SciAm.com - Earth & Environment

StoppingClimateChange.com                                                                                                                   Contents    Definitions    Prolog    About
New Tech: The Allam Cycle Biomass 300 MW(e) Power Plant  + Harvesting CO2 +  CO2 Disposal Wells   Solid Tech: The NuScale 12 Module 77 mW(e) Reactor    Hydrogen Processing   Water Processing   Geoengineering
Nuclear Powered Hydrogen for making Vehicle and Heating Fuels   Nuclear Powered Water Recycling and Desalination in every Town
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This Is The Dawn Of The End Of Climate Change

The World's 500 cities over 1 million population and 4,000 cities over 100,000 thousand population are powered in a thousand ways by electricity made by Coal or Natural Gas electricity generation power plants.
The fastest way to end carbonizing the world is to electrify the top 4,500 cities with as much electricity as possible - about 300 mW(e) Dual Allam Cycle CO2 engines with 4,000 Allam Cycle CO2 engine facilities.
The remainder of the world's cities, towns and villages need to be electrified by smaller Non-nuclear smaller Biomass 50 to 300 mW(e) Allam Cycle power plants to also remove the legacy CO2 from the air.
The World's Cities Need SOLID Electricity For:
                 Lighting, Heating, Appliances, Automobiles, Subways
                          Hydrogen for making Carbon-neutral Heating Fuels, Vehicle Fuels
                Water Pumping, Desalination, Wastewater Treating, Recycling
Standardized Modular Nuclear Electricity Near Every Large City and Town
The United States has largely phased out it's coal power plants, replacing them with hundreds of small, cleaner, natural gas turbine power plants. Now is the time to upgrade their sites with adjacent similar sized modular nuclear.
The world has irrevocably committed itself to a dispatchable electricity & hydrogen powered fuel modern civilization. Only nuclear electricity generation everywhere can satisfy such an energy demand on a forever basis.
https://energy-transitions.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ETC-Global-Hydrogen-Report.pdf         -          https://www.iea.org/ , and https://www.irena.org/

Above images from: "Progress Update on the Allam Cycle Commercialization of NET Power and the Net Power Demonstration Facility", GHGT-14, (2018), Melbourne, Australia.

Upgrading the Allam Cycle Power Plant to a Tandem Fuel BECCS Power Plant
The naturally CO2-capturing Allam electricity power plant is a new technology able to capture 100% of it's coal or natural gas fuel's CO2: 440+ Patents in 30+ Countries
In addition, it's slowly becoming recognized that this power plant presents an opportunity for also sucking massive amounts of climate change's CO2 out of the air.
"Repairing the Air Electricity" is Better for the Environment than either Renewable or Nuclear Electricity

High efficiency and low cost of electricity generation from fossil fuels while also eliminating atmospheric emissions, including atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The first of the practical CO2 energy machines that open the door to cheap and environmentally safe both FOSSIL fuel AND BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration power - at the world's current burn rate for the next 4 centuries.
Despite climate change promises, most governments plan to ramp up fossil fuel production one way or another. 1.000.00.11
The highly efficient Allam Cycle electricity plant is perfect for the world's 160 countries who want to continue to use fossil fuels but end their CO2 emissions.

https://netpower.com/ https://netpower.com/technology/

Don't close that mine yet! We Can Have Both Biomass BECCS and Clean Coal powering the same Allam power plant.

There are about 10 countries with significant reserves of natural gas. Perhaps 20 need to import costly liquefied natural gas with about 160 depending upon coal exclusively for their electricity.

The Allam Cycle engine is a Natural Gas powered, naturally CO2-Capturing engine that has had adaptors engineered to convert Coal and Lignite into synthetic natural gas, thus making Allam Cycle power plants environmentally clean on those fossil fuels in addition to 'natural' natural gas. These adaptors were derived from about 30 years of "clean coal" research to make conventional coal-burning boilers power plants environmentally clean.

Likewise, it may be possible to engineer and build a biomass-to-synthetic natural gas adaptor for the Allam Cycle power plant that would make it a VERY LARGE BECCS power plant possible. Such a power plant would not only not add CO2 to the air when running on coal, it would also REMOVE large amounts of existing CO2 from the air when running on biomass.

Every non-gas country in the world could have Dual-fuel (coal and biomass) 284 megaWatt electricity as the world moves toward living cleaner and better electrically.

Supplies of adequate amounts of biomass fuel are often seasonal and more expensive than coal. Coal is almost always available anywhere in the world at a competitive price.

The natural gas only 58% efficient Allam Cycle can power a coal adaptor and still remain more efficient at extracting energy from coal (50%) than boiler power plants (35%), so eventually all the world's 190 countries will be getting most of their electricity from Allam Cycle power plants rather than boiler power plants.

