NEWS RELEASE                                                                                                                MAY 2015

How to Make Coal Plants Greener

The common wisdom is that only with CO₂ capture can coal-fired power plants be green.  However, McIlvaine Company concludes that the lowest cost equivalent greenhouse gas reduction will come from coal-fired power plants which do not capture CO₂.  In fact, most of the world’s 2050 greenhouse gas targets can be met without either CO₂ sequestration or massive coal-fired power plant retirements. Here are the key points:

• CO₂ capture and sequestration is very cost effective when the CO₂ is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
• There is sufficient demand for utilizing all power plant CO₂ for EOR but the demand is in places such as Saudi Arabia and the CO₂ emissions are in places such as China.
• Realigning the word coal usage is impractical.  It is economically feasible to ship coal to Saudi Arabia and to build coal-fired power plants there.  Then more oil and gas could be sold rather than used.  But the political reality works against such an initiative.
• CO₂ sequestration is very expensive if the CO₂ is not sold.
• Coal-fired power plants without sequestration can be made very efficient.

Here is how huge reductions in CO₂ can be achieved:

• Advanced ultrasupercritical technology (AUSC) provides a 9 percent increase in efficiency at 700^oC steam cycle over ultrasupercricticals at 600^oC.  There are huge efficiency increases compared to sub-critical steam cycles and to the large number of older coal-fired power plants around the world.
• Cogeneration of steam for other uses can cut greenhouse gas impacts by 50 percent e.g. Blue Flint Ethanol plant with no CO₂ emissions due to waste steam from Great Rivers Energy.
• Use of gasified municipal waste as a reburn fuel above the primary firing zone in a coal-fired boiler has very positive economic and environmental benefits.
• One of the biggest opportunities is to create byproducts with less environmental impact than alternative approaches:

• Flyash and gypsum are already useful byproducts and environmental credit should be attributed to them.
• Many other options could be more significant.
• McIlvaine believes that a system producing hydrochloric acid, rare earths and gypsum would require no more operating expense and capital investment than a conventional plant and would solve strategic resource concerns of the U.S. and European countries.

More information on these opportunities is found in N043 Fossil and Nuclear Power Generation: World Analysis and Forecast