Carbon Capture and Storage –With Geothermal Thrown In To Boot
2GreenEnergy super-supporter Gary Tulie sent me this piece on carbon capture and storage for my review. The basic story line is that CO2 can be taken out of the exhaust steam from fossil power plants, compressed to form a liquid, and used as the fluid medium (replacing water) to extract geothermal energy from beneath the surface of the Earth. As it turns out, liquid CO2 has several distinct advantages over water in terms of efficiencies in collecting and distributing heat.
So far so good. In fact, this whole idea may be nothing but good–though I doubt it. Obviously, the whole idea turns on the notion that our 500 existing coal and natural gas power plants are geographically near geothermal energy reserves. If this turns out to be true, it will be a happy accident, but there’s no reason to believe that this will be the case. In fact, power plants are built near oceans and rivers, as they need water for cooling. But most geothermal reserves in the U.S. are in California and Nevada, where rivers are virtually nonexistent.
We also need to keep in mind that what we need is not just clean energy; it’s cheap clean energy. It’s impossible for me to estimate the additional cost associated with the capital equipment, installation, well-drilling, and maintenance associated with this idea, but I can’t imagine that it will be cost-effective.
Perhaps my go-to guy on ideas like this, senior energy analyst Glenn Doty (pictured above), will weigh in on this.
This sounds very much like the argument for hydrogen cars, “because we can make hydrogen from water.” Until you find out that it is far cheaper to make hydrogen from fossil fuels and the “make hydrogen from water” is a bit of a sham.
Here “we can use the carbon to enhance geothermal.” Sure we can but the plan for the one disastrously managed Kemper power plant in Mississippi is to take the carbon and inject it into oil wells to produce more oil. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/science/kemper-coal-mississippi.html
While it is great that the power plant carbon emissions are no longer entering the environment, the trade off is that we get emissions from burning more oil.
Craig
The concept and goal are good the limiting factor is Location Location Location along with declining prices for other Renewable energy.
This type of Geo thermal energy recovery is confronted with the similar challenge that the so called clean coal with carbon sequestration promoters face. The location of the coal power plant is either a. not close to a suitable geological formation to inject the CO 2 to keep it out of the atmosphere or
b. not close to old oil fields where the co 2 could be used for a enhanced oil recovery project.
And this narrows down the potential applications from the onset.
SMU University does extensive field research in the oil fields trying to use old depleted oil wells that still have warm water in them so they are trying to do a geothermal concept using low temperature water to generate power. Some folks chasing this .
But as you said we want not just clean energy but lower cost or you said cheap energy the challenge.
The systems I just described above in any of the 3 situations all face growing competition from solar and wind as they have gotten so low in price it makes it difficult to overcome their price with all the pipes and drilling needed. So location and infrastructure costs put these concepts at a cost disadvantage .
Of course the concept has to prove out on its own merits too.
Solar and wind are not only getting cheaper they are going to gain storage capability soon and that will give them a strong position.
The CO2 you mention would need to be near areas where GEO thermal resources below ground exist. There are maps for that as a good part of the country has been mapped. As you said CA, Nev. then Idaho , parts of Oregon and NM and also Wyoming tend to have traditional geo thermal deposits below ground.
Much is isolated from the Grid another limiting factor. Bbut most geo thermal is in areas long ways from the Grid, Drilling tends to be 55 to 60 % of a project cost stack. This is important as now that oil/gas drilling is beginning to ramp back up it competes with Geo Drilling ; once again it gets pushed back.
Using the Western States as a example : There are not that many coal plants left and their location relative to geo thermal resources is the 64 k question.
Being aware of competing energy s declining cost going forward makes this more challenging than the Attractiveness and Sizzle of using CO2 for Geo thermal. The concept is a higher value application versus using CO 2 to go get some more oil and entrapped carbon out of the ground. Then burning that oil ! Interesting would be cool to see it get traction if doable??
Craig,
I’m glad people like Gary and yourself are beginning to catch on to the potentialities of carbon capture usage.
Over the years I have posted comments concerning the remarkable advances in the commercial viability of by-products from carbon capture technology created by coal-fired power generation.
One of the uses I named was the developing technology to use CO2 in recovering Geo-thermal generation. Roughly half the source of Geo-Thermal energy reserves are from decaying radio active materials.
Considerable research has been conducted into synthesizing radio-active waste to resemble natural decay, and then utilizing Geo-thermal technology to recover energy. Interestingly, there are a lot of coal and natural gas mines encounter problematic radio-active pockets.
The economic viability of these technologies will always be an a case by case basis, but Chevron has several economically viable pilot project functioning.
