WV Coal Member Meeting 2024 1240x200 1 1

More CO2 Recycling with Algae

 
 
As you should by now know, we have elaborated on the direct capture, at the point of emission, and recycling, into liquid fuels, via Sabatier or Carnol technologies, of Carbon Dioxide produced by various types of coal processors, as a preferred and profitable course to follow in the resolution of carbon emission issues, as opposed to the costly, punitive and counter-productive concepts of Sequestration and Cap&Trade.
 
Harvesting waste or purpose-grown botanical cellulose in various forms, as well, and adding it directly to the coal being processed in a coal-to-liquid fuel conversion facility of appropriate technical design, would also serve to recycle Carbon Dioxide and help to stabilize it's atmospheric concentrations.
 
We have also documented efforts underway to establish "farms" for the intensive cultivation of algae as a means to capture and recycle CO2. Such concepts utilizing algae might provide additional options for the uses of algal biomass. Oil expressed from algae, for instance, has been successfully employed, with some processing, as a jet fuel and diesel replacement, as we've documented. High-cellulose strains could, presumably, also be liquefied with coal after, oil is extracted from them, via some of the coal conversion technologies, such as in Mobil's 1981 patented process we've recorded for you.
 
Following are a few excerpts from the enclosed article, which presents a fuller case for the use of algae to help coal help us achieve domestic energy independence. Additional comment followins. 

"Sequestration prevents carbon from entering the atmosphere by capturing and storing the gas underground in geologic caverns and oil formations. Sequestration is extremely costly."

And:

"It doesn't make sense spending public dollars putting a valuable waste product (carbon dioxide) underground. Algae are a biological alternative. There are certainly challenges to growing algae near coal plants: algae bioreactors have not been implemented on a large scale, coal power plants don't have a lot of excess water, and power companies are not farmers! Growing algae is fundamentally a farming operation - controlling inputs and harvesting algae sustainably. When has the word "harvest" entered the vocabulary of a coal plant operator? Coal farmers - a foreign concept."

We all know that "Sequestration is extremely costly". And, the real cost must include a calculation for the fact that, as we have repeatedly said, "It doesn't make sense spending public dollars putting a valuable waste product (carbon dioxide) underground". Carbon dioxide is actually a by-product of our coal use. It only becomes a "waste product" when we treat it like one.

In any case, this article on the use of algae to take advantage of a valuable coal-use by-product, we're certain inadvertently, evokes again the spirit of West Virginia's State Seal: The Miner and the Farmer, together, working for the future. The excerpt concludes with the thought that "Coal farmers" would be "a foreign concept". We think, instead, that it could, and should, become a domestic ideal.