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    msn The Carbon ‘ He eee Omer accents yng PT Oat MMM cer nu eceon El co hg WA ea ao evi i isseir ceponer Sencar, ‘im Pinkston has built a massive chemistry set in the middle of a longleaf pine forest in eastern Mississippi. “I’m so happy to see it come to fruition,” says Pinkston, arangy engineer with owlish eyes, during a tour of the Kemper County Energy Facility on a warm summer morning. ‘Standing on lange expanse of flat land that has been clear ccutand paved with conerete he Is pointing toa vast complex of ‘wvisting, turning pipes, hundreds of miles in all, that surges skyward. At the enter ofthis cross between a chemical factory and a power plant are two towering silos more than 900 feet tall The twin gasiies, each weighing 2,580 tons, can create the heat and pressure ofa voleano, That is what is required to take lignite, a wet, brown coal mined from almost underneath Pink- ston’ feet, and tur it nto gaseous foe that is ready to burn to generate electricity What makes this chemistry set extraordinary is not the fuel it will soon produce but how It will handle the chief by-prod- uct; carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas behind global warm- ‘ng. Rather than send the CO up a smokestack and into the at iigsphere, as conventional coal-fired power plants do, Pinkston ‘and his colleagues at Kemper will eapture it ‘Kemper isthe most advanced coal plant in the US, And itis key to a worldwide effort to cut back emissions of greenhouse s1ses, a long-avalted goal embraced by most of the more than 190 nations holding climate negotiations this month in Pars. Coal-ired power plants are the biggest source of the world’s (00, discharges because the most polluting countries rely on them to produce a large share oftheir electricity, Few of those. nations, inchuding the US, which gets 40 pereent of its power from coal, are willing to stop the burning. Without closing the plants, the only way these countries can meet their pledges sto keep CO, from going skyward, locking it away instead. ‘here 1s no credible plan to stave off global warming, ‘whether from individual countries or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that does not include such eazbon capture and storage, or CCS, technology. Even the scenarios that rely heavily on nuclear power or renewable energy still re ‘quire carbon capture to clean up emissions from all the neces- 1 meine Misilppi Power is bling the Kamp “san coat” powerplant 0 eres elec fm the dest Foe foal and apr theresling carton dove enisons ited of senng hem othe aes Kempe wills ie, 0acopany that wl ump down eo dis ing ol fis t free out mare of ‘chy ofa ted ofthe CO emisons ie pps wo romain appa urd your here Binge ol. howe, January 2016 ouldserd ne esis noth sy (Goats a Kempe nae esi lori very high ring dou shout wbsher the appaad i x arial sustirabl ode, 8 ca bon capture and erage poets teen dt down ores were. ‘Wahout efectve aflorsle carbon capt sation ahs months Pas climate ts tata commiting to ‘tension wl not beable to meet theplooes. Bac: AL, at sary cement and steel. There are more than 6,000 large, in dustrial sources of CO, emissions in North America alone. About 1,000 of them are cement kilns or factories that emit 100,000 tons or more of CO, # year. Nearly 5,000 of them are power plants that burn fossil fuels, which emit even more, ‘Add thousands of fossil-fuel plants in China, India and else- where, and they account for more than 70 percent ofthe plan ‘3 CO, pollution tis easy to see why C ing this pollution ‘The trouble is that carbon eapture is an expensive fx. The technology Itself seems to work, but the eos to build and oper ate a full-scale plant, which is coming to light as Kemper nears completion and other, smaller facilities gain experience, has been very high. Then there is the question of what to do with ‘the carbon once it has been captured. Storing It deep under- ‘ground in geologic formations that could hold it for thousands fof years adds even more to the cost. Governments are loath to {oot the bil, To reeaver their investments, plant owners would have to raise their customers’ electricity rates far above those ‘currently in place. The cost of CCS has seuttled once promising efforts. A dem onstration project at the Mountaineer coal plant in West Vie- sinia buried more than one 1 s central to reduc lion tons of COs, then shut KEMPER HAS REQUIRED 172 miles of tangled pipes, 40,000 tone of steet and two giant gasifiers (one at center, above right) to convert dy coal into a cleaner-burning gas and to