Re: [geo] Allam cycle gas power plant producing pure CO2 & electricity at cost of regular gas power plants

[Ronal W . Larson]

Paul:

1.  This Science article from May might answer your question from 
below: 
   
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/goodbye-smokestacks-startup-invents-zero-emission-fossil-fuel-power
 

  From my short googling,  I guess they are close to operating, but have not 
yet done so.

2.  Perhaps like you,  I find this new [still unproven] Allam cycle to 
be quite fascinating.   I learned a bit more from these two sites:
   https://www.netpower.com/news/ 
   
http://webcast.ovationevents.com/ovationcloud/event/2014/ceraweek/03042014Interview8/video/interview.mp4
 


3.  As now being built, this plant can be carbon neutral (mostly via 
CCS), but not yet carbon negative (this list’s interest).  Probably for some 
time it will even be carbon positive (but less so than coal).  But we can 
imagine replacing their present use of natural gas with biomass.   There is 
then potential to use pyrolysis, as the pyrolysis gases are predominantly CO 
and H2. Separating these two gases could make economic sense so that only CO is 
fed into their combustor.  Then they would have no need to separate out any 
water - as when they combust CH4.  And the solid charcoal resulting from 
pyrolysis can of course be valuable as biochar.

4.  If the H2 is (seemingly unwanted and) waiting, then the exiting CO2 
might “readily" be converted back into a biofuel - more so than with natural 
gas as the feedstock.   Or not?  (I am far from the needed ChE and ME 
expertise.  I am NOT claiming there is no waste;  but there should be 
appreciably less output CO2 .)  Of course they still need to work with O2 and 
not air as they oxidize the CO.

Thanks for bringing this back up.

Ron



> On Nov 10, 2017, at 5:50 PM, Paul Beckwith  wrote:
> 
> Are there any updates on this technology?  Is it working as advertised?
> Sincerely, Paul
>  
> From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com 
>  
> [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com 
> ] On Behalf Of Matthias Honegger
> Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2017 11:15 AM
> To: geoengineering
> Subject: [geo] Allam cycle gas power plant producing pure CO2 & electricity 
> at cost of regular gas power plants
>  
> Dear colleagues
> 
>  
> I wonder what people here think of the Allam cycle gas power plant (see the 
> Forbes article below). Would it make engineering and economic sense to use it 
> on the basis of biogas and to store the CO2 so that it constitutes a negative 
> emissions technology – how could it fare compared to BECCS based on 
> conventional thermal power plant design?
>  
> Best, Matthias
> 
> 
> Revolutionary Power Plant Captures All Its Carbon Emissions, At No Extra Cost
> Green Gas: the Allam Cycle technology promises a future of emissions-free 
> fossil fuels. 
> Christopher Helman – Tthis story appears in the February Special 2017 issue 
> of Forbes 
> 
>  
> GROWING UP IN ENGLAND after World War II, "all the youngsters like me were 
> obsessed with aircraft," says Rodney Allam. "I had a picture on my wall of 
> Chuck Yeager when he broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1, the earliest 
> turbine-driven aircraft." Those high-powered machines were inspirational. 
> Allam became a chemical engineer and went to work at the U.K. division of Air 
> Products & Chemicals, based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. There in the 1970s, 
> he became obsessed with an idea: how to capture the carbon-dioxide emissions 
> from the U.K's giant coal-burning power plants? He already knew where to put 
> the CO2. BP and Royal Dutch Shell would jump at the chance to inject it into 
> their vast oilfields in the North Sea. Injecting the gas (which acts as a 
> solvent to free up stubborn crude oil) has long been a common practice in 
> West Texas fields, where oil companies tap naturally occurring reservoirs of 
> CO2 But there were none of those in England.
> Allam explored various bolt-on methods to grab the CO2 from a giant 
> 2,400-megawatt coal plant in Scotland. But none came close to viability. For 
> a simple reason: They were too expensive. He became obsessed with making 
> carbon capture affordable: first for the technical challenge and then out of 
> an impetus to slow CO2 induced global warming. "I tried like hell," he says, 
> "but I gave it up in the early 1990s--couldn't make it work."
> But now he has. In December, Allam, 76, flew from his home in the U.K. to 
> meet Forbes at a construction site in Texas near the Houston Ship Channel, 
> the heart of the nation's largest petrochemical complex. When 

RE: [geo] Allam cycle gas power plant producing pure CO2 & electricity at cost of regular gas power plants

[Paul Beckwith]

Are there any updates on this technology?  Is it working as advertised?

