Western Canada – the Future Leader in Clean Energy

Clean Coal – Coal Gasification – IGCC – Why it’s better than Bio-Fuels, ethanol and Nuclear

There is an easy solution to the energy producing global warming dilemma, the answer has been around for over fifty years and is cost effective, reliable, green and not dependent on unstable foreign countries. Other than saving the planet, Clean Coal technology is the responsible and economically smart way to proceed. This technology has many benefits and minimal downfalls as compared to renewable, bio-fuels and nuclear energy creation sources.

Coal gasification combines pulverized coal, steam and oxygen under pressure and heat to produce a reaction that yields a synthesis gas composed of methane for process and domestic heat, electricity generation, hydrogen for fuel cells, CO2 sequestration for oil and coal bed methane enhanced recovery and nitrogen for petrochemicals. Also called NGS – Natural Gas from Coal.

According to Ben Anthony, a scientist with the CANMET Energy Technology Centre, Canada is on the brink of transforming its lower-grade hydrocarbons into useful energy on a very large scale thanks to projects now under way in Alberta’s oilsands. Clean Coal or Coal Gasification process uses heat and pressure to draw synthetic gas – including hydrogen, the cleanest of all fuels – from low-value coal and upgrading residues. Compared to just burning the stuff directly, gasification can be energy efficient, and it’s also relatively easy to capture waste byproducts like carbon dioxide and ash.

CANMET estimates that in excess of $4 billion dollars worth of gasification equipment will be installed in Alberta over the next five years. “We’re entering a period of extraordinary development,” Anthony comments. “Gasification of petroleum coke and asphaltenes is a highly significant energy development in itself. In addition, the operation of large gasifiers for the oilsands will probably enable us to develop economic technologies for coal gasification in the near future.”

Among fossil fuels, coal is the mother lode. Proven world reserves are estimated at 1,000 billion tonnes, conveniently spread across more than 70 countries. Canada alone holds close to 10 billion tonnes, more energy than its conventional oil, natural gas and oilsands bitumen combined. So gasification of coal and bitumen waste holds out the tantalizing prospect of turning a supremely available resource into a cleaner, more useful form of energy.

 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says 117 gasification plants are in operation around the world, with 35 more facilities under development. Of those 117, about 36% produce synfuels, 19% electricity, and 42% chemical feedstocks. Installed electricity generating capacity totals 24,000 megawatts, with an annual growth rate of about 10%. “Gasification technology is dominated by global players with very deep pockets,” Anthony explains. Among the leaders are Chevron Corporation, with its Texaco Gasification Process, and the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. The first uses a coal liquid feeding system to supply the gasifier, the latter a dry pulverized coal. An especially eager player in this field is China, which is long on domestic coal reserves but drastically short of its own crude oil.

As Nordahl Flakstad from Oilweek Magazine reports, the prospect of mining Alberta’s vast resources of sub-bituminous coal, located close to the surface, and turning it into synthetic gas (syngas) has caught the Alberta government’s attention. In fact, Premier Klein went out of his way to highlight those possibilities during his 2006 TV Address in February.

“Clean coal has a big role to play in Alberta’s energy future,” the premier suggested. “The coal beneath our feet contains twice the energy of Alberta’s conventional crude, natural gas, and bitumen, combined. To make the most of this massive resource, we’ll need to use the same Alberta ingenuity that turned the oil sands into a source of long-term prosperity. We already use clean coal to meet more than half of our electricity needs. But we can do so much more.” Although it was later stated by the premier that cleaner coal (super critical) production is being used in the province but clean coal or coal gasification technology was still in development.

Furthermore Klein noted: “The government is supporting some excellent clean coal research in Alberta, and we’re committed to building on that work. Alberta’s best minds and industry leaders have the knowledge and the innovation needed to unlock coal’s massive potential. A new day is dawning for coal . . . and it’s dawning here, in Alberta.”

Significantly, current efforts, and certainly those of the coalition, are not focused on producing gas for general distribution but on channelling the converted coal directly into use in electrical power generation. The emphasis is on using coal differently, rather than on producing a syngas that would compete directly with conventional natural gas or even with coalbed methane. In effect, coal gasification can help assure that Alberta’s vast reserves of sub-bituminous coal, sufficient to meet demand for 1,000 years at current rates of production, can find continued use in power generation.