Building the coal adaptors for these Allam Cycle power plants to also accommodate biomass by adding BECCS modules to the adaptors and running the power plant in BECCS mode when possible will enable the world to eventually repair the world's air by lowering the air's CO2 level from 420 ppm to it's normal 280 ppm. This will tend to lock keeping the world's air CO2 level down into the system.

Good tutorial: https://netl.doe.gov/research/Coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/westinghouse http://www.powermaxgasifiers.com/

The rational for making the combustion Allam Power Plant Cycle an international standard for global electricity generation are the facts it is unusually efficient for a combustion power plant, it will run well on any combustion fuel without damaging the environment, it is of a substantial size, can be built by any second or first world country, and can be installed adjacent to any existing coal burning power plant and have it's captured CO2 easily carried by rail to nearby CO2 disposal wells.

Allam Cycle Power Plant Bio-fuel Energy Fuel Efficiency

Abstract:
As the global temperature continues to rise and environmental concerns worsen, cleaner and more sustainable energy is a pressing need worldwide. Power generated from oxy-fuel combustion processes like the Allam Cycle can reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions and make carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration more feasible. The Allam Cycle, a novel power generation system developed by NET Power and currently being tested at a demonstration plant in Texas, burns natural gas and uses supercritical CO2 as the working fluid within a Brayton thermodynamic cycle. The technology enables sequestering of all of the CO2 generated, meaning it has zero atmospheric emissions. Using biomass, a renewable energy source, in place of natural gas to fuel the Allam Cycle would make the power generation plant even more environmentally-friendly and potentially carbon-negative, qualifying it as a bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) technology. Such technologies will be necessary in coming years to counteract climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. In this work, gasification of corn stover for syngas production integrated with an Allam Cycle power plant is designed and simulated in Aspen Plus. The simulated gasification using a bubbling fluidized-bed pressurized gasifier had a cold gas efficiency of 78%. The performance of the overall plant on a 65.5 MWth (biomass feed, LHV basis) scale was evaluated and found to have a net efficiency of 31%. The economics of a biomass-fired Allam Cycle plant were considered, and an LCOE of $233/MWh was found. The LCOE of the biomass-fired Allam Cycle was compared to that of a natural gas fired Allam Cycle plant; in the presence of an economy-wide CO2 price of $103/tonne CO2, the LCOEs of the two technologies would be the same.

Princeton University Senior Theses, 24-Jul-2019 Allam Cycle Fired with Biomass: Process Design, Performance Simulation, and Cost Assessment Buscher, Mim

Click To Enlarge The Above Images (Left) For details of natural gas, synthetic natural gas and proposed coal and lignite adaptor processing components see pdf 2.306.02
(Right) This is what would likely be involved if a Biomass Adaptor were to be added to remove CO2 from the air to repair the air.

Thousands of cities. 2,329 power plants with both coal and biomass fuel adaptors pulling CO2 out of the air.

Adding a Biomass Gasifier to an Allam Cycle Power Plant Russian CO2 Tank Car

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Repairing the Air is Better for the Environment than merely using Renewables or Nuclear

Taking the Allam Cycle a Step Further - A Biomass Adaptor Would Upgrade It Into A Large BECCS Power Plant

The 284 megaWatt Allam Cycle power plant NEEDS a Biomass adaptor as depicted above and below. It's efficiency potential as a "Super BECCS" is just too good to ignore.

The Allam Cycle power plant shown above is designed to run on the fossil fuels natural gas, coal, and lignite and to emit their carbon directly in the form of liquefied carbon dioxide ready for injection into an underground storage strata via a Class VI CO2 injection well.

Your author is suggesting that this newly developed 'Allam' technology - which was recently patented and proven in a pilot plant in Texas - could be implemented as a potentially far more efficient and cleaner BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) facility burning densified biomass pellets. While densified biomass pellets made of shredded wood fibers would work, switchgrass would be a less expensive fuel.

The design of the Allam Cycle engine in this application gives us a potentially next-generation BECCS facility, far more advanced than the BECCS facilities being currently suggested to the world by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The biomass-to-synthetic natural gas conversion system depicted above as '5' and '6' would have be added to convert the power plant into a "Planet Cooling" electricity generation plant that would pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by storing the air's carbon dioxide in the ground.

