BioCleanCoal (BCC) in a joint venture with Linc Energy will develop a bioreactor that will convert CO2 through the photosynthesis process into oxygen and solid biomass to permanently and safely remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
The bioreactor offers a purely organic and environmentally sound solution to the large scale greenhouse emission problem.
The benefits of the bioreactor system are:
- very low maintenance
- designed to handle any amount of gas
- by-product is oxygen
Coal
Coal is an extremely important fuel and will remain so. Some 23% of primary
energy needs are met by coal and 39% of electricity is generated from
coal. About 70% of world steel production depends on coal feedstock. Coal
is the world's most abundant and widely distributed fossil fuel source.
The International Energy Agency expects a 43% increase in its use from
2000 to 2020.
Problem
However, burning coal produces about 9 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide
each year which is released to the atmosphere, about 70% of this being
from power generation. Other estimates put carbon dioxide emissions from
power generation at one third of the world total i.e. over 25 billion
tonnes of CO2 emissions.
| Professor Flannery, who spoke
at a business and sustainability conference in Parliament House on
Monday 19th May, said new science showed the world was much more susceptible
to greenhouse gas emissions than had been thought eight years ago. “Regardless of what happens to emissions in the future, there was already far too much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere,” he said. “Cutting emissions was not enough. Mankind now had to take greenhouse gases out of the air.” "The current burden of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is in fact more than sufficient to cause catastrophic climate change," Prof Flannery said. "Everything's going in the wrong direction at the moment, timelines are getting shorter, the amount of pollution in the atmosphere is growing. It's extremely urgent. And all conventional coal-fired power stations - which did not have ‘clean coal’ technology - should be closed by 2030.” |
Scale of problem - NO problem for the BCC/Linc reactor
One of the challenges with implementing new emissions control technology
is that everything is so big. The scale is massive. For example, emissions
control equipment for a 500MW plant treats two million cubic feet of flue
gas every minute. Scrubbers may be as large as the power plant to which
they are attached. Remember that we need to add new emissions control
technology without taking the plant off-line. The BCC/Linc reactor
has being designed with above challenges in mind.
