The Black Vault

Jul 8, 2009

The project is one of the biggest carbon capture plants installed at an Australian power station.

International Power has officially opened its carbon capture and storage demonstration plant at its Hazelwood power station in the Latrobe Valley, in Victoria's south-east.

The $10 million project received funds from the state and federal governments to capture CO2 in a solid chemical form and store it above ground.

The project is one of the biggest carbon capture plants installed at an Australian power station.

Victorian Energy Minister Peter Batchelor launched the project today.

The process takes emissions from the power station smoke stacks, extracts CO2 and uses a chemical process to turn it into calcium carbonate.

The resulting solid can then be stored above ground or sold to industry.

Mr Batchelor says it is one of a range of options being investigated to store the power industry emissions.

"Where you produce a product, you quickly find a market but the really important task here is to recognise thath this is taking technology that's worked in the laboratory, in the research and development phase, and taking it to an industrial scale development," he said.

But Environment Victoria has labelled the project a waste of taxpayer funds.

A spokesman for the group, Mark Wakeham, says the plant will capture about 25 tonnes of carbon dioxide a day.

But he says the power station produces about 50,000 tonnes of CO2 for the same period.

"The power station is long past its use-by date," he said.

"To spend $2 million of taxpayers' money on this project, they could have achieved much larger emissions reductions by spending that money on energy efficiency and on clean energy generation in the Latrobe Valley."



Australia to begin carbon capture
2 April 2008

Australia's first underground carbon storage facility has opened in the southern state of Victoria.

The geo-sequestration plant, the only one in the Southern hemisphere, will capture CO2 from a power station and store it 2km below the surface.

Researchers believe the pilot scheme will help Australia make deep cuts to its greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmentalists, though, are not convinced that the technology is appropriate.

'Very significant'

Australia's new carbon "tomb" lies in an old gas field near the town of Warrnambool, west of Melbourne.

Under this type of geo-sequestration, CO2 (carbon dioxide) from power plants is compressed into a liquid and pumped underground.

Several years of testing have convinced scientists that the site in southern Australia will be able to safely absorb 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases.

Rock formations have been described as giant sponges that will soak up the CO2. The hope is that the dense fluid will remain locked away indefinitely.

One of the project's chief architects, Dr Peter Cook, says the technology will be carefully scrutinised.

"What we'll have is probably the most comprehensive monitoring programme for stored CO2 anywhere in the world," he said.

"It will also be one of the largest pilot projects in the world.

"It's a very, very significant project even by world standards and we're having a number of international groups who'll be working with us as part of this experiment.

"So, it will be the first real test of geo-sequestration under Australian conditions."

The scheme has the support of the Australian government and the country's powerful coal industry, which is looking at ways to secure a greener future.

A senior chemical engineer has told the BBC that geo-sequestration should be an effective way to curb CO2 emissions if leaks from underground storage areas can be avoided.

There is a warning, though, that this controversial process is expensive.

Environmental groups believe it has too many unknowns.

They have insisted that the money spent on the Victorian project should have been allocated to proven technologies, such as solar and wind power.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7325782.stm

Whatever they spent the money on it seems the Austrailians usually have the idea when it comes to funding scientific advancements.

If they could find a way to take that carbon atom out and realease the O2 or use it for medical purposes it would be more beneficial. Pending the consiquences of cost of course.

I guess the carbon could be sent to a steel mill or used in other ways.

Though taking it out of the atmosphere is a big enough step as it is.

Xethavosh wrote:Whatever they spent the money on it seems the Austrailians usually have the idea when it comes to funding scientific advancements.

If they could find a way to take that carbon atom out and realease the O2 or use it for medical purposes it would be more beneficial. Pending the consiquences of cost of course.

I guess the carbon could be sent to a steel mill or used in other ways.

Though taking it out of the atmosphere is a big enough step as it is.

So true.

But im not so sure about Australia's first underground carbon storage facility.

I don't think underground carbon storage facility are such a smart move overall.

An earthquake could cause the stored gas to escape an underground carbon storage facility, & the results could be catastrophic.

I've got a better idea if it can be done. Instead of turning CO2 into calcium carbonate, I think it'd be better to actually seperate the carbon and oxygen and solidify the carbon for use in industrial materials like Carbon nanotubes. Of course if that could be done economically they'd probably already be doing it.

Decomposition do you figure? Capture C + O[sub]2[/sub] seperately and sell them both!

Or single replacement. I wonder under what circumstances you could get
2H2 + CO2 ---> 2H2O + C

But then you'd need to get hydrogen..

Is CO2 conductive?

Actually you have to wonder even though they are talking climate change with CO2, at some point if CO2 increases are too catastrophic we will actually start losing Oxygen to breathes. Like breathing air in and out of a balloon at some point CO2 saturation makes breathing more and more difficult until asphixiation.

So if we were to capture just the carbon (call it atmospheric and industrial carbon scrubbing) for sale as industrial material the oxygen freely released would actually be a benefit to most life on the plant in the long run.

carbon capture, changes nothing.


If there is Some sort of catastrophe, like an earthquake.

If the CO2 is released all at once anybody within range will be toast.

& the impact on the enviroment will be as it would have been without carbon capture.

Toxic poision ......or over a million tones of co2........ whats the diff, they both kill.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general ... /1203.html

Carbon capture could mean something. If you decomposed CO2 you could eliminate the threat it possesses, and produce Carbon and Oxygen, both of which are marketable and neither of which possess nearly as high of an ability to harm as CO2 possesses.

Besides which pure carbon can be stored as a solid at room temperature.

Tairaa wrote:Carbon capture could mean something. If you decomposed CO2 you could eliminate the threat it possesses, and produce Carbon and Oxygen, both of which are marketable and neither of which possess nearly as high of an ability to harm as CO2 possesses.

Aquatank wrote:Besides which pure carbon can be stored as a solid at room temperature.

& yet nither of you have said how we would stop the stored co2 from re-entering the enviroment.

Carbon that is millions of years old is already stored .... it's stored in the trees & in the ice caps.

However as with man made Carbon storage, over time it is re-released into the atmosphere.

With trees when they burn in bush fires or rot from age.

Humans cut down trees & make thoundands of products from the wood from, paper to wooden
furniture.

& all the carbon stored in the tree / wood / paper, is re-released into the atmosphere as the product decays & breaks down& the same goes for ice, as it melts it releases the stored carbon into the environment.

This Is the best idea iv seen so far.

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