year figure often bandied about.  In addition, when one also factors in the conversion of coal to fuels (the lower bars in the graph) the lifespan decreases even more dramatically. (The graph is from the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy review 1999)."  -- Green Car Congress web site.

 

Remember, you're looking at 25% of the world's known coal reserves.

The absolute stupidity of not going Nuclear Oil is apparent on the chart.  We must:

1. Stop burning coal to make electricity immediately.

2. Use coal only as the feedstock for oil, use nuclear heat, not coal heat, to convert coal to oil.

Otherwise we'll burn through our coal very rapidly and have only Global Warming gasses to show for it.

Our one big new alternative energy program, ethanol, isn't very big and isn't very environmentally friendly either.  Many of the newer ethanol plants are going to coal, rather than natural gas, as their source of processing heat.  From bad to worse to make another buck.

 "Carbon cloud over a green fuel."  A Goldfield, Iowa corn refinery (still, actually), open since December, uses 300 tons of coal a day to make ethanol. 

"An hour south of Goldfield, another coal-fired ethanol plant is under construction in Nevada, Iowa. At least three other such refineries are being built in Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota."

"The trend, which is expected to continue, has left even some ethanol boosters scratching their heads. Should coal become a standard for 30 to 40 ethanol plants under construction - and 150 others on the drawing boards - it would undermine the environmental reasoning for switching to ethanol in the first place, environmentalists say."  --  Christian Science Monitor web site.  http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0323/p01s01-sten.html

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Part 7:  Energy efficiency and starving ourselves strong.  Ohm's Law.  Smart grids are a stupid trap. 
Sun Wakes from Slumber .pdf     Space Weather Primer at NOAA web site.

Ohm's Law
 SMART GRIDS: A rubber crutch for America's renewable-debilitated electricity system.
Are "Smart Grids" really such a smart idea for YOU?
 I am not a fan of the Smart Grid. To me, those are code words to perform demand management in order not to build the plants and infrastructure necessary
to maintain a robust electrical system.  It will enable power companies to become as predatory as our financial services sector.

Wind and solar are dumb energy ideas.  Smart Grids will place the average citizen at a severe disadvantage.  Two or more dumb ideas do not make something smart.  Smart grids cannot possibly make such dumb ideas any smarter.  Do you really want the power company/Government to have the power to turn your household appliances on and off to suit the will of the wind? 
I didn't think so.   Smart Meter and Slot Machine Security .pdf

 (Left) United States electrical grid.  Click for larger image.

Smart Grids for hamster-power green energy.
 Most of the people advocating Windmills, Solar Power, and Smart Grids are pig-ignorant about electricity and grids.
This advertisement is dangerously misleading.  (1.2 meg wmv)       The reality.  (3.2 meg wmv)

 

     

Geomagnetic Storms Can Threaten Electric Power Grids.  Recall the "Northern Lights"?  When the Earth's magnetic field captures ionized particles carried by the solar wind, geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) can flow through the power system, entering and exiting the many grounding points on a transmission network.  Systems in the upper latitudes of North America are at increased risk because auroral activity and its effects center on the magnetic poles, and the Earth's magnetic north pole is tilted toward North America.   

The U.S. electric system includes over 6,000 generating units, more than 800,000 kilometers of bulk transmission lines, approximately 12,000 major substations, and innumerable lower-voltage distribution transformers. All can serve as potential GIC entry points from their respective ground connections. This enormous network is controlled regionally by more than 100 separate control centers that coordinate responsibilities jointly for the impacts upon real-time network operations.  From:   http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/eiskappenman.html 

 

      How one small nuclear bomb in the right place
can destroy the grids and cars of United States, Canada, and Mexico.
 Solar Weather Storming Forward .pdf

Remember?  Your car has computers and wires longer than 3 feet also.

Military first strike would target Smart Grids to paralyze the country.  In addition to geomagnetically induced failures, Smart Grids are extremely vulnerable to EMP attack.  H-EMP stands for "High altitude-Electromagnetic Pulse" from an atomic bomb.  Exploding a single, tiny atomic bomb 300 miles up in space over the center of the U.S. will take the entire country out - cell phones, computers, cars, and all.  The longer the wire, the greater the damage.  While the military can build EMP resistant electronic gear by minimizing naturally occurring antenna lengths in their wiring and using special solid state components, optical communications fibers are the only long distance communication method naturally immune to EMP.