India, China , Japan, Poland, France, Russia, USA, Canada and many other nations are producing remarkable break-thoroughs with carbon capture technology.
Most of the opposition comes from those who hate coal for ideological reasons, not economic viability. Although in some countries cheap natural gas makes competition coal marginal, there are many area’s where there are no viable alternatives to coal.
Developing valuable coal by-product technologies while reducing Coal environmental impact, should be applauded, not rejected.
Sorry I missed this one Craig.
🙂
I’ve been away a while.
First, the question of whether or not this is useful due to location is wrongly considered on two fronts:
1. Geothermal energy is available everywhere, it’s just a matter of how deep you have to go to retrieve it.
2. The scale of CO2 requirements is way off. Something like this doesn’t need a GW+ coal plant… A biofuels refinery, a fertilizer processing plant, a cement plant, a natural gas peaker… any such emitter would be fine. Also, it’s not that difficult or that expensive to pump CO2 a few hundred km. We have literally tens of thousands of km of compressed CO2 pipelines (mostly for enhanced oil recovery) in the U.S. today, and that is expanding rapidly.
The fraudulent portion of this is trying to sell it as a carbon capture technology. You’d only need a ~100,000 m3 (~100 kT-CO2) per geothermal system. You would run out of the need for electrical power around the world before you even buried a single GT. With enhanced oil recovery, the CO2 typically stays buried between ~10-20 years before eventually seeping out of the fractured rock. I suspect the same will be true of liquid-CO2 cycled geothermal.
The other fraudulent portion of the propaganda concerning this is that it could be used as a “battery”. It couldn’t possibly be used as such and compete with a chemical battery. The possibility of geothermal lies in its ability to replace baseload. If you start considering load-following options, then it will never pay itself back. That way lies folly.
The only reason that I could imagine wanting to use CO2 rather than water would be to avoid the need for a recuperator. Water injected deeply into the Earth and recovered will inevitably pick up all kinds of toxic contaminates, so the water cannot be allowed to pollute the water table. This is usually accomplished by keeping the water underground and transferring the heat to a heat-transfer fluid (usually some form of hydrocarbon, like cyclohexane) into an organic rankine cycle (ORC). Modern recuperators are extremely expensive, so if the plant were able to pass the compressed, heated CO2 directly through a series of turbines, then just re-liquify the CO2 and plunge it back into the Earth… you’d save some money.
I think you’d save less money using CO2 than you would by using a two-step process (thus incorporating TWO massive recuperators)whereby you use a relatively cheap, shallow(ish) well to recover low-grade heat – just above 100C so you can recover the enthalpy of fusion – then use a second recuperator to further heat the organic fluid using a much deeper/more expensive well that has very high-grade heat, in which case the water vapor never condenses, but is instead re-compressed into a supercritical fluid and re-injected into the deeper well. The deep wells are much more expensive, and that higher-grade heat is therefore much more valuable. There’s no reason to waste it on the first ~100 C.
But that’s my take. I would need far more information to make a stab at actual cycle efficiency for the CO2 concept. I do believe there might be something there though… it’s just not the route I would choose to follow, because the deep high-grade energy is more costly than the recuperator.
Glenn excellent technical presentation re the feasibility of the concept of using CO2 for Geo thermal.
My position on location location being critical remains the same as my position is based on the solid facts that tapping into co2 and then using a pipeline to go extract some OIL EOr is totally dependent on a basin of oil being nearby or in some sort of proximity.
That is a constraint in respect to coal to recovered oil.
I concede the point you make that yes there is Geo thermal resource located in many more places etc as you stated you are right.
But again Economic extraction or recovery is the 64 K question. Drilling costs as I stated tend to be (ORMAT figures) around 50 to 60 % of the cost of a Geo thermal base load power plant. When the oil market is going strong competition for Rigs, crews and time becomes a limiting factor as billing rates increase – the boom side of the energy equation.
furthermore since the value of oil is higher than a kwhr with more energy density the economic return is biased towards recovering oil thus or hence the slow pace of Geo thermal development sad but reality is the constraint.
Given current practices, economics and government tax subsidies for fossil fuels I dont see this changing in near term . Carbon Trumperian policies will only exasperate this equation !
A alternative plan for 1 region that could work and avoid all CO 2 and yes I admit this is location dependent. But its a snapshot of what could be done to really advance GEo thermal and balance out the Grid.