 

Climate Change Central reports in its article “Alberta Ready To Be World’s First Integrated Energy Economy” states Alberta has the geography and the geology to become the world’s first fully integrated energy economy, says Dr. Eddy Isaacs of the Alberta Energy Research Institute.

Isaacs’ vision would see waste products of every energy production process used as a fuel or feedstock for some new energy output or products.

If government and industry could connect up all the dots to form a fully integrated system, he says, Alberta would alleviate the public revenue impacts of declining conventional oil and gas production.

“Conventional oil production peaked in the 1970s and natural gas is nearing a peak,” Isaacs says. “That’s a serious threat to future revenues of the province. We need to rethink the kind of technology we should be striving for and the shape of the economy it can support.”

One such scenario would involve the gasification of coal, oil sands bitumen , coke and feedlot manure. Low-emissions synthesis gas (syngas) would feed the petrochemical industry, electrical power generation and other natural gas markets. It could become a source of hydrogen for fuel cells and also meet the hydrogen needs of oil sands upgrading.

“If hydrogen costs could be reduced, smaller players could operate on smaller leases in the oil sands because there would be less need for upgrading economies of scale,” Isaacs suggests. “Producing the oil sands would no longer be just for the biggest companies.”

 

Carbon dioxide produced by coal gasification could be used to extract large quantities of residual oil from depleted oil fields or to displace coalbed methane from Alberta’s vast coal fields, he says. “We have so many resources in our geographic location that the byproducts from one resource can be used to generate another.”

Alberta’s conventional oil and gas reserves are declining, he says. The province has potential coal and bitumen reserves to meet Canadian energy demands for hundreds of years even at accelerating rates of production.

Gasification technology and development of coalbed methane could extend gas production — and revenues — almost indefinitely, while carbon dioxide production could also help to revitalize declining oil fields.

Both Chevron/Texaco and Royal Dutch Shell operate several gasification plants, he notes. Most of these plants are in locations where conventional gas supplies are scarce and correspondingly expensive, but the same situation could soon prevail on this continent.

“If North America continues to demand gas at current growth rates, prices may rapidly rise to levels that would support gasification projects,” he says. He estimates the point of economic viability for gasification would be around the $5 U.S. mark, a level that was dramatically, if only briefly, surpassed in the winter of 2000-01.

“The era of cheap natural gas in North America is slowly coming to an end,” he says. “That can either be a serious threat to future provincial revenues or the key to a new energy future.”

 

There are currently two major types of clean coal gasification technology techniques, IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) and TIPS (ThermalEnergy Integrated Power System) both technologies are controlled and financed by CANMET (Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology). Although, IGCC is a more common and commercialized system, TIPS technology from ThermalEnergy Corporation, Hudson Massachusetts is capable of using many feedstocks, natural gas, oil, coal and cleanly convert them into syngas with plants on tenth the size of conventional energy plants. This technology has the ability to wipe out global warming gas producing emissions and concerns in Western Canada.

Coal gasification, even though not used industry wide because of its extra cost to construct a gasification plant compared to low cost dirty coal electricity generation operation is gaining huge interest in Western Canada. This technology is claimed by some as not feasible yet, but they are wrong, this is an emerging and quickly progressing industry. Some of the leaders in clean coal and gasification technology are:

OPTI Nexen – Oil Sands operator is constructing a gasification plant at its $4.6 billion Long Lake project. Hydrogen will be created from an asphaltene feedstock to be used in its upgrading process as well as fuel gas for steam generation.

North West Upgrading Inc., Plans to construct an Albertan 2.4 billion 50,000 barrels per day bitumen upgrader. Residual bottoms from its hydrocracker will be gasified into syngas and hydrogen.

Peace River Oil Inc., Alberta Blue sky project due in 2010. Asphaltenes will be converted into hydrogen, power, and steam, which should also push sulphur emission recovery above 99%.

Sherritt International Corp. Proposed as Canada’s first coal-fed gasification plant. The Dodds-Roundhill project, budgeted at $1.5 billion, would process syngas from an open pit mine southeast of Edmonton Alberta. Synthetic gas could be used as a petrochemical feedstock, or provide pure hydrogen, or simply be used as fuel. Also important could be carbon dioxide for use in enhanced oil recovery.

Weyburn Carbon Dioxide Monitoring Project, the world’s largest, full-scale; in-the-field scientific study ever completed involving CO2 storage and gasification. Dakota Gasification Company’s plant in Beulah, N.D., where the coal gasification process occurs and carbon dioxide is being produced and delivered by a 204-mile pipeline to the Weyburn oil field in Saskatchewan. Pipelines are already spread across the country and could be used to transport carbon dioxide.

