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NNadir

(33,368 posts)
Sun Jul 18, 2021, 09:50 AM Jul 2021

UK's First Gas-Fired Allam Cycle Power Plant Taking Shape

This is a news item from Power magazine, to which I have a free subscription, owing to my interest in trends in engineering the electrical grid: UK’s First Gas-Fired Allam Cycle Power Plant Taking Shape

Let me preface my remarks by clearly stating, that in my view, 100% of "let's build carbon dioxide dumps" (sequestration) are unsustainable lipstick on the dangerous fossil fuel pig, just as wind power and solar power are unsustainable lipstick on the the dangerous natural gas pig.

This news item involving the Allam cycle, in which I've had considerable interest in a highly modified form that I call "the reverse Allam cycle," is involved in the unsustainable fantasy of building carbon dioxide dumps the consequences of which will fall on future generations.

The Allam cycle, as generally described, is essentially an oxyfuel combustion cycle designed to convert dangerous natural gas into a pure stream of carbon dioxide. Pure streams of carbon dioxide may have seriously important industrial uses, and there are many reasons that having them is desirable, but obtaining such a waste stream from a dangerous fossil fuel, any dangerous fossil fuel is in my view a crime against all future generations, and in fact, all living things.

From the news item:

The inventor of the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle, a novel power cycle that uses supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2), is collaborating with a subsidiary of Singapore-based Sembcorp Industries to potentially develop the UK’s first 300-MW natural gas–fired NET Power station at an existing site at Teesside, northeastern England.

Zero Degrees Whitetail Development Ltd. (ZDW), a subsidiary of North Carolina-based 8 Rivers Capital, and Sembcorp subsidiary Sembcorp Energy UK (SEUK) on July 13 said they will collaborate to set up the 300-MW Whitetail Clean Energy NET Power project at SEUK’s Wilton International site. While the companies did not provide a potential start date, 8 Rivers said the project may be the first of “multiple 300-MW facilities in the UK,” and that it could commission a NET Power station in the UK “as soon as 2025.”

The project is another notable prospect for 8 Rivers, which has been developing its potentially revolutionary power plant based on the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle (AFC) since 2012 under NET Power, a business arm it holds jointly with heavyweight industry backers Exelon, McDermott, and Occidental Low Carbon Ventures.

As POWER has reported, the AFC is essentially a specialized Brayton cycle that is directly fired with oxy-fuel and uses supercritical CO2 instead of steam as its working fluid. The cycle also recycles its exhaust heat and eliminates all air emissions, including traditional pollutants and CO2. As a byproduct, the cycle produces pipeline-quality CO2 that can be sequestered. NET Power has said these attributes could make it more cost-competitive and efficient than traditional gas power plants...


A picture from the news item:



It's probably open sourced, so anyone interested can read the whole news item herself or himself.

Oxyfuel combustion that does not involve separation of oxygen from air, either by membrane, pressure swing or other energy wasting schemes, would be available as a side product of thermochemical water splitting, and as such, might produce very pure carbon dioxide streams associated with the combustion of say, waste biomass.

A reverse Allam cycle would use carbon dioxide, rather than oxygen, as the oxidant. This would also produce enormous environmental benefits in a case where a future generation chooses to clean up, via what would essentially amount to air capture, after the waste produced by our generation and dumped indiscriminately into one of our favorite waste dumps, the planetary atmosphere, while we all waited, like Godot, for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here, and won't come.

I trust you're having a nice weekend.

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