Given these points I think it is society’s and the environments, rate payers and generation planners and Sound Energy Policy best interests to expand traditional Geo Thermal power in the Salton SEA area of California where reserves are known. All that is lacking is a good transmission build out in California and other states on the WEEC Grid would all benefit as would the over all economic position of the struggling Imperial Valley Irrigation district which is lobbying hard for such a solution to a multi region issue.
Cost estimates for this expansion of facilities are not huge as the studies have been done and its all quite feasible. Not only Cal but also AZ and Nevada and perhaps even Oregon would prosper under the plan. The environment and economy would also prosper.
This project would not need any CO2 and the end result would be clean green baseload power to back up the growing renewable portion of the regions power supply. Whether the logic of this can over come the inter regional politics and at times conflicting leadership positions from the current Governor Mr Brown is yet to be determined !!
Back to Enhanced Oil recovery and CO2
Secondly EOR is a costly venture also and typically requires a $ 50 per barrel price of oil break even point. Thus EOR is limited to situations when the price is that high – then the swings in the International Oil market make these types of projects more financially risky.
Then there is the life cycle of the EOR in a deeply mature oil field. EG : At the Rocky Mtn Oilfield testing center located at the Tea Pot Dome Region of Wyoming ( I did some work on this project for DOE) where Anaconda Oil began a CO2 EOR project in 2006 . The lifespan for the enhanced recovery was 10 years or less per the DOE and Anadarko Geologists with peak recovery attained in 2013 or 2014. Then just like a regular oil well the decline curve sets in and its steep.
When one factors in the large drop in oil prices that has occurred during this projects lifetime and Alas one see this pathway having additional financial risk.
Now it is true that Anadarco was making plans in 2014 to extend the pipeline North over 150 miles or so to Montana to extract more oil there but whether or not this extension happened I am not certain as I no longer work in those areas. The price drops since then may have made the project uneconomic ? just don’t know. My work the last 7 years has been on efficiency and renewable’s side.
The most glaring weakness in the whole concept of using CO 2 for this type of recovery is that we are just recycling more carbon into the atmosphere ! Some people have a more fancy term for this but in essence we are increasing carbon not reducing carbon ; so whats the point or the gain from environmental point of view??
How can we attain the reductions in CO2 that is needed to heal the planet by pursuing these dark green wash type projects ???
Not only is the logic of doing this if one supports green house gases reductions but one also has to question the financial folly and tax subsidies that are being deployed to support some of this CO2 re-purposing.
there are many in the engineering World , Power generation but primarily in the terminal Coal sector that are trying what ever Green washing they can package together to prolong the life of the coal sector well into 2060 by claiming that capturing CO2 is the only way to save the Globe. many articles floating around espousing this flawed disguised plan to just extend coal longer than is good for the Planet s health. Packaging knows no limits!
here is an example:
NRG Energy in Texas just West of Houston , Tx .at the WA Parrish Coal Plant. This is called the Petra Nova project and will recover a estimated 60 million Barrels of Oil in So Texas. More carbon burning so more CO2 in the air will result.
The fossil fuel and nuclear genie cheerleaders lament and cry and express outrage over the small amounts of Government subsidies that has finally gone into the Renewable Energy Sector the past decade or so. Such out rage is false and disingenuous with Reality.
NRG mind you is the largest merchant power producer in the US w over 50,000 total megawatts under their ownership and on their balance sheet. It is not immature or showing any green bias to state that they are a Mature Player in a Mature market yet here they are deep into their Carbon Maturity dependent on Federal and other governmental tax breaks for their project.
They are getting $ 180 million dollar grants from the favorite whipping boy for the GOMER Hypocrites aka the DOE – yes the agency the former good hair governor and good ol boy himself Rick Perry who just got a promotion into the Trump regime. he wanted to kill this agency like so many other intellectually impaired GOMERS.
They overlook the 18 % of total project costs that isa DOe subsidy as the total project cost for Petra Nova is $ 1 billion to retrofit a existing coal plant to make it capture carbon.
Then there is the Kemper plant in Mississippi which is sending carbon 80 miles to aging depleting oil fields. This palnt was projected at $ 2.9 billion and it is now coming online at $ 7 Billion. this project mimics the path way of cost explosion more commonly found in the nuclear Genie sector. perhaps there is a contest between the two sectors but they are both Beyond the Laws of diminishing returns. Perhaps we never will know.
Kudos to NRG they get FED money , get plant done in 2 years. kemper over 5 years and billions over cost plans. so much for this type of CO 2 capture.