FutureGen – Tomorrow’s Pollution-Free Power Plant – This is an initiative to build the world’s first integrated sequestration and hydrogen production research power plant. The $1 billion dollar project is intended to create the world’s first zero-emissions fossil fuel plant. When operational, the prototype will be the cleanest fossil fuel fired power plant in the world. The project will employ coal gasification technology integrated with combined cycle electricity generation and the sequestration of carbon dioxide emissions. The project will be supported by the ongoing coal research program, which will also be the principal source of technology for the prototype. The project will require 10 years to complete and will be led by the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, Inc.,
Natural gas commodity prices have spiked and forced industry to look into other technologies that will produce, for instance, hydrogen and certainly coal is one of those feedstock’s that is a low cost feed stock and its price is going to be very stable for a very long time because North America has plentiful supplies. Also natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel and is currently used to create a dirtier fuel for example bitumen upgrading produced from the oil sands. It makes more economical and environmental sense to sell the natural gas in its current form and use coal gasification to fuel the electricity required to supply the oil sands operations.

Some important benefits arise when discussing this technology, currently there is a huge loss of energy over transmission lines causing wasted energy and money. Gasification and synthetic gas can be transported to the areas of use like cities and large industrial projects and then converted to electricity and or hydrogen, this issue alone would save billions of dollars every year in energy losses.

 

Nuclear Meltdown:
Nuclear power generation is not a safe, economical way to provide electricity to consumers. The question in today’s day and age with better technologies available, why are corporations still considering using the bad boy of energy – nuclear?

Even though some people say nuclear energy is safe, it’s only a matter of time that another accident will happen. With most third world and terrorist based countries in the world wanting or attempting to harness the power of the atom, one of them will eventually make a mistake or use these nuclear power plants in the wrong manor in which they were intended. Are you really comfortable with the thought of North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria, Sudan, Nigeria and Iraq using nuclear power to provide for their energy needs?

Other than an obvious terrorist target, nuclear power generation is not economical. Without government subsidies, this industry would not be viable. Plants and transmission lines are required to be built far away from large cities for obvious reasons. Electricity is lost over the long distance it needs to travel across these lines and therefore are not very energy efficient. What is the actual cost of effectively disposing of spent fuel rods? No one knows because is never been done, the radioactive rods are just stored in the hopes that some day in the distant future someone would figure it out.

Another alarming issue with nuclear is the scarcity of its feedstock – uranium, hard to mine, store and transport and has an increasingly limited supply. All factors which drive up the cost of nuclear energy generation. Also, nuclear is not a clean energy source and its not friendly to global warming issues like the industry would like you to believe, massive amounts of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere during the mining and enrichment processes of the feedstock – uranium.

Coal Gasification does not have the economical and security concerns as the negative nuclear points listed above. Clean coal gasification on the contrary is affordable, safe, abundant and secure.

 

Biofuels:
Taking food and turning it into fuel at first was thought to be a good Idea, now that this industry has expand, people and governments are starting to admit they made a huge mistake.

It currently takes more fossil fuel energy per unit of input than it produces. Industry will tell you that with further technology improvements; this issue of less energy out will be solved, even though very unlikely.

Let’s say for example that technology does make it more efficient, why would you use a food source or potential food growing land so you can drive your car or heat your house? On one hand as you drive your ethanol car around thinking you are “green” you at the same time complain about the high price of agriculture products and groceries at the store.

There is no rational reasoning for using biofuels. The only plausible excuse to use biofuels is that it is locally supplied and not reliant on foreign unstable supplies. Biofuels however are renewable, but so is solar, wind and wave which don’t affect the food supply. Clean coal technology is also locally abundant and it won’t drive up the cost of food.

 

What is the best energy soulution?
Lets say for example, you are a leader of one of the top counties of the world and you are facing an energy crises and you need to find the best possible solution, the citizens of your country are demanding results. As you think to yourself, you need to set national policy that provides a common fuel or energy for you country’s future prosperity that is affordable, abundant, secure, environmentally friendly and renewable. Listed below are the current potential energy sources to fuel North America.