Sincerely, Paul

 

From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] 
On Behalf Of Matthias Honegger
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2017 11:15 AM
To: geoengineering
Subject: [geo] Allam cycle gas power plant producing pure CO2 & electricity at 
cost of regular gas power plants

 

Dear colleagues

 

I wonder what people here think of the Allam cycle gas power plant (see the 
Forbes article below). Would it make engineering and economic sense to use it 
on the basis of biogas and to store the CO2 so that it constitutes a negative 
emissions technology – how could it fare compared to BECCS based on 
conventional thermal power plant design?

 

Best, Matthias



Revolutionary Power Plant Captures All Its Carbon Emissions, At No Extra Cost

Green Gas: the Allam Cycle technology promises a future of emissions-free 
fossil fuels. 

 

 Christopher Helman – Tthis story appears in the February Special 2017 issue of 
Forbes

 

GROWING UP IN ENGLAND after World War II, "all the youngsters like me were 
obsessed with aircraft," says Rodney Allam. "I had a picture on my wall of 
Chuck Yeager when he broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1, the earliest 
turbine-driven aircraft." Those high-powered machines were inspirational. Allam 
became a chemical engineer and went to work at the U.K. division of Air 
Products & Chemicals, based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. There in the 1970s, he 
became obsessed with an idea: how to capture the carbon-dioxide emissions from 
the U.K's giant coal-burning power plants? He already knew where to put the 
CO2. BP and Royal Dutch Shell would jump at the chance to inject it into their 
vast oilfields in the North Sea. Injecting the gas (which acts as a solvent to 
free up stubborn crude oil) has long been a common practice in West Texas 
fields, where oil companies tap naturally occurring reservoirs of CO2 But there 
were none of those in England.

Allam explored various bolt-on methods to grab the CO2 from a giant 
2,400-megawatt coal plant in Scotland. But none came close to viability. For a 
simple reason: They were too expensive. He became obsessed with making carbon 
capture affordable: first for the technical challenge and then out of an 
impetus to slow CO2 induced global warming. "I tried like hell," he says, "but 
I gave it up in the early 1990s--couldn't make it work."

But now he has. In December, Allam, 76, flew from his home in the U.K. to meet 
Forbes at a construction site in Texas near the Houston Ship Channel, the heart 
of the nation's largest petrochemical complex. When completed early this year, 
at a cost of about $150 million, these 5 acres of steel and concrete, pipes, 
tanks and high-voltage lines will become the proving ground for a technology 
called the Allam Cycle. It's a novel electric-generation system that burns 
natural gas and captures all the produced carbon dioxide. The best part is that 
it makes electricity at the same low cost as other modern gas-fired 
turbines--about 6 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Environmentalists are hopeful. "It's not just a bridge, it's a destination," 
says John Thompson, who directs the carbon-capture program at the Clean Air 
Task Force. Renewable energy sources haven't scaled fast enough to replace 
fossil fuels, and zero-carbon nuclear is too expensive. "We're going to have to 
use fossil fuels in the future whether we like it or not," Allam says. "The 
challenge will be in using fossil fuels to produce electricity without emitting 
CO2 into the atmosphere."

Allam left Air Products in 2005 after 44 years. In 2009, he got a call from 8 
Rivers, a venture capital incubator in Durham, North Carolina. Bill Brown, 8 
Rivers' cofounder, saw piles of federal Recovery Act money available for 
research on carbon capture and sequestration. It wasn't hard to rev Allam up 
again. Soon he was sending handwritten brain dumps to the cadre of young 
engineers at 8 Rivers. Within six months, Allam completed the design. 8 Rivers 
worked with engineering powerhouses Fluor and Babcock & Wilcox to refine and 
verify the tech. Brown, formerly of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, presented 
it to whoever would listen. "Nobody believed us," Brown says. "They thought I 
was selling snake oil." They had reason to doubt. Bolt-on systems for carbon 
capture exist, but they reduce efficiency. And they're expensive; Southern Co. 
is $4 billion overbudget so far on its "clean coal" plant in Mississippi. 
"Companies don't want to just slap a box on the back of a power plant," says 
Julio Friedmann, carbon-capture expert at Livermore National Laboratory. "They 
want an integrated solution."

