The rushed through NZ ETS going through parliament has been watered down some what and as expected but at least some sort of scheme will get initiated. The Greens backed the scheme because a $1 Billion warm house fund, every home in NZ to get insulation. This will be the real winner, reduced energy demand as well as lower illness instances and improved productivity.

http://blog.greens.org.nz/2008/08/27/1-billion-of-warm-homes/

Apparently the government is open to the idea of a carbon tax.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/01/2352458.htm

I think that this is a good idea too - my main issue with trading schemes is that unlike a usual marketplace, an ETS is not self regulating - if you go to the butcher, and give him money, and he gives you green meat then you throw it in his face and demand your money back. In an ETS both parties have an incentive to lie, but no real incentive to verify the veracity of what they're buying. Additionally with a tax the price is stable.

Plus the idea of hiring an engineer rather than an accountant to avoid tax tickles me (because I'm an engineer).

Clean Coal Conmen

WASHINGTON PULLS PLUG ON “CLEAN COAL” Decries the article by Rebecca Smith and Stephen Power in “The Australian” Mon 4th February 2008. This article refers to the cancellation of the much touted FutureGen carbon capture project in Illinois U.S.A. This project was launched by the Bush Government in 2003 to attempt development of Carbon Capture technology; the plant was to be a demonstration plant to generate 275MW electricity in a coal fired plant and capture the carbon dioxide emissions and pump them to an underground site for disposal. It was originally conceived to cost around $800 million $U.S. the Federal Government would fund half and group of coal mining companies would fund the other half. Five years later no progress has been made. No equipment has been built and all that remains is a vacant piece of real estate and the projected cost has increased to $1.8 billion dollars.
To build a plant around the same size as one existing in NSW, “Eraring” which is around 9 times larger at 2400MW the eventual cost could be 9 x $1.8 Billion $U.S. or $16.2 Billion $U.S. on Today’s estimate. Also the cost of the pipeline and compressor stations at the disposal site has to be added to the total price. What the final cost would be is anyone’s guess. The cost of a 3MW Wind Turbine is somewhere between $8-10 million $US. To produce 275MW of wind power would require 550MW of capacity to be installed or 185 turbines, at a cost of $1.8 billion dollars and no coal would need to be bought, mined or transported and that $1.8 billion is fixed at today’s prices not subject to cost overruns or unforeseen development costs and no fuel purchases. It is quite clear that the U.S. Government has found that “CLEAN COAL” can never be competitive with any form of renewable power generation equipment. The commercial partners appear to be unwilling to finance any further development of this technology even though the profits of the industry are at record levels.
The similar project in Queensland launched by the Beattie Government will face a similar scenario. This proposed technology can be achieved but only at a punishing high cost. With coal now approaching the $125 per tonne mark, only the intervention by Aliens or the Supernatural are going to turn this scammery into a viable technology. Wind turbines are almost cost competitive with existing Coal fired power stations when Coal prices are at $125 per tonne which is the estimate of what the contract prices for Australian coal for export to Japan will reach at the negotiations this year.
WHY “CLEAN COAL” OR “CARBON SEQUESTRATION” WILL NEVER
BE A COMMERCIAL REALITY
For Carbon capture to take place I will only look at one technology as the only instances of demonstrated Carbon Capture by chemical means is in military submarines where the conditions are quite different to the requirements of power stations and have never been demonstrated in large scale or commercial applications and are likely to be more costly than compression separation.
The separation of gases requires the compression of the gas to a liquid and then the “boiling off” of differing gases at the temperature of their boiling points (it is not a simple “filtering technology”), these plants have been built in very large scale to separate LNG (Methane) from other gases (Carbon Dioxide, Helium, Ethane, Propane, Butane and Condensate) extracted from the wellhead of gas production plant and waste products such as Carbon Dioxide are generally reinjected into the oil production wells to maintain pressure, the condensate is sold to oil refineries at a premium price and the other gases sold to their specific customers.