prevent the CO2 by- product from being dumped into the atmosphere. own for lack of funds to continue the experiment. In 2015 the US. Department of Energy canceled its hallmark FutureGen venture with industry, which was meant to rebuulld an old coal plant in Mlinois, after spending $1.65 billion. China has quietly changed the name of its flagship GreenGen CCS proje Jar to Kemper~and is running the plant to produce power but without capturing CO3. Only 15 CCS projects are operating worldwide today, with another seven under construction, in cluding Kemper. All have cost billions of dollars to study, de- sign and complete. Kemper has founda creative way to finance its project, how. ever. It plans to pay for CCS by siphoning off the CO and selling it, an approach known as carbon eapture and utilization. Some ‘companies might use CO, as an ingredient In baking soda, dry ‘yall, plastics or fuel, But emissions from power plants world ‘wide dwarf even the raw materials thet go into the more than four billion tons of cement made every year, one ofthe largest produets that might use the gas, “With the amount of CO, we have to deal with, youre not going to tum everything nto a valu able materia” says Ah-Hyung ‘Alissa Park a chemical engineer ‘at Columbia University, who works on this challenge. There is one customer that could use lots of CO, and is ‘wealthy enough to pay fori: Big Ol. Petroleum companies need vast amounts of C02, which they pump underground to force ‘outoil from wells that otherwise would be running dry. Carbon capture and utilization presents a contradietion: Does it make sense, as a response to climate change, to capture earbon only touse itto obtain more fossil fuels for burning? THE LABYRINTH "HE KEMPER PRorEcT began back in 2006, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which contributed to surge in natural gas prices. Mississippi Power was headed toward a future in which 80 percent ofits cleetrcity would be generated from natural ‘58, according to spokesperson Lee Youngblood. Nuclear power ‘as too expensive, and renewable sources sich as wind and so: lar were too intermittent, That left the local lignite. The adja. cent countryside holds nearly 700 million tons ofthis dirtiest, ‘wettest kind of coal—more than enough for a power plant with ‘Kemaper’s capacity to burn for 50 years or more Conventional coal power plants typleally avoid lignite be ‘cause cleaning the alr pollution itereates, much less the COy, is daunting. Pinkston and his partners realized that designing 3 power plant around two towering gasifiers would alow them to ‘se the lignite and still keep pollution below federal limits. They also realized that by adding more equipment they could capture the COs, which mae strategie sense as plans were lai; Con- ress was strongly considering legislation to cap greenhouse gas Pollution. in 2009 the Magnolia State gave Mississippi Power permission to bulld Kemper, witha cost limit of $2.88 billion, Mississippi Power's parent corporation, Southern Company, hhad already developed the gasifier ithe 1960s as part af exper iments to turn lignite Into a cleaner fuel. Pinkston’ team chose ‘an industrial solvent, Selexl, to grab CO, from the gas created by pressurizing and heating the ditty coal, Subsequently drop- Ping the pressure would readily release the CO, from the so! Carbon capture makes for big, costly power plants, much like nuclear power. As a result, the list of dead projects is long. vent, like twisting open the eap on a bottle of seltzer. The ap- proach meant that less of the energy generated from the coal hhad to be devoted to cleaning up the pollution, lowering the ‘ost, nd ft seemed like i all eould be done with various pieces of technology that had been used in other ways for years. “There's nothing new here but the integration,” says Bruce Har: Fington, assistant plant manager for Kemper, ‘That integration has proved trickier than expected. The part of the plant meant to dry the coal had tobe torn down and re- built as a result of faulty parts. The labyrinth of pipes just kept srowing as Kemper got but, stretching to 172 miles, 76 miles ‘more than planned. Workers inside the glant tangle painted ‘some of the machinery a special lu that turns colors if it gets too hot or eold—one of the only ways to see inside the maze to ‘make sure everything is working properly, despite instruments at ‘more than 90,000 points. Engineers with petrochemical exper. tise had to he imported, wd 2,300 miles of electrical cable had « fe h How IT WORKS Carbon Capture ‘The Kemper power plant strings together ‘existing