Very little crude oil is used in making electrical power.
Most oil goes to transportation and industrial use.
Posted on 02/10/2006 12:51:58 PM PST by thackney
Oil giant BP is expected to announce today the construction of a second, clean-burning power plant, this time in the United States, a BP executive told an Anchorage audience this week.
BP and some partners moved forward last year with a similar but smaller plant in Scotland. In all, BP plans to spend $8 billion to build a total of 10 plants worldwide that generate "carbon-free" power, the executive said.
Charles Christopher, BP's CO2 program manager, spoke Wednesday at the Alaska Forum on the Environment about the oil company's efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and make money doing it.
BP has spent $200 million over the last four years on projects to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which cause global warming, by improving energy efficiency and reducing flaring of natural gas during oil production. By taking these steps, the company made $600 million in revenue, he said.
In 2002, BP achieved its goal of reducing total company emissions by 10 percent from 1990 levels, he said. "And we made money doing it," Christopher added.
Its current goal is to maintain the 10 percent reduction until 2012.
...
The latest $1 billion, 500-megawatt plant will be built at a BP refinery in Carson, Calif., according to The Wall Street Journal. Like the 250-megawatt plant in Scotland, it will produce electricity from hydrogen, which releases water, not greenhouse gases, when burned.
Unlike the Scottish plant, which converts natural gas into carbon dioxide and hydrogen and then pumps the gas underground, the California plant will use petroleum coke as a fuel source, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Petroleum coke is a byproduct of oil refining.
"It's the bottom of the barrel," Christopher said. "The refineries in the U.S. produce a lot of it, and it's not worth anything."
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
< groan>
Honestly, nuclear power plants are very difficult to destroy through a terror attack as is. The best chance is to drive a large airplane into the building. That's been done already, and isn't happening again.
I'm not very worried about a nuclear power plant accident at all. The new ones, especially the new "pebble bed" reactors are designed to be impossible to melt down. As far as I'm concerned, we could replace all of our electricity generation with those within few years. And, you really wouldn't need to really "fortify" them. The security they already have should be more than enough.
Well, it seems like the input fuel is a waste product from refining so there's a strong economic basis. Nothing to be upset about here as far as I can tell.
From BP Announcement:
But the detail is probably found later in the article:
The costs of hydrogen power are higher than those of traditional power plant fuels. As a result, the project will depend, in part, on incentives provided in the Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 for advanced gasification technologies. In addition, continued progress on the California Public Utilities Commission's electricity "resource adequacy" procurement policies will encourage this first-of-its-kind facility.
Nuclear?
Very little crude oil is used in making electrical power.
Most oil goes to transportation and industrial use.
I seem to recall that the "Garbage into Oil" plant is able to convert this oil coke into a form of normal oil that can be refined into heating fuel.
If that is correct, along with this use, "Oil Coke" is not so much without value as it is under utilized.
Turning waste products into energy, this is the sort of intelligent use of existing resources that needs to expand.
By starting with methane CH4, and then stripping the C to combine it with O2, freeing the H4 for combustion, the process gives up over 50% of the mole energy; this means a lot of wasted energy by anyone's standards.
The manufactured CO2 will be pumped underground to "sink" it; out of sight, out of mind.
ISO NE is concerned about the lack of oil fired generation, with a good turn down in this area, but with the commie Governments in this region I am not going to hold my breath.
PAULA DOBBYN you should cease your carbon dioxide emissions, which cause global warming.
Why are they building anything here ???? What we are some third world country now ?
They need to leave quickly as possible.
What are you talking about?
"The refineries in the U.S. produce a lot of it, and it's not worth anything."
funny, I thought they used it in road construction....
Hydrogen is produced by passing natural gas over red hot coke. Is this petroleum coke the same as coal coke?
"The latest $1 billion, 500-megawatt plant will be built at a BP refinery in Carson, Calif., according to The Wall Street Journal. Like the 250-megawatt plant in Scotland, it will produce electricity from hydrogen, which releases water, not greenhouse gases, when burned."