Nuclear energy
Biofuels – ethanol and equivalent energy
Biofuels – biodiesel used animal fats energy
Solar energy
Wind turbine energy
Hydroelectric energy
Energy from waste products
Hydrogen energy
Crude oil energy
Natural gas energy
Heating oil
Geothermal
Tidal Generators
Gasoline, diesel and kerosene energy
Coal combustion energy
Coal gasification energy

The only North American viable energy source and fuel feedstock combination that meets most of the above criteria is hydrogen produced from Coal Gasification.

Hydrogen fuel can be made from multiple sources which are affordable, abundant, secure, environmentally friendly and renewable. It can also be used to power all machines, supply all heating and cooling requirements and provide all electricity needs.

Plug in, fill up
The following is an overview of renewable and alternate clean energy sources, data source James Bowen, Scan. Canada, perhaps more than any other country, has the natural resources to produce vast amounts of clean and renewable energy. But those resources have remained largely unexploited.
 
Wind
By 2012 it is estimated Canada will have a total capacity of 5,600 MW of wind energy. It takes 1,000 MW to power 200,000 homes.

Solar
In 2002, solar power accounted for only 512 MW of electricity worldwide. Waterloo, Ontario, is home to the first (2002) solar-powered neighborhood in Canada.

Biomass
Energy production from biomass currently meets approximately 6% of the national demand for primary energy. Canada’s forest industry in 1993 generated more than 26 billion dry tons of biomass – the energy equivalent of 82 million barrels of oil. If it was all converted to fuel, it would be enough to meet Canada’s oil needs for 151 years (at 1993 consumption rates). Per capita, Canada has access to far more biomass resources than any other country in the world.
 
Tidal
An experimental plant on the Bay of Fundy, in operation since 1984, is one of the first, and the largest, constructed to capture tidal energy. It has a production capacity of 20 MW.

Small hydro
There are just over 300 small hydroelectric plants in Canada, accounting for approximately 3% (2,000 MW) of the country’s total 69,000 MW of hydroelectric output.

Geothermal
We have more than 30,000 geothermal heat pumps installed across the country, many of them in Vancouver, where Canada’s first electricity generating geothermal plant is scheduled to open in 2007. Each year approximately a thousand heat pumps are installed across the country.

 

Clean Coal
In 2006, the Ontario government announced plans to close coal-fired electrical power generating plants and go nuclear, but reality checks along the way have caused successive delays. Realistically, there are currently few alternatives to using coal as our prime energy source for generating electricity.

The United States has the largest coal reserves in the world, and the US Department of Energy is pursuing coal gasification on a major scale. Other countries with an abundance of coal are doing the same. In Canada, New Brunswick is our champion coal producer and it is currently considering using this process. Worldwide, coal gasification is expected to produce 25,000 MW by 2010.

Gasification is an environmentally friendly process that converts carbon-based materials like coal into methane using high-temperatures. Methane has the same chemical composition as natural gas and can be used to drive gas turbines that in turn drive electrical generators. The process is about twice as efficient as generating steam to drive steam turbines, using roughly half the coal to produce the same electrical energy.

Modern low-temperature gasification processes leave sulfur and nitric oxides as well as mercury and other toxins in the slag. The immediate benefit is the lower carbon dioxide emission and a reduction of our carbon debt.

 

History of Coal Gasification, this is not new technology, it’s just been forgotten about.
The concept isn’t new. In the 1800s, cities such as Boston used big, dirty ovens to turn coal into town gas to fuel streetlights and gas lamps in homes.

Sourced from the Department of Energy, In 1944 General George S. Patton’s Third Army was racing across southern France. In his haste to be the first U.S. commander to cross into Germany, however, Patton overextended his supply lines. His armored columns ground to a dead stop. Faced the choice of waiting until he could be resupplied or draining the fuel of captured German vehicles, Patton chose the latter. His tanks and armored personnel carriers continued to steamroll toward Germany, powered by the German’s own ersatz gasoline – synthetic fuel manufactured from coal.

The leaders of World War II, on both sides, knew that an army’s lifeblood was petroleum. Ironically, before the War, experts had scoffed at Adolph Hitler’s idea that he could conquer the world largely because Germany had almost no indigenous supplies of petroleum. Hitler, however, had begun assembling a large industrial complex to manufacture synthetic petroleum from Germany’s abundant coal supplies.

