Rules and Guidelines
Want to participate in the discussions? Please read our Community Rules and Guidelines. Need some help? Visit Support and Answers.

  • State Not Answered
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 6 replies
  • Subscribers 17 subscribers
  • Views 706 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
You may also be interested in
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

CARBON CAPTURE AT DRAX POWER STATION

CliveS
The original DRAX power station was build next to a huge coalfield so it would be the ideal site to bury any captured carbon.   Possibly the best fuel for DRAX would be reclaimed scrap plastics as it has pulverising plant that can be adapted to pulverise plastics mixed with scrap wood collected from our garden refuse bins. 

Using fresh wood, that has to be imported however, would lead to deforestation in some foreign land; an environmental disaster and is anyway hopelessly uneconomical because of the transportation costs.

Producing power by burning scrap refuse instead of burying it in landfill is surely, highly desirable.?
  • 0
    Not sure how you would use a coal mine to store CO2 - most of them are not water tight, let alone gas tight.  A former gas field in the north sea might by a better bet.

    Even with that our experience of the Rough field is that re-using a gas field, in that case a salt cavern off the east coast, is not perfect - we have recently decommissioned it as the UKs  long range gas reservoir due to increasing difficulties keeping the gas in.

  • 0
    Thanks Mike.   Interestingly enough sea water has 410 parts per million of calcium which is only 0.04% but when you think of the size of an ocean it will contain millions of tons per cubic kilometre.   So what if we scrubbed the carbon dioxide in the exhaust of power stations by bubbling it into the sea water?

    Wikipedia has an article on chalk deposits in north and south downs being deposits formed 70 million years ago which could have been formed in the same way.  In fact the volcanic vents in the deep ocean are presumably creating chalk even now so it is not too environmentally unfriendly. There is a power station in South Wales at Aberthaw which if still running could convert to burning plasic/gargen waste and scrubb the CO2 out in the Bristol channel.
  • 0
    If you bubble carbon dioxide, through water, you get carbonic acid.  It's a very weak acid, but the oceans are already losing their natural alkanlinity.  Go too far, and you'll kill off any shellfish in the area as they won't be able to make shells any more.
  • 0
    The problem is that some CO2 gives you chalk (calcium carbonate), which is hard (especially when squashed into marble), but too much dissolves the chalk or marble again to make the bicarbonate, which is soluble, and great for baking scones, but makes a poor building material for houses or shells.


    *A quick calculation suggests that Co2 entrapment in the bubbles  inside large scones or sponge cakes is also impractical on the scale needed for Drax.
  • 0
    Thanks Mike, but we need fossil fuels forever; for peak winter electric generation and bulk transportation. So somehow we must work out how to return the CO2 into the soil or the oceans. 

    If we do not, then the planet will solve the problem by melting the polar ice caps which will release millions of square kilometres of extra land on which grass and trees will grow absorbing the CO2 we are emitting. .

    The problem is then the sea level will rise and that really will be a catastrophe of our making.  No wonder the kids are protesting.

    CliveS
  • 0

    we need fossil fuels forever




    Well I hope we don't, because it is very much a one shot energy source. Once the stored sunshine of many millenia that is locked in  the coal, oil and gas we are burning now over a few decades has gone, that is that. Short of then waiting a few million years for new coal oil and gas to form.

    Obviously to revert it to carbon lumps we can bury will take more energy than was released on first burning, so that is a non-starter, so all sequestration methods for post processing oil and coal residue, will be CO2 (not true of wood however, where it would be possible to half burn it, make charcoal, and bury that). 

    In any case, the long term response will have to be to use far less of the stuff. Which may well mean less energy available overall, if not then as you observe, energy that is not always available on demand on the manner to which we have become accustomed.

    Equally, as I keep pointing out to my friends, the earth will be just fine, it does not need saving,  it is the homo sapiens scrabbling about the surface that should be planning their tactics for possible resource wars and a dramatic reduction in population. I am not convinced that CCS is an especially  big part of that longer term view, it may delay the day we cannot burn stuff for fuel, but it will not stop it arriving.

    Personally I'd be happier if we were now building  a tidal lagoon off the welsh coast, even if it is a long shot, and the first one may not be profitable. We need disruptive progress, not incremental development.


Community Rules & Guidelines