I'm missing something. Where is the Hydrogen coming from? Is it a byproduct from another industrial source?
They are no longer British Petroleum, just BP, Beyond Petroleum in some of their Ads.
They are just another energy company and have lots and lots of facilities here in the US. Just like Shell.
I do not know what process they are using.
There is more information at:
http://www.bpalternativenergy.com/liveassets/bp_internet/alternativenergy/next_generation_hydrogen_carson.html
I tried chasing through some of their links. More fluff than real technical info. It may be there, I just don't have time at the moment to find it.
The article says it is residue remaining after they refine fuel oil. That residue wouldn't be the same as coal (would it).
It's probably a solid similar to what you get from heating coal in an oxygen-free mass.
http://www.atticusmedia.co.uk/carson/bp-700.html
This video walks (slowly) through the process.
Coke (petroleum): A residue high in carbon content and low in hydrogen that is the final product of thermal decomposition in the condensation process in cracking. This product is reported as marketable coke or catalyst coke. The conversion is 5 barrels (of 42 U.S. gallons each) per short ton. Coke from petroleum has a heating value of 6.024 million Btu per barrel.
It is a low value product. The author of the article is overstating it to say no value.
http://www.roskill.com/reports/petroleum
World petroleum coke output has grown by 4%pa since 1991 and could rise from 83Mt (including 59mt marketable coke) in 2001 to 88Mt by the end of 2005. This figure could be exceeded as 13.5Mtpy of new or expanded capacity could come on stream during this period. Growth in North America (3.3%pa) and Europe (1.4%pa) is below the world average but this is balanced by significant expansion in Asia (about 8%pa). World demand for petroleum coke is expected to rise mainly due to increasing oil production and consumption, decreasing quality of crude oil feedstocks, and higher demand for gasoline and other transportation feeds. The progressively stringent environmental regulations for these fuels will lead to a greater need for coking. Globally, around 75% of petroleum coke output is burned as a fuel: in North America, around 90% of coke used in the energy sector is catalyst coke that is burned as a fuel in its host refinery. In Europe and the Pacific region, non-energy applications (including electrodes and cement manufacture) are proportionately more important. The manufacture of carbon and graphite electrodes is the largest non-fuel end-use for petroleum coke, which is the main ingredient in carbon anodes for primary aluminium smelting and in graphite electrodes for steel production via the electric arc furnace (EAF) process.
LOL not a American company sold during the rein of the sink king should never of happened!
I do not understand what you are trying to say.
Ever heard of The Standard Oil Company of Indiana (Amoco)? It's now called BP, OK?
If the TransAlaska Natural Gas Pipeline is built, and we still should say if, we will be learning a lot about natural gas. Up to now, though, in Fairbanks, gas has had only minimal development. In the next decade there will be a lot of gas expertise showing up. Now it is a sideline for some plumbers.
It will be built, but when is still a big questions, years or decades. But it will happen.
Conoco has agreed to the contract, but Exxon is holding off. The contract is supposed to go to the Legislature in two months or so, but with the price of natural gas still dropping, interest may be flagging.
The interest was there when the price was quite a bit cheaper. It has not gone away, the demand has grown and the domestic supply continues to decline for the Midwest.
Haiti was a French colony. Why would they want to build there? They don't speak English in Haiti. Haiti has TOTAL Petroleum, a French company.
We have been depending on foreign companies to supply energy for quite a long time in this country.
LOL it was a joke but a third world country never the less.
We have been depending on foreign companies to supply energy for quite a long time in this country.
Yes but not inside suppling basic primary energy needs like electric.
I think we can handle that ourselves.
Yes they have. This isn't even BP first time doing it.
Break even is $2.50. $7.50 is good enough to build. $5.00 is marginal, and a lot of proposals have come and gone in the past 30 years at that rate. The present proposal would be in danger if the price drops below $5.00. It shouldn't matter since nobody can seriously guess what the price will be in ten years when the pipeline would be complete, but it does.
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