Carbon Management Programs for Fossil-Fueled Boilers was the Hot Topic on March 31, 2011

Jim Staudt PhD, President of Andover Technology Partners, provided an overview of ongoing activities in the greenhouse gas mitigation area with particular focus on the U.S. EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Options Database. It is designed to help developers, suppliers, consultants and the operators select the best options.

Jim Sutton, Director at Alstom Power, discussed CO₂ reduction through increasing energy efficiency in coal-fired boilers. Lots of CO₂ could be avoided by making improvements in many areas. For example just using a more efficient transformer rectifier with a precipitator significantly reduced the parasitic load.   There is a huge potential when the average heat rate for the U.S. fleet is 10,761 Btu/kW-hr for an efficiency of only 31 percent. Jim showed a group of older power plants with heat rates above 15,000 Btu/kW-hr, so the potential CO₂ reduction for these old power plants is very large.

John Wheeldon, a Technical Executive in EPRI, told the participants that raising generating efficiency offers a “no-regrets” approach to lowering emissions of CO₂/MWh.  Progress is being made in raising generating efficiency up to 50 percent (HHV) and also improving the economics of CO­₂ capture and sequestration. Longer term there are revolutionary approaches for CO₂ capture which include:

§  ARPA-E-technologies

§  Enzymatically-enhanced solvents

§  Solid sorbents

§  Gas separation membranes

§  Chemical looping

The Bios, Abstracts and Photos are linked below.
BIOS, PHOTO, ABSTRACTS - March 31, 2011.htm