  (Wikipedia Image)

Please read the linked Wikipedia page to get an idea of how stupid the "Smart Grid" idea is.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse

Just one tiny nuclear bomb 300 miles above Kansas City.  Ever wonder why our leaders hyper-ventilate every time North Korea or Iran says "Boo"?

 Check out National Geographic channel's "Electronic Armageddon."    Electromagnetic Pulse Blackout .pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phasor_measurement_unit  About GPS clocked synchrophasors.  Do you really want your electricity to depend on them?  Synchrophasor data could be used to allow power flow up to a line's dynamic limit instead of to its worst case limit.  The author advocates local power generation with tie-lines instead.

W = I2R,  W = EI,  or W = E2/R    Any way you figure it
Ohm's law says long transmission lines are a dumb idea.

Why are we even considering Smart Grids?  One reason wind isn't working out well is that the best wind is in the Midwest and the country's population centers are located on the east, Gulf, and west coasts.  Very long distance electricity transmission lines are being sold to the electrically naive as ideal the solution to the problem. 

Transmission line limitations.  Like all things electrical, electricity transmission is subject to Ohm's law, in most basic form: E = IR, or, voltage (in Volts) = current (in Amperes) (times) resistance (in Ohms).  Every foot of wire has an Ohmic value, so the longer the wire, the more Ohms resistance the the Voltage has to overcome.  Think friction in a pipe.  The energy consumed in overcoming the friction is absorbed by the environment as heat.

In the world of electrical engineers, transmission lines are usually thought of in terms of kiloVolts needed to push the electricity through the wire's resistance and the GigaWatts of electricity to be pushed.  The adjacent table shows how many miles can be traversed without uneconomical losses.  765 Volts and about 4 GW have been about as high as they have been able to push technology for the last 50 years.  Desperate measures on the west coast have done a little better than that at a lot greater cost.

As you might observe, the amount of electricity that can be transmitted without excessive losses diminishes rapidly with distance.  Assuming the best wind region in the United States is a north-south line going through T. Boone Pickens' stomping grounds, Amarillo, Texas, it is 1,080 miles to Los Angles and over 1,500 miles to New York City.  Can you find those distances on that table?  I didn't think so.

The world's record holder as of 2010: "The Yunnan-Guangdong UHVDC system covers a transmission distance close to 1,500 kilometers (932 miles). The new ultra-high voltage level of 800 kV offers global transmission operators economical low-loss bulk power transmission over even longer distances. Distances of 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) and even more are feasible now with UHVDC technology of this kind: At a transmission capacity of 5000 MW losses are as low as around 2% per 1000 kilometers, plus less than 1.5% losses for both converter stations at the sending and receiving end of the transmission line." - - Green Car Congress

Smart Grids appear to be a dumb idea for the average home owner who likes to have control over his own house.  It's basically a scheme to cut your power first when the wind dies unless you pay a premium for your electricity.  Think California's rolling blackouts.  Ain't those marketing folks wonderful?  Makes you wonder who the State Utilities Commission thinks they are supposed to be looking out for.  Will this also mean you will be able to get premium water with fewer germs?  Or flush your toilets more than once a day?

Ever hear of the Trojan Horse?

If you have a cell phone, you already know how network grids make it easy for these guys to get into your credit card:

Concord, Massachusetts, Smart Grid Could Be Functional Next Year.
The Concord (MA) Journal (7/1/10, Ball) reports, "Smart Grid could be up and running in Concord by this time next year, Light Plant Director Dave Wood told the Board of Selectmen," noting that "the Light Plant has put out four bids - two for materials, one for fiber electronics and one for construction services - and all responses have been 'well within our budgets.'" Wood said that "the Smart Grid will come online in sections." The Light Plant wants "to use Smart Grid to better manage peak demand, improve monitoring and supervisory control of Concord's electric grid and help users improve energy conservation and usage through Smart devices and remote control of central air conditioning."
 

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Part  8:  Energy efficiency and starving ourselves strong.  Energy Efficiency and Conservation have earlier limits than you think.