Which is what the Allam Cycle gives them. To understand what this cycle is, 
start with what it isn't. Most power plants t

RE: [geo] Allam cycle gas power plant producing pure CO2 & electricity at cost of regular gas power plants

[markcapron]

Matthias,Supercritical CO2 working fluid looks real.  Lots of research for use in connection with solar thermal and nuclear heat.  The Texas project mentioned in Forbes is the nearest commercial-scale test appearing in the news for the past couple years.  Note that combustion of methane produces a blended supercritical fluid of water and CO2.  Blended supercritical fluids have mole-proportional blended critical temperatures and pressures.  Because of the much higher density of supercritical fluids (near 200 kg/m3) the turbine can be much smaller than a steam turbine.Mark E. Capron, PEVentura, Californiawww.PODenergy.org


 Original Message 
Subject: [geo] Allam cycle gas power plant producing pure CO2 &
electricity at cost of regular gas power plants
From: Matthias Honegger 
Date: Tue, February 21, 2017 8:15 am
To: geoengineering 

Dear colleaguesI wonder what people here think of the Allam cycle gas power plant (see the Forbes article below). Would it make engineering and economic sense to use it on the basis of biogas and to store the CO2 so that it constitutes a negative emissions technology – how could it fare compared to BECCS based on conventional thermal power plant design?Best, MatthiasRevolutionary Power Plant Captures All Its Carbon Emissions, At No Extra CostGreen Gas: the Allam Cycle technology promises a future of emissions-free fossil fuels. Christopher Helman – Tthis story appears in the February Special 2017 issue of ForbesGROWING UP IN ENGLAND after World War II, "all the youngsters like me were obsessed with aircraft," says Rodney Allam. "I had a picture on my wall of Chuck Yeager when he broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1, the earliest turbine-driven aircraft." Those high-powered machines were inspirational. Allam became a chemical engineer and went to work at the U.K. division of Air Products & Chemicals, based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. There in the 1970s, he became obsessed with an idea: how to capture the carbon-dioxide emissions from the U.K.'s giant coal-burning power plants? He already knew where to put the CO2. BP and Royal Dutch Shell would jump at the chance to inject it into their vast oilfields in the North Sea. Injecting the gas (which acts as a solvent to free up stubborn crude oil) has long been a common practice in West Texas fields, where oil companies tap naturally occurring reservoirs of CO2. But there were none of those in England.Allam explored various bolt-on methods to grab the CO2 from a giant 2,400-megawatt coal plant in Scotland. But none came close to viability. For a simple reason: They were too expensive. He became obsessed with making carbon capture affordable: first for the technical challenge and then out of an impetus to slow CO2 induced global warming. "I tried like hell," he says, "but I gave it up in the early 1990s--couldn't make it work."But now he has. In December, Allam, 76, flew from his home in the U.K. to meet Forbes at a construction site in Texas near the Houston Ship Channel, the heart of the nation's largest petrochemical complex. When completed early this year, at a cost of about $150 million, these 5 acres of steel and concrete, pipes, tanks and high-voltage lines will become the proving ground for a technology called the Allam Cycle. It's a novel electric-generation system that burns natural gas and captures all the produced carbon dioxide. The best part is that it makes electricity at the same low cost as other modern gas-fired turbines--about 6 cents per kilowatt-hour.Environmentalists are hopeful. "It's not just a bridge, it's a destination," says John Thompson, who directs the carbon-capture program at the Clean Air Task Force. Renewable energy sources haven't scaled fast enough to replace fossil fuels, and zero-carbon nuclear is too expensive. "We're going to have to use fossil fuels in the future whether we like it or not," Allam says. "The challenge will be in using fossil fuels to produce electricity without emitting CO2 into the atmosphere."Allam left Air Products in 2005 after 44 years. In 2009, he got a call from 8 Rivers, a venture capital incubator in Durham, North Carolina. Bill Brown, 8 Rivers' cofounder, saw piles of federal Recovery Act money available for research on carbon capture and sequestration. It wasn't hard to rev Allam up again. Soon he was sending handwritten brain dumps to the cadre of young engineers at 8 Rivers. Within six months, Allam completed the design. 8 Rivers worked with engineering powerhouses Fluor and Babcock & Wilcox to refine and verify the tech. Brown, formerly of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, presented it to whoever would listen. "Nobody believed us," Brown says. "They thought I was selling snake oil." They had reason to doubt. Bolt-on systems for carbon capture exist, but they reduce efficiency. And they're expensive; Southern Co. is $4 billion overbudget so far on its "clean coal" plant in Mississippi. "C