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Adding Biomass to the Allam Cycle's Fuel Repertoire is an Excellent way to Speed Up Repairing the Air

Why Biomass? The CO2 molecule is made of one carbon atom and 2 oxygen atoms. 1 Kg of carbon on complete combustion will produce 3.67 Kg. of CO2. Biomass is heterogeneous and the exact amount of carbon in 1 Kg of dry biomass will vary depending on the species and age of the biomass etc.
1. It is reported that 1 Kg of biomass contains about 450 to 500 gm of Carbon. This means 1 Kg of biomass is holding about 1.65 to 1.80 Kg of CO2. This is how biomass acts as a carbon sink. Similarly, burning of 1 Kg of biomass containing 500 gm of carbon will generate 1.65 to 1.80 Kg of CO2 and 17,070 btu of heat.
2. Heat from biomass Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG) costs more than heat from natural gas but the 60% gas efficiency of the Allam Cycle power plant is almost twice that of a typical 35% efficient fossil natural gas power plant. European coal power plants are burning U.S. wood pellets now to keep their CO2 emissions low.
3. Metropolitan Solid Waste (MSW) i.e., Garbage, is being used to make syngas to power small 50 megaWatt syngas power plants, worldwide to minimize landfill waste. Similar MSW syngas/SNG plants could add their outputs via short local gas mains to base power a large 284 megaWatt Allam Cycle plant.

Planet Earth currently has about 3 trillion trees and might support an additional trillion. (In the United States, a trillion is a thousand billion and a billion is a thousand million.) It's essential we plant as many trees as possible immediately all over the world because we will need them for removing Climate Change from the air when the last of the fossil fuel decarbonizations has been completed and the installation and startup of the first several hundred Allam BECCS power plants has been completed. The Allam power plants will first be running on natural gas and coal converted to synthetic natural gas, switching over to biomass BECCS mode as the gasification equipment is installed. This could be as soon as 2030 to 2040 so the first Climate Change removal switchgrass would be only 20 years old at most. After that, an annual rotating crop of energy plants such as switchgrass will be needed for over 100 years.

California has biomass electricity power plants that consume 1 ton (900 Kg) of woody biomass per hour for each megaWatt-hour of electricity produced. So, a 284 megaWatt Allam BECCS power plant could consume as much as 24 hours x 284 tons or 6,816 tons of biomass per day.
1 Kg of wood holds about 1.65 to 1.80 Kg of CO2. A 10-year old typical small tree weighs 1,800 to 4,500 Kg. 1 ppm CO2 = 2.12 Gtonne carbon or 7.76 Gtonne CO2. (IPCC and Gilbert Masters). 1 Tonne (a Metric Ton) = 1,000 kg. 1 G (Giga) = 1 Billion.
To remove enough CO2 from the air to make the air as clean as the end of the last Ice Age we would need to remove from the air: 415 ppm CO2 - 280 ppm CO2 = 135 ppm CO2. 135 ppm x 7.76 Gtonne CO2 or 1,047 Gtonne CO2 or about 1 trillion 2 ton trees.

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Energysheds Illustrating the Idea of Co-locating
Carbon-capturing Allam Electricity Plants and Geological Sequestration Strata

Farmers prefer switchgrass over wood because it can be farmed and harvested on poor soil using conventional farming machinery.

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Why the Allam Electricity Plant?

The transition of gasoline to electricity for transportation will open an economic opportunity for a BECCS Allam Cycle electricity power plant network powered by the biofuel Switchgrass to cause a concomitant cooling of the planet. Switchgrass powered electricity plants would produce large amounts of reliable, clean electricity to the grid while the Switchgrass' carbon stream thus produced would be sequestered underground at no additional cost to remove carbon from the air to repair the air thereby cooling the planet.

Major Players: According to a contemporaneous press release, in 2012 8 Rivers launched a subsidiary, NET Power, and formed a team to pursue development of the technology:

Toshiba will develop the innovative system’s high temperature and high pressure turbine and combustor, the key equipment in thermal power plants, by making best use of its material, combustion and cooling technology. NET Power and [global engineering services firm] Shaw will work on overall plant engineering and [U.S. utility] Exelon will support development and operation of the 25MW plant, such as selecting the site, obtaining permits and commissioning the facility.
Toshiba Signs Agreement to Develop Next Generation Thermal Power System with NET Power, Shaw and Exelon, Toshiba Corporation, 06/15/2012.

In the ensuing years, the NET Power team spent $150 million as it built a demonstration plant in LaPorte, Texas; and in May 2018 conducted the first firing test of the plant’s combustor.

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About an Allam Cycle Engine with BioEnergy Carbon Capture and Sequestration (BECCS)
This is the first time the world has seen a proposed practical supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) working fluid BECCS engine.

Just like steam (water vapor, H2O) from water, CO2 gas can be used as a working fluid in power plants. Will CO2 steam become the second age of steam?

