Cleaning the atmosphere of CO2 just got possible

[WouldBe]

Seems logical to combine the power station with the cement-equivalent factory - or at least part of it if that's a way to use waste heat / gases.
Do they make gypsum from SOx anywhere ?

One of the links above says Germany gets around 50% of it's requirements for gypsum from power station scrubbers.

 

[equationgirl]

I'm saying it's *also* not proven commercially.

Because no-one's got a spare £1bn-£2bn to build a working full-scale unit. They were going to do it at Longannet but the government changed their minds.

I'm not sure you understand the prototype to commercialisation process fully. I can post up some more info about it if you want.

 

[equationgirl]

After a bit more digging, I'm a lot less keen on this Drax CCS scheme, as they now seem to be planning to use deep sea saline aquifers for storage, and I'm a lot less keen on that concept.

I'm sure in the original plans drawn up by Yorkshire Forward, before the government scrapped the regional development agencies, the plan was to build a pipeline to connect up with one or more of the big almost depleted gas fields.

Looks like they either missed the boat, or had to go for the cut price option.

I really don't think we understand the deep ocean well enough to be sticking huge amounts of CO2 down there and expecting that it's definitely going to stay down there, and not have any other negative impacts.

Have to admit I'm a bit sceptical about the storage part of CCS. I do think you're correct with your recollections about the Yorkshire Forward plans though, I remember something about the depleted gas fields.

Getting rid of the development agencies was one of the more short-sighted things this government has done.

 

[free spirit]

Have to admit I'm a bit sceptical about the storage part of CCS. I do think you're correct with your recollections about the Yorkshire Forward plans though, I remember something about the depleted gas fields.

Getting rid of the development agencies was one of the more short-sighted things this government has done.

yep, apparently we didn't need regional development agencies as westminster was perfectly capable of looking after our interests and ensuring the money was spread around fairly, which'd be why London got something like 10 times more infrastructure spending per head than Yorkshire or the North East last year.

 

[equationgirl]

yep, apparently we didn't need regional development agencies as westminster was perfectly capable of looking after our interests and ensuring the money was spread around fairly, which'd be why London got something like 10 times more infrastructure spending per head than Yorkshire or the North East last year.

It'd be laughable in any other circumstances.

 

[bi0boy]

Here's a nice way to do it - make lots of space elevators

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33998697

 

[Falcon]

Because no-one's got a spare £1bn-£2bn to build a working full-scale unit. They were going to do it at Longannet but the government changed their minds. I'm not sure you understand the prototype to commercialisation process fully.

The thing no-one's got a spare £1bn-£2bn for is maintaining existing generating capacity, not stressing it even further with colossally power intensive sequestration schemes. There's nothing commercial here.

 

[free spirit]

The thing no-one's got a spare £1bn-£2bn for is maintaining existing generating capacity, not stressing it even further with colossally power intensive sequestration schemes. There's nothing commercial here.

It's mostly allocated to the apparently unlimited budget of (privatised) nuclear decommissioning, and subsidising the generation for 30 years from the unbuilt, and quite possibly never to be built proposed new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point.

 

[Falcon]

It's mostly allocated to the apparently unlimited budget of (privatised) nuclear decommissioning, and subsidising the generation for 30 years from the unbuilt, and quite possibly never to be built proposed new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point.

Define "it". When you try, I think you'll find you are referring to "debt". The debt level, which was so high in 2008 it crashed the financial system, is now higher and rising.

 

[free spirit]

Define "it". When you try, I think you'll find you are referring to "debt", and committing the by now rather fatal mistake of overlooking how it ever supposed to be repaid.

You mentioned £1-2 billion needing to be found, I was just pointing out that was chicken feed compared to the £80 billion of so budget for nuclear decommisioning and £17.6 billion proposed subsidies for Hinkley.

I can't be arsed to get into a pointless discussion with you over the nature of debt, but suffice to say that we could borrow whatever we wanted to invest in new / upgraded energy infrastructure. The government chooses not to for ideological reasons. As for paying it back, well we could start by not paying £1 billion a year in profits / dividends to overseas stateowned companies that now own much of our utilities.

 

[NoXion]

What would be needed is some kind of process than can extract atmospheric carbon and combine it with something else into a relatively stable and non-toxic compound. Something like calcium carbonate would seem to be ideal as it has a wide variety of applications.

Planting more trees would help, but from what I understand of statements made by the likes of the IPCC that wouldn't be enough by itself. Proper old-growth style forest which would lock up more carbon than serried rows of newly planted trees takes a century or more to establish itself, and if the climate doomsters are right then we don't have that long.