technologies in anew way. Startwith nie, the dties kind of eo Convert it nto gas (thats leaner to bum (2) to create electric (3), leaving behind carbon dloxide that ean realy be captured instead of blowing up a | smokestack inta the air Then use that CO, 0 extract oll fom od unproductive oil fle (4. Some of the CO, will become locked underground (5), soit does not reach the atmosphere and add to global warming. A hand of planes similar to Kemper have been bulk ‘worldwide, but they are proving tobe ‘@remely expensive; mary have been shut down or canceled because of | _cerstuation delays and cost overruns Oogentomair a Brow cal ite) (62 SeienticAmercun, January 2018 esr ook the Coa ® ‘Heat the coel under high meee arya essehans Caton capture Cbonmonaie, hygtogenandeabon oe oa) OO Ah os @ Clean the Gas Prose yng to crate ir cone anderen mone ue nds of OD sation by a ge Mis 6A LIBERTY BELLE: The 1,000-horsopower strip-ining machine ‘sparked onthe dirt expose after forest was clear-cut wating todredge another trench to grab wet lignite coal hth to be laid, leading to a doubling ofthe construction workforce. All ofthis complexity inflated the cost: as of Oetober, Kem: ‘per was $3.9 billion over budget, up from $2.4 billion when the Southern Company's flings to the US, Securities and Exchange Commission, The company had to pay back hundreds of mile lions of dollars in feel tox credits tld to project milestone {acllty was proposed in 2009 to $6 billion. Mounting delays dates that were missed, ‘have pushed the start date from May 201410 atleast April 2016; ‘Mlssissippt Power has had to turn to its own customers to every month of delay costs at least $25 mullion, according to avokd bankruptcy as it builds a power plant worth more than al @ Extract on @, 8) Carbon Burial mph COinerrndo ore a TheCO tesa depundegonunaly ‘eal from aldo fees, Some CO raid stored inthe tn spans between girs of and ‘9 trapped there reuse the CO, insandstove, here the oh prevostybeeneld, | ‘Hatreums forasubsequent ele Caron done Twothidsof Oyisrssed One hrdaf Oy preied ‘oremainurdeground B) Produce Power 7 Bumbo fea inturbines to generate ect usa the ers esto make start pins separate abies, rong onal elect. January 206, SesentieAmeriet.com 63 ‘the rest of the company’s assets put together. In August it raised clectricity rates by 18 percent. The big solution, however, is to sell pre, dry CO, to the oil industry. (OIL TO THE RESCUE ‘on conmaas have been. using CO, to seour more oil out ofthe ground for decades, buying the gas from other companies that fended up delling into underground deposits oft rather than the oil or natural gas they sought, They build a kind of mint factory atop an oilfield that compresses the CO, und pumps it down be- To The CO, mixes with the oll to make it low easier an restores the pressure underground to force more ofl to the surface. AS ‘much as two thirds of the CO, that gets puniped down returns ‘with the oil That CO, gets eomabined with fresh supplies and sent ‘back down to push up yet-more oll Fach cyele about one third of the gas remains underground, caught in the tiny pres in sané stone like te ol befor it Thats the climate benefit—burying the treenkiouse gas away from the atmosphere. ‘The Tinsley oil ficld near Kemper has produced more than 220 million barrels of ol since its discovery in 1999. Such a bis field ean warrant the big cost of buying CO, from # place like Kemper, along with added roads, truck trips and CO, pipelines, to foree out another 100 milion barrels. Denbury Resources be ‘gan flooding, the field with CO, from natural deposits in Mare 2008. At Tinsley, the company now recycles 670 million cubic feet of CO, a year and buys an additional 100 million eubie feet ‘annualy, boosting oll production from the field from 50 barrels ‘a day to more than 6,000 barrels daily. When fully operational, Kemper plans to send roughly 60,000 million cub feet of CO year through a new 60-milelong pipeline to Tinsley and other fields inthe region, ‘The eateh, of course, Is that when the extra oil is subse ‘quently burned as gasoline, home heating fuel or other petro eum fuels, more 00, is sent into the atmosphere, The idea that combating climate change depends on a technology that uses CO; to produce more oil that lien gets burned, producing more (C0,, reliably elicits chuckles from oil fetd workers. Nationwide, the US. produces roughly 300,000 barrels of ofl aday with COs, from nearly 140 fields, a number expected to ‘double if low oil prices rebound. ‘The DOE estimates there are ‘Pa milion barvel of olin the US, including