Boucher Introduces Legislation to Accelerate the Availability of CCS Technology

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - U.S. Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA), Chairman of the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, today introduced bipartisan federal legislation to advance the development and deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. CCS is a method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by capturing and injecting underground the carbon dioxide emitted from electricity generation plants that use fossil fuels.

"Coal is America's most abundant domestic fuel, and today, coal accounts for more than one-half of the fuel used for electricity generation. Given our large coal reserves, its lower cost in comparison with other fuels, and the inadequate availability of fuel alternatives, preservation of the ability of electric utilities to continue coal use is essential. The legislation introduced today addresses this clear need by enabling electric utilities that use coal to have the continued ability to do so when a mandatory program is implemented to control greenhouse gas emissions," Boucher said.

"This legislation is by no means in lieu of a cap and trade measure, which I believe to be urgently needed. It simply begins the necessary work to accelerate the deployment of CCS technologies in order to ensure that they are commercially available at the earliest possible time," Boucher added.

Local Rat in SWVA trying to have it both ways.

Boucher is doing what he does best. This is taking care of the coal interests as well as Dominion.

He's a rat, but his constituent services are what have kept him in office.

CCS technology?
Shouldn’t that justbe shortened to BS technology?

If you take activated charcoal or carbon and use it to strip out the CO2; and then later when it is spent and can’t adsorb any more CO2 you have to dispose of it, all they do is burn it to get rid of it. Doesn’t this just release the CO2?

Legislation to Accelerate the Availability of CCS Technology

Another costly "solution" to a non-problem.

Wait until the unitended consequences of injecting CO2 into the ground come home to roost....

Actually, when using activated carbon in a pressure swing adsorption unit to remove CO2 from well gases, flue gases, etc. the hydrocarbons adsorb to activated carbon under pressure and the CO2 flows right on through to be either rejected to atmosphere or collected. Then the carbon bed is regenerated on the next leg of the PSA cycle by pulling a vacuum on it, thus desorbing the hydrocarbons. The carbon beds are replaced when they become to saturated with heavier elements (C4's and higher usually) and lose their adsorption efficiency. At least, that's how we did it in the systems we've built (ours were for rejecting nitrogen from well gas, but it works for CO2, also.)

We've actually been researching another process lately using a certain type of molecular sieve to adsorb the N2 or CO2 directly.

Anyways, the whole point of our systems is to recover the hydrocarbons, not the CO2! Plus, when you reinject CO2, it tends to migrate from the injection site and go all over, getting into whatever. We had some customers whose gas wells had huge CO2 concentrations, because another company was injecting it to recover additional oil from wells miles away. The sheer premise of reinjecting CO2 is ludicrous to begin with; the attempt at implementation on such a massive scale would be certifiably insane.

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