You are looking at something very new and very different. Invented and owned by NET Power, and built by Toshiba, it is a pilot version of a natural gas power plant that has no emissions stack. IT NATURALLY CARBON- CAPTURES IT'S OWN FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS. It has been feeding test power electricity into Exelon's nearby grid for a couple of years in La Porte, Texas, with a team of Exelon's utility power plant operators who are working up a control room from the same room NET Power's scientists used to get the plant up and running. This new thermodynamic cycle, the Allam-Fetvedt cycle, has never been built and run before and still is running since everyone wants to know if the "natives are really long-term friendly". https://netpower.com/technology/

A production 284 megaWatt full city-size version (about the size of a typical large U.S. coal power plant unit) is currently under construction in Japan. The Allam cycle power plant makes NO EMISSIONS that can get loose. Versions that burn coal and lignite have been engineered, patented, and are beginning testing. An oil version should be easy. Both steam and jet engine power plants have been set up worldwide over the years to burn either natural gas or oil.

This small test version strikes your author as being a very good commercial size for powering "Combined Heat and Power" plants such as the one powering the Capitol Building Complex depicted above. It is much more efficient.

There are thousands of building complexes around the world that could make good use of a HVAC power plant that burns fossil fuels. Like everything powered by fossil fuels, the plant does make emissions but they come out as the liquids water, argon, and liquefied CO2, each contained in a separate pipe. The liquefied CO2 that comes out can be mixed with "Carbfix" liquid CO2 solidifying solution and then pumped into deep underground storage vaults, becoming a form of solid limestone forever.

The Carbfix folks claim there are nowhere near enough fossil fuels on earth to fill up the known storage vaults with CO2 so mankind is good to go in that direction. Having said that, I would be remiss if I didn't remind you about coal's and lignite's ashes. But ashes don't easily get loose and float up into the air if you bury them in landfills or use them to make roads. https://www.carbfix.com/

This technology could give a real boost to the IPCC's drive to achieve some form of Deep Decarbonization in the world's energy industry by 2050.

(Above) Think of the combustor discharge as a rocket engine discharge. That white plume from a rocket engine is combustion water condensing. The Allam Engine's combustor cooling jacket is closed.
Click images to enlarge. When a gas turns into a liquid, it releases heat.

Two Schematic Presentations Of The Allam Cycle Engine and a Photograph Of The La Porte, Texas, Pilot Plant Turbine Supplied By Toshiba

(Right) I've been looking at power plant steam turbines and their photographs off and on since 1956. Haven't seen anything quite like this before. https://www.toshiba-energy.com/en
Someone remarked a power plant steam turbine would have to be about the size of a school bus to make that much electricity but this one is actually about the size of a small SUV.
Look at how thick the shell is and how many massive bolts they are using to hold it together.
Those lugs sticking out it's sides give the impression it could be rather heavy for a 30 megaWatt(e) turbine. Could be as much running temperature as pressure.

Your author worked for a major engineering company as an electrical instrumentation system drafter and designer on several coal and one nuclear power plants for several years in the late 1950’s. I still visit local power plants near where I live when the opportunity arises.

One of the coal power plants I made electrical connection drawings for in 1957 had electrostatic precipitators at the base of its smoke stack to capture coal fly ash. The plant was Ohio Edison’s (now FirstEnergy) W.H. Sammis plant, 75 mW(e) unit 1, located in South East Ohio on the Ohio River. It was later shown by the EPA to have produced acid rain in Coastal New York State, some 500 miles away. At the time, I wasn’t surprised since the stacks were at least as tall as the Washington Monument, (555 feet, 5 inches). Like a large forest fire, the stack’s coal exhaust plume would rise to the bottom of the Stratosphere and be carried far to the East by the Jet Stream.

I recently learned the W.H. Sammis plant will be closed permanently on June 1, 2022.

I was also personally involved in the automobile smog emissions struggle of the late 1960s engineering an automobile exhaust hydrocarbon emissions analyzer for Delco-Remy division of General Motors. This, plus what I had learned about coal emissions and the later ozone emissions hole, locked me into being concerned about the issue of energy's impact on the environment.

From that time until retirement I worked for a pharmaceutical company in their engineering division as an industrial electronics consultant.

By the time I retired in 1996, I realized that most of the folks who were concerned about Global Warming (later called “Climate Change”) were, in general, both ignorant of, and hostile to, engineers from the coal electricity world.

Yes, the supercritical carbon dioxide working fluid Allam Engine is a bit of rocket science, and is pushing the limits on several other technology fronts, but in early January 2021 it was announced that the pilot plant in Texas is going to be duplicated in four different countries for training local engineers so a lot of people are putting long term money on tables.

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Carbon Ratios

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More Climate Change Cleverness: How Conventional Carbon Capture Technology Works

Worley Parsons - Carbon Capture Overview (3).pdf

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What Others Are Doing With Advanced Conventional Carbon Capture Technology

https://deltacleantech.ca/delta-purification-systems-c02-capture/

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