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Fuel Cells Could Offer Cheap Carbon-Dioxide Storage
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/515026/fuel-cells-could-offer-cheap-carbon-dioxide-storage/[font face=Serif][font size=5]Fuel Cells Could Offer Cheap Carbon-Dioxide Storage[/font]
[font size=4]A new type of fuel cell could make CO2 storage cheaper, but it could also prove to be a good way to pump more oil out of the ground.[/font]
By Kevin Bullis on May 24, 2013
[font size=3]The electrochemical reactions that occur inside fuel cells to generate electricity could provide a cheap way to selectively remove carbon dioxide from the exhaust gases of fossil-fuel power plants. The same reactions could concentrate the carbon dioxide, allowing it to be stored underground. The fuel cell could also be used to generate electricity, providing revenue to offset its cost.
Existing approaches to capturing carbon dioxide would nearly double the cost of electricity from a coal-fired power plant. And although using fuel cells instead would still increase the cost of electricity, that increase—based on early tests and calculations—might be one-third or less, says Shailesh Vora, a program manager at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, which is helping to fund development of the technology with a $2.4 million grant. Researchers have considered using fuel cells for capturing carbon dioxide since at least the early 1990s, but the cells are cheaper now and they last longer, which could make them more practical.
Carbon capture technology, aimed at reducing emissions from power plants, might be key to addressing climate change, especially since fossil-fuel power is growing faster than power from low-carbon sources such as wind, solar, and nuclear (see “The Carbon Capture Conundrum,” “Will Carbon Capture Be Ready on Time?” and “The Enduring Technology of Coal”). Technology already exists that could capture carbon dioxide from exhaust gases, but it’s not being used at a large scale because it’s expensive, and because it uses steam that would otherwise be used to generate electricity, cutting a plant’s power production and revenue by about a third.
Vora says one advantage of the fuel cell approach is that while other carbon-capture technologies decrease the amount of electricity—and revenue—that a power plant generates, the use of fuel cells actually increases power production.
…[/font][/font]
[font size=4]A new type of fuel cell could make CO2 storage cheaper, but it could also prove to be a good way to pump more oil out of the ground.[/font]
By Kevin Bullis on May 24, 2013
[font size=3]The electrochemical reactions that occur inside fuel cells to generate electricity could provide a cheap way to selectively remove carbon dioxide from the exhaust gases of fossil-fuel power plants. The same reactions could concentrate the carbon dioxide, allowing it to be stored underground. The fuel cell could also be used to generate electricity, providing revenue to offset its cost.
Existing approaches to capturing carbon dioxide would nearly double the cost of electricity from a coal-fired power plant. And although using fuel cells instead would still increase the cost of electricity, that increase—based on early tests and calculations—might be one-third or less, says Shailesh Vora, a program manager at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, which is helping to fund development of the technology with a $2.4 million grant. Researchers have considered using fuel cells for capturing carbon dioxide since at least the early 1990s, but the cells are cheaper now and they last longer, which could make them more practical.
Carbon capture technology, aimed at reducing emissions from power plants, might be key to addressing climate change, especially since fossil-fuel power is growing faster than power from low-carbon sources such as wind, solar, and nuclear (see “The Carbon Capture Conundrum,” “Will Carbon Capture Be Ready on Time?” and “The Enduring Technology of Coal”). Technology already exists that could capture carbon dioxide from exhaust gases, but it’s not being used at a large scale because it’s expensive, and because it uses steam that would otherwise be used to generate electricity, cutting a plant’s power production and revenue by about a third.
Vora says one advantage of the fuel cell approach is that while other carbon-capture technologies decrease the amount of electricity—and revenue—that a power plant generates, the use of fuel cells actually increases power production.
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