So one should tread careefully when considering CO@ for Geo thermal as you might not be getting all this clean power one thins. glen pointed that out that it probably will leak out after 20 to 25 years.
for those of you who like to take hard line on cost and economics put this into the equation. These CO 2 projects like the Anadarko one in Wyoming are piping CO@ from far Western Wy at the Exxon la Barge plant that for years was a high volume polluter as it all went up the pipes into the Blue Sky. The pipeline distance from the source to TEa Pot dome is roughly 200 miles or so, then on to Montana to work the next field is another 150 to 200 miles. This all costs Money and increased Energy Inputs.
This is why the EROEI for fossil fuels and these types of projects is declining and why the industry is going to need higher prices to sustain such grandiose projects.
This is the Real Under Reported Inconvenient Truth that afflicts the long term economics and viability of the oil and coal sectors. In my understanding of these Bigger issues and many others this is what peak oil is really more about much more than the pools of the resource remaining . Petro geologists have long used the term Economically recoverable reserves to describe such oil , etc.
Back to Perry and his ilk, I wonder how he does in the country club and other Petroleum clubs when his favorite chums complain that he wants to take away their subsidy fountain!
The Clean coal Power initiative of the DOE is funding a portion of this project.
Obama and bush the lessor combined to give the coal sector close to $ 4 billion since 2006 or so to help the coal sector find a way to capture CO 2 and make Clean coal viable etc. Fair and Balanced perhaps but the results are still the same.
More carbon in the Air.
I am sure Glenn and scientists like him know a better pathways forward….but our policy is held in bondage to the carbon masters…and that’s the Real Limiting Factor.
Until those shackles are broken Real significant progress toward reducing Green House gasses Carbon etc are Elusive! yes we have reduced some but we are perpetuating a polluting form of energy.
I say put the money into real geothermal and be done with it. Glenn says there is more out there than most think. I tend to believe him but we, well the system lacks the Wisdom to pursue that pathway. Sad. After 100 plus years of subsidized operations the mature players still need their handouts and our money addicted politicos still love doling it out. And the simpleton morons are clueless as well. So it is.
Trust this sheds more Insights into reality!
Silent Running.
I do agree with your assessment that the majority of the cost of geothermal power is drilling costs. That’s why I put forward the suggestion that a more economical approach would be having separate low-grade and mid-grade heat recovery fields. Then you’d just need a few miles of piping the heat transfer fluid, which is extremely cheap compared to the cost of the deep mid-grade geothermal injection wells.
But as to the overall suggestion that using CO2 is somehow bad for the environment, I’m afraid that you fail to see the scope of the issue here.
It is absolutely true that the past 8 years have seen a growth in renewable energy that is nothing short of remarkable. No-one can nay-say the growth rate of wind and solar.
But in 2008, we had a total electrical generation of 4.119 PWh in America. In 2015, that generation had dropped to 4.077 PWh.
In that time frame – during the record-shattering growth of renewable energy – wind energy generation increased 0.135 PWh/yr, while solar energy generation increased ~0.038 PWh/yr.
It is going to take time. A lot of time. During that time any load shifting to nuclear power is a blessing, as a nuclear power facility is extremely low carbon and only results in a few square miles of land being rendered non-productive. Any load shifting from coal to natural gas is a blessing, because it reduces the CO2e emissions by ~1/3 and reduces the emissions of Pb, Cd, As, Hg, PAH’s, and soot by an order of magnitude or more.
Any defined use of CO2 that results in more geothermal energy development is a blessing, because that CO2 is being emitted anyway, and will continue to be emitted for decades… and any geothermal plant that is built and operating will shift most of the load from coal to geothermal, which is a tremendous boon.
If CO2 makes oil production more efficient, that’s a blessing, because that oil would be harvested anyway, but using less energy to extract the oil results in lower total emissions, and perhaps slower development of really bad options like tar sands and coal-to-liquids (the slower the other options are developed, the more likely that will be displaced by alternative fuel options).
We need to think of this as a marathon, not a sprint. You won’t eliminate CO2 emissions in a year. So what can you do right now that is the most cost-effective way that you can reduce the total emissions? Do that!
🙂
Glenn,
Well put ! I appreciate your sensible and pragmatic perspective.
Thanks marcopolo.
It’s a rare instance when we agree.
🙂
Tell me about it! 🙂
Hi Glenn thanks for your technical justification for the long slow process of shifting away from Carbon CO 2 . You make good points .
Some folks at Lawrence Livermore Labs speak similar positions for capturing carbon from coal.
Yes it is a Marathon – but I still fail to see the efficacy in perpetuating century plus large economic subsidies to the coal / oil so they can somehow improve their process es which allows them to maintain longer market share – more time delayed in conversion – that is what the subsidies do.