The Photograph above is of The Northwest Shelf Partners gas separation/liquefaction plant at Burrup Peninsular near Dampier in Western Australia. This plant has a liquefaction/separation capacity of around 10-12 million tonnes annually and the total cost of the plant is in excess of 6 billion Australian dollars. The plant is very large the tanker in the top left of the photograph is 272 metres long. This is the kind of plant necessary to separate gases for Carbon Sequestration.
There are two ways this can be done the gases can be separated prior to combustion. That is Nitrogen, Argon (85% of gases in Air) and the rarer gases can be extracted so only Oxygen is combusted with Coal; the Carbon Dioxide exhaust then can be collected and piped for disposal. Post combustion, Air is combusted with Coal and Carbon Dioxide is separated from the exhaust gases.
It is more cost effective to separate the gases prior to combustion as the exhaust gases are very hot, requiring further energy to be expended in compression/separation, this is why new plant will have to be designed and built for Carbon Capture and pure Oxygen feed.
The major chemical reaction creating energy in Coal combustion when combusted with Oxygen is C+O2=CO2, but there is also Sulphur which reacts to form Sulphur Dioxide on combustion. Water can easily be extracted from the exhaust as can Sulphur Dioxide which is reacted with lime to form Gypsum a sold product. Eraring Power Station Which Generates 2400MW of electricity consumes 5.3 million tonnes of coal annually. If the Power Station had to supply power for the gas separation process to separate Oxygen from air prior to combustion then it would require an extra 660 MW Generator consuming an additional 1.3 million tonnes of coal for a total coal consumption of 6.6 million tonnes of coal would lead to an annual Carbon Dioxide output of approximately 24 million tonnes. Therefore 17.6 million tonnes of oxygen would have to be separated from air to react with the coal. The oxygen content of air is around 20.9% the total amount of gas that would have to be processed is 83.8 million tonnes to extract 17.6 million tonnes.
Given that the Burrup plant pictured above can compress and separate 12 million tonnes annually then to produce the Oxygen for a power station similar to Eraring would require a plant 7 times the size of the one pictured above and 7 times the cost (that is 7 x 6 Billion$ Aus). The plant pictured above is well over 1 square kilometre.
I have an offer for all politicians, if you think that Carbon Capture is a great idea then I’ve got a Brooklyn Bridge, a Sydney Harbour Bridge and an Opera House I would like to sell cheap. Peter Foster ended up in Gaol for a minuscule series of scams, but Carbon Capture is a mega scam orchestrated by an industry with enough engineering skills to realize the futility of this enterprise. The principles of these schemes need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, it is a Confidence Scam. As I have said earlier it is going to require the intervention of Aliens or the Supernatural to make this scam a goer. A far more practical proposition would be to attempt to contact Aliens to negotiate a power supply agreement.
Let’s now assume that all technical and financial problems have been solved and the “Clean Coal Plant” is under construction now all we have to do is ship the 24 million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide gas annually the 900klm from the Hunter Valley to Bass straight (hopefully we can use an abandoned oil platform and not have to build our own platform) this is going to require a pipeline many times larger than the Sydney to Cooper basin pipeline to transport the 24 million tonnes per anum of Carbon Dioxide going around a similar distance so another many billions of dollars are required for this. The holes will have to be the subject of an offshore geological survey done because there has to be enough space to pack the 24 Million tonnes of Carbon Dioxide in for the 60 years of the project’s life.
The resources of an Oil Company which will not have the equipment to spare to either drill carbon capture holes or pipelines whilst they are busy attempting to find more Oil as the energy crisis unfolds, facing supply shortages of equipment.

