July 1, 2009.

    Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) Cholla Power Plant is set to receive approximately $70.6 million in federal stimulus funds for a coal gasification project.

    According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Cholla plant was selected in May to receive $70.6 million from a $2.4 billion program to “expand and accelerate the commercial deployment of carbon capture and storage technology.” The funds come from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

    The DOE notes, “The funding is part of the Obama administration's ongoing effort to develop technologies to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas and contributor to global climate change, into the atmosphere while creating new jobs.”

    Energy Secretary Steven Chu explained, “To prevent the worst effects of climate change, we must accelerate our efforts to capture and store carbon in a safe and cost-effective way. This funding will both create jobs now and help position the United States to lead the world in CCS (carbon capture and storage) technologies, which will be increasing in demand in the years ahead.”

    An announcement by the DOE noted that the intent of the project at Cholla Power Plant is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while still using domestic energy sources, such as coal.

    “...funding will permit the existing algae-based carbon mitigation project to expand testing with a coal-based gasification system,” the announcement explained. “The goal is to produce fuels from domestic resources while reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions. The overall process will minimize production of carbon dioxide in the gasification process to produce a substitute natural gas from coal. The host facility for this project is the Cholla Power Plant...”

    According to DOE, coal gasification not only reduces carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions, but also produces useful by-products, such as sulfur.

    “In some methods, the sulfur can be extracted in either a liquid or solid form that can be sold commercially,” a DOE publication notes.

    That same publication explains the gasification process. “Rather than burning coal directly, gasification breaks down coal into its basic chemical constituents. In a modern gasifier, coal is typically exposed to steam and carefully controlled amounts of air or oxygen under high temperatures and pressures. Under these conditions, molecules in coal break apart, initiating chemical reactions that typically produce a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and other gaseous compounds.”

    Hydrogen resulting from the process, as well as some of the other gasses released from the coal, is then used to generate power.

 

(Or, the Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide can be re-combined, via Fischer-Tropsch and related technologies, to synthesize liquid fuels and chemical manufacturing feed stocks. - JtM)

    APS is one of only two companies specifically named by the DOE when the funding was announced. A Ramgen power plant in Bellevue, Wash., will receive $20 million for “testing of an existing advanced carbon dioxide compression project.” The remainder of the $2.4 billion in clean energy stimulus funds will be used for various projects that are part of either a clean coal initiative, carbon capture and storage project, geological sequestration site identification or geological sequestration research.

 

(So, they are still wasting money geological sequestration. - JtM)

    “DOE’s Recovery Act projects will stimulate private sector infrastructure investments due to the significant amount of cost sharing that will occur in all large-scale projects to be selected for implementation,” the DOE notes. “These combined public and private investments will establish a proving ground for creating a safe, reliable, widely-available, environmentally responsible and affordable CCS (carbon capture and storage) infrastructure.”"

 

(Note that they already have an "algae-based" Carbon Dioxide mitigation facility at Cholla, which they will expand to accept emissions from the coal gasification plant. As we have documented, the algae can then either be harvested and co-gasified with the coal, or used for bio diesel production - if they've thought that far ahead. - JtM)

 

It sounds like a great project, except that they plan to burn the syngas in a power generator rather than convert it into liquid fuel, via Fischer-Tropsch processing.

 

And, they're still talking about expensive and wasteful geologic sequestration of Carbon Dioxide, while at the same time spending money on the more-advantageous algal recycling of Carbon Dioxide.