CovEr STory - Mjunction

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Special Feature Recovering carbon from flue gas On the threshold of infinite energy Coal Insights Bureau Just how many times have you heard these words – oil peak, coal peak, or simply energy crisis How many times have you cursed the consuming class for the imminent shortage in fossil fuels….and made that doomsday prediction, ie the time when the world will run out of fuel! Strangely, there is no dearth of energy around us. There is more energy in nature than we can ever exhaust. In other words, the energy crisis is not about a shortage of energy. It’s only that we are unable to tap it, except from a few known sources, mainly fossil fuels. But what if we could break that barrier….! There is magic in nature. Everything here comes in a cycle or a chain; eg. life cycle, food chain, oxygen or water cycle. Likewise there could be an energy cycle too. The key to entering this cycle could be the gateway to the mankind’s search for an infinite source of energy, affordable and non-polluting. In the recently held Coal Asia 2012 COAL INSIGHTS 46 March 2012
Special Feature conference in Delhi, Dr Endre Simonyi, a professor of chemical sciences at Universitas Budensis and the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Hungary, proposed just as much. Successful extraction of carbon from flue gas (discharged by the thermal power plants) can change the Dr Endre Simonyi way the world looks at energy issues, he suggested. It will not only provide a new source of fuel, but will help cleanse the air as well. And yet, it’s not just simple carbon capture and sequestration, but a step way forward. Claiming that such a process can be successfully developed, at least at the laboratory level, Dr Simonyi demonstrated his experiment before a select audience that included the representatives of India’s coal fraternity. While the detail of the experiment, which is pending patent and sponsors, was not to be shared with, the following excerpts from his demonstration may give a broad hint to a whole new world of possibilities! The energy scenario In the present global energy scenario, said Dr Simonyi, coal fired power plants are the cheapest energy producers ($0.05 - 0.08/kwh), but they also produce the largest quantity of greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. This poses a problem of balancing power generation growth with environmental sustainability. The world’s biggest energy users can be found in the northern temperate zone. The biggest amount of sunbeam reaches the area of the equator, the northern parts of Africa, India, the southern region of United States and China. To some extent, the problem of a balance between power production and environmental sustainability can be solved by producing solar energy where there is sufficient sunbeam and then transporting the same by tubes to places where it is needed the most. But the costs of this method are humongous. “Solar energy plants are the cleanest but their cost of investment is very high (US $2,500 to 3,500/kw),” Dr Simonyi said. In the temperate zone, the annual dispersion of energy is not adequate either. Most of the energy is needed in winter; however the sunbeams are the least effective in that season. In summer, the number of sunbeams is too much, while in winter it is too few. The situation is the same at the above mentioned energy producing areas too. What is flue gas Coal Insights Bureau According to popular definition, flue gas is the gas emitted into the atmosphere via a flue, which is a pipe or channel for releasing exhaust gases from a fireplace, oven, furnace, boiler or steam generator. In many cases, the flue gas refers to the combustion exhaust gas produced at power plants. The composition of flue gas depends on what is being burned. However, it usually consists of mostly nitrogen (typically more than two-thirds or around 79 percent) derived from the combustion air, carbon dioxide (CO2 – 8 to 14 percent) and water vapor as well as excess oxygen (also derived from the combustion air; 2 to 6 percent). Flue gas further contains a small percentage of a number of pollutants, such as particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulphur oxides. Flue gas scrubbing At power plants, flue gas is generally treated with a series of chemical processes and scrubbers, which help remove pollutants. Electrostatic precipitators or fabric filters remove particulate matter and flue-gas desulphurisation captures the sulphur dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, particularly coal. Nitrogen oxides are treated either by modifications to the combustion process to prevent their formation, or by high temperature or catalytic reaction with ammonia or urea. In either case, the objective is to produce nitrogen gas, rather than nitrogen oxides. In the US, there is a rapid deployment of technologies to remove mercury from flue gas – typically by adsorption on sorbents or by capture in inert solids as part of the flue-gas desulphurisation product. Such scrubbing can lead to meaningful recovery of sulphur for further industrial use. Technologies based on regenerative capture by amines for the removal of CO 2 from flue gas have been deployed to provide high purity gas to the food industry. They are now under active research as a method for CO2 capture for long-term storage as a means of greenhouse gas remediation. There are a range of emerging technologies for removing pollutants emitted from power plants. As yet, there is very little performance data available from large-scale industrial applications of such technologies, and none has achieved significant penetration of the enormous worldwide market. Source: C Michael Hogan. 2011. Sulfur. Encyclopedia of Earth, eds. A.Jorgensen and C J Cleveland, National Council for Science and the environment, Washington DC COAL INSIGHTS 47 March 2012
Page 3 and 4: Chief Editor Rakesh Dubey, Tel: +91
Page 6: Cover Story India’s quest for UCG
Page 9 and 10: DIG DOWN, AND YOU’LL FIND IT’S
Page 12: Cover Story The UCG process The UCG
Page 16: Cover Story UCG only way to exploit
Page 20: Cover Story and appropriate technol
Page 24 and 25: coal market fundamentals Thermal co
Page 26 and 27: coal market fundamentals Price fixe
Page 28 and 29: Feature The new and effective price
Page 30 and 31: Feature Govt may start auction of n
Page 32 and 33: fEATURE MoC may deallocate 58 block
Page 34 and 35: fEATURE Ministry of Coal and repres
Page 36 and 37: Feature COAL INSIGHTS 36 March 2012
Page 38 and 39: fEATURE Trans Damodar coal block st
Page 40 and 41: fEATURE Union Budget a mixed bag fo
Page 42 and 43: fEATURE Indian plants generate 70,9
Page 44 and 45: fEATURE Power utilities’ coal imp
Page 48 and 49: Special Feature “There are reacti
Page 50 and 51: Technology ♦♦ Timely availabili
Page 52 and 53: CORPORATE RCF, CIL JV to set up coa
Page 54 and 55: CORPORATE BKT plans 32% hike in pro
Page 56 and 57: CORPORATE BKT’s R&D capabilities
Page 58 and 59: CORPORATE product ensuring a produc
Page 60 and 61: Expert Speak most of it is under fo
Page 62 and 63: Expert Speak within 2-3 years time,
Page 64 and 65: International US coal consumption,
Page 66 and 67: INTERNATIONAL New coking coal mines
Page 68 and 69: INTERNATIONAL UK mining equipment m
Page 70 and 71: logistics Dedicated Freight Corrido
Page 72 and 73: Logistics Port traffic down 0.74% y
Page 74 and 75: power sector update ALL INDIA ENERG
Page 76 and 77: Power sector update List of utility
Page 78 and 79: Power sector update Power Supply Po
Page 80 and 81: Power sector update Power supply to
Page 82: Power sector update Generation capa
Page 85 and 86: port data Major Ports through which

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