Starving ourselves strong:
Energy Efficiency and Conservation have earlier limits than you think.
Factoid: Climate change has already arrived.  We are going to need more, not less, energy of all kinds to survive and overcome it.
 Without ample cheap energy our technologies become unaccessible.  We can't starve ourselves strong. 

Ultra-efficiency and conservation have real limits that will eventually get you into real trouble.     

Up to a point, energy efficiency makes excellent sense.  Beyond that, your systems become fragile and your situation becomes precarious - a trap - severely limiting your ability to survive unanticipated emergencies.  These dangers can be very subtle.

Recent example: To reduce in-flight fuel consumption, our commercial airplanes are no longer carrying the 45 minute fuel reserve that has, over the years, served as a prudent measure in the event the destination airfield becomes unexpectedly unusable due to some event - such as another airplane crashing on it's runway.

Nature is effective, not efficient.  Efficiency usually has little value beyond sufficiency. 

 (Author's graphic - Getting a very high mileage car saves very little fuel.) 
http://www.NobodysFuel.com/  "Energy supply is more important than climate change."

 

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Part  9:  Energy efficiency and starving ourselves strong.  The Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Everyone wants to repeal it.

  Second Law of Thermodynamics

Efficiency's Dead End Inefficiencies.  Everyone wants to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The Hard Truth about Thermal Energy. 

The energy market is the market for HEAT.  So, thermal is what it's all about.

A fact or "Law" of thermodynamics:  You cannot get all the energy out that you put in.

Eventually you will come to C P Snow's "Last Law of Thermodynamics":  You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game.

In the case of automobile, jet, electric power plants, etc., the Second Law applies.  This is because the engine's exhaust gasses are still hot (ideally, exhaust gasses should be at room temperature) as they leave the engine and, since this heat is dumped into the environment around the engine as part of the engine's exhaust, it's just plain lost. 

The second “law" of thermodynamics allows us to capture as mechanical energy only about 1/3 of the heat energy consumed by any heat engine (automobile, jet, power plant, etc.) we build. 

About 2/3 is always wasted.  "Lost" is the word used in the chart about U.S. energy below.  To make matters even worse, heat engines that run at variable speeds, such as automobile engines, rarely achieve even 1/3 efficiency since they are rarely running at their most efficient speed.  The more gears in a car's transmission, the better.  Running only when needed and, at a more constant speed when running, gives hybrid automobile engine systems their big advantage in city driving.  Power plants and jet engines run at constant speeds.

This means we will always need a lot of heat to drive the engines that power our society.

In other words, the power plant has to burn three lumps of coal to make one lump of heat in your toaster.

Hard Facts:

1. It is impossible to capture and contain all the dangerous polluting chemicals of combustion.  AND  Combustion materials (oil, gas, coal, etc.) are limited in availability.

2. It is easy to contain all the dangerous materials from a nuclear reactor.  AND  Nuclear heat is virtually limitless in availability.

Nuclear heat is the only kind of heat we can safely use forever.

A fact of physics: No one, including the government, will ever get the Second "law" of thermodynamics repealed.

 

Where does all that energy go? 

Notice the gray waste energy flow in the U.S. energy flows chart? (Click on it for bigger image.)

The second law of thermodynamics says we will fail to capture that amount of energy as mechanical energy.

 

 

Example: For a Lycoming airplane piston-engine at steady cruse.  The limiting case is described by the Carnot cycle:  (Gasoline's Burn Temperature minus Engine's Exhaust Temperature) divided by the Gasoline's Burn Temperature - all in absolute degrees.  Thus the engine's efficiency = (2,660 - 1,800)/2,660 = 0.32 or, roughly, 1/3. 

The bigger the difference between burn and exhaust temperatures, the more efficient the heat engine.  [All in degrees Rankine which equal Degrees F + 460.]

 

Eventually you will come to C P Snow's "Last Law of Thermodynamics":  You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game.

Thermodynamics is the study of the inter-relation between heat, work and internal energy of a system.
The British scientist and author C.P. Snow had an excellent way of remembering the three laws:

1. You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).
2. You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).
3. You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).

 http://secondlaw.oxy.edu/index.html     Light-hearted exploration into the implications of the second law of thermodynamics.  Or, "Why nothing lasts forever".

 

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