Pioneering European CO2 capture plant coming to Spain in 2009
In 2009, Europe will have a CO2 capture plant in the Northwest of Spain, in the coal mining region of El Bierzo.
The "City of Energy" foundation has signed an agreement with Fwesa and Praxair (Foster Wheeler Energy), technology providers for the plant. The "City of Energy", a public entity itself, will build an experimental plant near the coal power plant of Cubillos del Sil which will capture CO2 from the atmosphere. The cost of the project is 70 million euros.
The plant is considered a first step towards the industrialisation of this technology, based in injection and CO2 transportation. The EU plans to have 12 plants like this working for 2015.
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[Source: Spanish Ministry of Energy via Energias Renovables]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
GoodCheer 10:00AM (10/03/2007)
Amazing how they're not whining about the CO2 being emitted by China. They're just moving ahead producing jobs in engineering, construction and operation, and removing CO2.
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T2 11:33AM (10/03/2007)
The photo provides a good illustration of why central electricity generating plants are a bad idea. Readers who have not had the opportunity to study thermodynamics will no doubt appreciate that there are substantial heat losses from the boilerhouse smokestack but may be unaware that the cooling tower on the left, while condensing the steam back to hot water for re-use is in fact releasing close to 70% of the original steam energy into the atmosphere as it does so.
Generally electric power from remote locations as depicted is really a way of exporting pollution. Sure it's cleaner but NIMBY thank you very much. That 70% of wasted low grade energy is important since many residential and office spaces are heated by the burning of natural gas in open flame furnaces thus denying that one chance we have to use it for generating electricity. At the same time for every 1kw of electricity we use, the power station authority is throwing away 4kw of heat energy that we could have used for space heating.
T2
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bioburner 7:16PM (10/03/2007)
T2-agreed. Also keep in mind that nuclear power plants operate at lower steam pressures and thus have a lower overall cycle efficiency. Thus they would release more waste heat to the environment than a fossil plant.
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Arthur Embleton 5:41AM (10/07/2007)
Also agree with T2 there. What we need is for the government planning requirements for new builds to include CHP (Combined Heat and Power) systems in all new office blocks, hospitals, blocks of flats and other large buildings. These can then efficiently run a gas generator to generate electricity and also heat the building and provide hot water from the otherwise unused heat. This could mean that during the winter, electricity and heat in the building could be made at near 100% efficiency.
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