It perpetuates & extends the status quo – reflect on that.
This delays the development of the latest Dream for the Advancved nuclear Genie versions ….think about it. Some of these monies could be given out to the various players to get their talking a good game into doing a real performing game.
The money could be used to build up the NRC and modernize it so that they can regulate the modern technologies with modern rules ! The permitting process is out dated and retards progress!
Those are the policy discussions that need to be having not prolonging dirty coal and oil!
The longer we allow coal to hang around the inventory of low to medium cost coal power clogs the marketplace. Look at it that way. That surplus makes the adoption of advanced nuclear harder to pull off and makes nuclear over concentrate to be that elusive low first cost winner. Any one who has had their eyes opn during their Journey with Energy and Efficiency etc., would have to been sleep walking not to recognize that the in efficiency in energy markets was baked into our system by addiction to LOW First Cost obsessions.
The speculative commercial construction sector has long been the Poster Child for bad practices ergo wasted or blockage of new better more greener and more sustainable technologies.
Yes programs like LEED have chipped away at this in-place obsolescence
Nuclear by its nature will probably always have a higher first cost but the economics and sustainability economics make it a good option for Life cycle Sustainability costs ( a new metric perhaps LOL LOL) That is my real point.
That is the reason I took the time to document real new costs for these hybrid coal plants that are being packaged as clean coal etc. They are really not clean as they are being presented.
They delay adoption rates for other technologies including advanced nuclear and CPS w thermal storage and wind w storage etc.
If we want to get serious about global warming and pick up the PACE and get more EV ‘s and the other generating technologies adopted and not just talked about endlessly ( aka new small scale nukes) we need to make the economics work for us.
Besides the extended 10 years or so of oil production from EOR is just the Law of Diminishing returns clinging to market share, but with government subsidy. It just prolongs the status quo which has failed us!
It prolongs illusionary cheap gasoline and folks buy large SUVs and Trucks they dont need – they actually rent them thru leasing which is a different situation but being economically diagnostic as to one of the tricks the industry uses to keep people buying those bigger than needed vehicles that use more fuel and perpetuates the fossil cycle longer than needed.
In these economic and market share dynamics lies some of the real hurdles to a better future. So that is where I am coming from.
A System of Systems approach rather than just a simple this one technology or that one approach it is how they fit together like a Mosaic Painting and the pieces can integrate and function better for all. Currently gas is the darling but that will change in 2030 time frame as price increases will make small nuclear and massive amounts of solar , solar thermal , wind , wind storage etc. much better options for the economy and the environment.
the Retirement Party or funeral for coal should not be a long over done affair 1
We will not buy tar sand gasoline as most of it is to be exported where it can try to recover some of its low EROEI cost premium. Put that into your equation . Not to say its disastrous environmental costs…
the best way to keep it in the ground is to make it expensive ! Then economic substitution ramps faster, not prolonging it. Like a War just do it finish them off to stop the bleeding.
Electric utilities need kWhr sales and EV s can deliver and deliver load shaping usage patterns that can make the GRID perform at higher utilization levels that Optimize performance and that helps the entire economy.
Load factors of 50 % nationally are now the norm so the GRID under performs. So we are not doing well there and it is a drag on the economy as well impacts business costs in negative way.
So why perpetuate this level of In efficiency in the system?
These facts are buried within those power generating numbers you pointed out in your effort to explain a slower transition to greener energy. etc. The current market does not function or operate very efficiently and that is one of the hidden or disguised barriers to more rapid adoption of greener technologies.
Perhaps the inclusion of the economic barriers into the debate changes the dynamics and levels out the field somewhat.
The other side of coin is that there is no cheap energy from black elephants like the Kemper project kwhr estimated to be over $ 16. 5 cents per Kwhr by So Company. They will have to resort to some serious accounting cost shifting to spread the higher costs out over the So System various generation costs to spare ( reduce) the economy the high costs.
The two other Future GEN clean coal projects that close to $ 4 billion was spent on by DOE both failed to get finished as designed etc. Both Obama and Bush the Lessor supported them till Obama pulled the plug last year. Both in Midwest. The legacy of failure is long.
These Power market price distortions are the Elephant in the room blocking more progress including the Iconic Nuclear Genie so I even consider that in my Big picture Grid Plans.
Glad to see Marco P agreeing with some one a nice Pre Easter surprise Good For you Glenn!
Forgive me for the length but been at Power Industry issues and related a long time and myself along with many others see so little focus on speaking to the Root Causes of our many challenges.
Take care – I still have your business card from a trade show event in Denver when we met. Glad to see you still in the game making good changes.