When Allied bombing of the German synfuels plants began taking its toll in late 1944 and early 1945, the entire German war machine began grinding to a halt. More than 92 percent of Germany’s aviation gasoline and half its total petroleum during World War II had come from synthetic fuel plants. At its peak in early 1944, the German synfuels effort produced more than 124,000 barrels per day from 25 plants. In February 1945, one month after Allied forces turned back the Hitler’s troops at the Battle of the Bulge, German production of synthetic aviation gasoline amounted to just a thousand tons – one half of one percent of the level of the first four months of 1944. None was to be produced afterwards. Lack of petrol meant the end of the war and the end of the Third Reich.

When apartheid was the law of the land in South Africa, the country was subject to an international petroleum embargo. To compensate, South Africa used developed Fischer-Tropsch gasification operations, which are still in use today.

Coal Gasification and liquefaction production continued to decline for years after the war as petroleum’s popularity increased. Today’s electricity providers still confuse the public by making statements that gasification technology is not commercially ready and still in its infancy. The technology is proven and has been successfully viable since the forties.

Currently natural gas fuels a good portion of Alberta’s industry, natural gas is a highly sought after export commodity and should be reserved for export. The western provinces could and should switch to coal gasification and liquefaction to generate regional electricity for commercial, residential and industry.

 

CO2 sequestration – Why it’s the best technology to combat Global Warming
Western Canada and especially Alberta will soon become the world leader in clean energy technologies. Global governments and citizens have recently been envious of Alberta’s energy reserves and prosperity, now they have another reason to be envious, Western Canada will lead the fight against global warming by introducing and implementing the greenest and cleanest technologies known to mankind.

Sequestration is the key that opens the door to clean energy technology, by disposing of all pollutants and greenhouse gases while providing the energy for economies to flourish. Sequestration simply returns all bad toxins, greenhouse gases and pollutants back from where they came from, safely and securely.

 

ICO2N – stands for Integrated Carbon Dioxide Network and is Western Canada’s plan to be the last step in leading the world in clean energy production. This consortium of powerhouse companies, along with governmental funding will tackle all climate change concerns head on. The group consists of the following companies – Agrium Inc., Air Products Canada Ltd, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., CononcoPhillips Company, EPCOR, Husky Energy Inc., Imperial Oil Ltd., Keyera, Nexen Inc., Shell Canada Ltd, Sherritt International Corp., Suncor Energy Inc., Syncrude Canada Ltd. And TransAlta Corporation.

Weyburn Carbon Dioxide Monitoring Project, the world’s largest, full-scale; in-the-field scientific study ever completed involving CO2 storage and gasification. Dakota Gasification Company’s plant in Beulah, N.D., where the coal gasification process occurs and carbon dioxide is being produced and delivered by a 204-mile pipeline to the Weyburn oil field in Saskatchewan. Pipelines are already spread across the country and could be used to transport carbon dioxide.

Carbon sequestration is the term used to describe a broad class of technologies for capturing and permanently sequestering, or storing, carbon dioxide (CO2). Affordable and environmentally safe sequestration approaches could offer a way to help stabilize atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide at “a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” a goal toward which 188 nations have pledged to work.

Even though Kyoto and Global Warming scheme is now disproved, Alberta still needs to “Go Green” as the debate is definitely not over. One question that remains now that the required technology is ready and available is who is going to pay for the environmental cleanup? The exploration companies? The refining companies? The Consumer? The car manufactures? Government? The answer is all of the above.

The real solution to Global Warming and clean energy production is Alberta’s new energy source.

 

How do all these Technologies Work Together?
Using the best alternative energy sources, gasification to synthetic gas to hydrogen, combined with CO2 sequestration (carbon capture and storage) is the most environmentally friendly and profitable way to proceed for Western Canada’s energy industries. The combination of all these new technologies will work together to transform and help solve the world’s energy crisis.

Gasification Syngas to hydrogen can be made from renewable and alternative sources, not all renewables are environmentally friendly and not all alternative energies are dirty, it just depends on the process used.

Clean coal gasification is just one method (which also happens to be the best) and is one of the cleanest sources when the CO2 is captured and sequestered.

Currently this is the route chosen by Alberta industry and not only profitable but is environmentally friendly. This process will fuel the oil sands, residential electricity generation and conventional oil production in the province.

Media Sources
Oilweek Magazine
Dob Magazine
Scan Media
Department of Energy
Climate Change Central
Alberta Energy Research Institute
ICO2N – Integrated Carbon Dioxide Network

Source Columnists and Reseachers
James Bowen, Ben Anthony, Nordahl Flakstad, Dr. Eddy Isaacs, Cheryl Pellerin