This looks like a good scoop – at the least, resourceful reporting. The Casper Star-Tribune‘s Dustin Bleiseffer reported late Saturday that a trio of corporations believes it can build – and have in service in 2015 – a modest-sized 100-megawatt, coal-fired power plant that will sequester 90 percent of its CO2 emissions. The plant would use an advanced high-oxygen system called Oxy-Coal combustion that yields a nearly pure stream of CO2. The gas will go either for disposal in deep, saline aquifers or be pumped into oil fields to enhance recovery. The latter use would leave it there for a geologically significant time but, one thinks, doesn’t taste as green as just putting it in the ground for reasons other than to get more fossil fuels to squirt out.

The combine behind the bid, it says here, wants some government money to do the job. It has an application in with the Department of Energy through its overhauled FutureGen program. Word on it emerged, it also says, via a briefing by the governor’s office to a state economic development committee. Somebody at the local paper, it appears, had his ear to the ground. The two primary companies behind the project, which has been in the works for several years while looking for a place to do it, are Babcock & Wilcox and Air Liquide of France and Delaware.

Grist for the Mill: Babcock & Wilcox Technical Paper, 2008 “Commercialization of Oxy-Coal combustion…” ;

Pic: An oxy-coal combustor, Source ;

Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.