Alaska) that could be recovered every day with CO, Already 5,000 miles of pipe Tine shuttle CO, from natural deposits such as the Jackson ‘Dome in Mississippi to old oll elds, like a spider's web lurking just underground and occasionally breaking the surface with & valve or pump. PRICEY PROPOSITION {TAPPING 003 in deposits currently costs about $0.50 per ton. Car- bon dioxide from the complicated Kemper facility, however, ‘may cost wp to three times that. CCost lessons are coming from several places, notably one of the fst CCS projets, atthe Boundary Dam power plant in Sas ‘katchewan, In October 2014 the “clean coal" power plant began feeding power into the electri grid. SaskPower spent a little ‘ore than $1 illion to rebuild one ofthe plants three coal-fired boilers to capture its CO, emissions, The expense worked out to bout $11,000 per kilowatt of electric generating capacity, mare than three times as much asa typeal boiler, Mississippi Power's SAUCE sO estimate for Kemper is similar: at least $10,000 per kilowatt At those levels, capturing CO, would add at east $0.08 per kilowatt-our to the consumer price of eletrcity, according [DOE estimates, That is a 5 percent increase to the average ‘American price of electriity: $0.12 per kilowatt-hout. Without regulations requiring carbon captare or a tax on earbon pollu tion that power utilities would want to avoid, the companies have litle financial reason to pursue the technology. The eco hhomics are no better in China, whieh now consumes roughly four times as mich coal as the US., or in India, whieh has de- clared in its submission to the Paris climate taks thatt intends tobuid many more coal-fired power plants. The new plants are ‘unlikely to have OCS because of the eost -Bven ifthe expense of carbon capture comes down, the cost ‘of storage may also remain too high. Many ofthe more than 600 coal-fired power plants in the US. are nowhere near geologic formations that might reliably hold CO that is simply pumped ‘underground for permanent storage. Many ofthe power plants are also nowhere near the 1,600 US. ol eds that might benefit from CO» injection, requiting long, expensive pipelines and compressing stations. And selentsts cannot say with certainty how much of a climate benefit using CO, to produce ofl would offer. “We don't know the net amount of CO, stored,” says Ca nlle Petit, a chemical engincer at Imperial College London. RECKONING DEFERRED ‘As eases stows, carbon capture makes for big, expensive pow. tr plants, much like nuclear power. As a result, the lst of de funet projects such as FutureGen is long. Worldwide, 33 CCS ‘projects have been serapped since 2010, according tothe Glob- ‘al Carbon Capture and Storage Institute. Most consumed hun: ‘dreds of millions of dollars before failing. Taose that still exist, such as Sunni Powers Texas Clean Energy Project, are strug fling. Boundary Dam is having trouble meeting its own carbon capture targets. "Nevertheless, CCS projects continue because of the compe ling need to combat climate change. NRG Carbon 360 is build ing one in Texas called Petra Nova. The utility plans to make money from selling eletecity and the of obtained by pumping 1.6 million tons of CO, a year into the West Ranch Oil Field near Houston, Petra Nova, scheduled to come online in late 2016 at the earliest, vill capture CO, from only 10 percent of the power plant’ total eapacity however, at a cost of $1 billion. “Cleaning wp coal plant emissions is a good goa,” says Al Ar mendariz, a Sierra Club activist and former Environmental Pro ‘wetion Agency official. “But the costs ofthe Petra Nova project especially compared with the low costs of renewables in Texas like wind and solar, make it questionable if CS is the most ef fective way to reduce carbon emissions ‘Therein lies the fallacy, Unless the US. starts to shut down ‘more coal power plants and even natural gas power plants, it ‘must find a way to convert CCS from an expensive luxury to & viable fix, Otherwise the eountry will not meet its long-term target of 80 percent cuts in greenhouse gas pollution by 2060. ‘Kemper does not provide much hope that carbon capture canbe a cheap and easy solution, Two bulging stockpiles of dark coal rse beside the behemoth, aking under the Mississippt sun, ‘waiting forthe gasifiers to start up. The nine-million-pound,al- clectri strip-mine machine that dug it up, renamed the Liberty ee iE: ia er CAPTURING Kempers COs and other pollution requires the extensive | labyrinth of ductsand towers shown above. The tall gasfiers that

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