CARBON CAPTURE TABLE

CARBON CAPTURE VOLUMES

Total Coal consumption Total Oxygen required Total volume of Air Total Carbon-Dioxide
Of Power Station to fully react Carbon processed to extract Oxygen capture required
(Ex ERARING)

5,300,000 tonnes (Carbon) 14,120,213 tonnes 67,239,109 tonnes (PER ANNUM) 19,420,212 tonnes

101,923 tonnes 271,543 tonnes 1,293,060 tonnes (PER WEEK) 373,466 tonnes

14,560 tonnes 38,791 tonnes 184,723 tonnes (PER DAY) 53,352 tonnes

NWS Burrup ( 12 m/t capacity ) gas separation and liquefaction plants at 6 Billion Dollars in 1990 dollars each required to separate either CO2 from plant exhaust or O2 from air annually ( 67,239,109 tonnes ) = 5.6 at a cost of 34 billion dollars.

NB: If a new-found technology involving CO2 solvents “amines” is found practical then it will require massive tank farms of solvents, pumping machinery and cooling towers (this is not a little shed out the back technology, it is a very large scale engineering solution probably as expensive as gas compression and liquefaction separation) will be required to separate the CO2 from exhaust gases. Water resources for cooling towers for a solvent capture solution could also be a problem in Australia.

This does not end the requirement for compression and liquefaction of the Carbon-dioxide captured, therefore the bare minimum of NWS/Burrup plants required to compress the 19+ million tonnes of CO2 would = 1.6 at a cost of 9.6 billion Dollars 1990 prices + the cost of solvent capture (the sky's the limit) + the cost of piping and drilling wells to pump the CO2 into.

N.S.W POWER STATIONS

26,000,000 tonnes 69,268,968 tonnes 329,852,231 tonnes (P.A.) 95,268,968 tonnes

500,000 tonnes 1,332,096 tonnes 6,343,312 tonnes (P.W.) 1,832,096 tonnes

71,429 tonnes 190,299 tonnes 906,187 tonnes (P.D.) 261,728 tonnes

NWS Burrup (12m/t capacity) gas separation and liquefaction plants at 6 billion dollars ea required to separate either CO2 from plant exhaust or O2 from air annually (329,852,231 tonnes) = 27.5 or 7.9 if solvent capture technology is used therefore the minimum cost of gas compression and liquefaction is 47 billion dollars at 1990 dollars + the cost of solvent capture again (the sky's the limit) + the cost of piping and drilling wells to pump the CO2 into.

For the whole of Australia approximate the figures by multiplying by 3.
WHOLE OF AUSTRALIA SCENARIO
A minimum of 140 billion dollars just for CO2 compression and liquefaction + ( the cost of actual capture would have to be added to this and the sky's the limit, and at the very least would probably equal or exceed the 140 billion dollars for the compression and liquefaction ) + the cost of pipelines and well drilling at the burial site at a time when all the petroleum industry's available resources will be totally applied to supplying oil to industry already suffering a serious supply shortage.

On a world wide scale its impossible 5000,000,000 tonnes of coal is used annually producing 18,320,955,481 tonnes of CO2 per annum or 50,194,398 tonnes per day. At present worldwide a little more than 3 million tonnes of CO2 is being captured ANNUALLY.

The costs of “CARBON CAPTURE” proposed by various mining companies, Governments and news/media conglomerates is being seriously underestimated to the point of total misrepresentation, it's quite clear that the compression and liquefaction for piping alone, is going to be several orders of magnitude above the figures touted to Governments and Media for the total proposed cost of carbon capture. After the addition of transport and capture costs Coal Fired Power is going to prove to be many times the cost of renewables and it’s patently obvious.

It's the work of a bunch sleazy hucksters and confidence men. None of the projects being touted by these scam men will ever prove commercially viable, these sleazy con men all know this and have suckered brain dead politicians and media toadies into their scam.

The U.S. Government has already abandoned their leading scheme “Future Gen” as the cost reached $1.8 billion dollars for a minute power station of 375MW before the first sod was turned on the site, the engineers had already worked out it was going to cost 2-5 times as much as various renewable projects per MWh.

Coal fired power stations are already the most expensive form of power generation systems in existence. The cost of operating a new ERARING type power station over 50 year period could easily exceed $40,000,000,000 and that's without carbon capture. With carbon capture it could be a lot more than double this!

THE END OF CARBON CAPTURE

K.R Cobley 19 Barton St Katoomba 2780