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Pitch

America needs a lot of electricity produced to meet it's needs and the use of fossil fuels in our power plants is an important part of it.


Description

Summary

America and the world depends heavily on coal as a fuel for producing electricity because it is so widely available around the world. It has become synonymous with dirty energy as opposed to clean green energy and clean coal is regarded as an oxymoron. We believe that the fault lies not in coal, but in our collective failure to combust and utilize the products of combustion effectively. In fact the Coal Fired Power Plants which are today regarded as the principal culprits behind global warming and climate change can actually be agents of climate stabilization and slow global warming to acceptable results. At the very least it will act as a bridge between now and the energy scenario of the future. As iron and steel are still main stays of engineering materials, in spite of the huge advances and introductions of other materials over the years the combustion of thermal coal will still be required.                                                     In our proposal we intend to show with precise examples and data how a CFPP exhaust can be converted economically into a source of carbon reducing products, greatly reducing the CFPPs carbon footprint to negligible levels and at the same time increase their profitability.                                                               Our technical approach is based on tried and true technologies used in other industries for decades thus proving it's efficacious.


Is this proposal for a practice or a project?

Project


What actions do you propose?

Sidel Global Environmental will meet with the owners/operators of a Coal Fired Power Plant, do the required engineering for that facility to remove/reduce it's CO2 emissions by over 90%, and submit a proposal for the installation of a Sidel Carbon Capture Utilization System.   Upon agreement and the signing of a contract, further engineering and site drawings will be created, and materials to construct the required components will be ordered.                                                                                    Upon receipt of materials construction will begin on all of the required components. The main component, the Sidel CCU Reactor is a patented design. Inside this reactor is where the CO2 from the combusted coal exhaust will be absorbed into the Sidel created amine. This Sidel Reactor operates in an atmospheric condition. Removal of the CO2 from the exhaust does not require steam from the power plant, allowing the power plant to use it's produced steam to produce electricity.              The amine mixture used in the patented process is produced from an agriculturally grown plant and an earth based product.  As the combusted exhaust is traveling upward through the Sidel Reactor the Sidel amine mixture is being "sprayed" down from the top of the reactor. As the CO2 makes contact with the amine mixture, it is absorbed into this fluid mixture. Over 90% of the CO2 will be absorbed into this amine mixture.                            Leaving the vent of the Sidel Reactor will be less than 10% of the created CO2 during combustion. Collected and removed from the bottom of the reactor will be a slurry of calcium carbonate and a bio fuel that after further refining on site will have a calorific value of twice that of most coals. This bio fuel with the addition of a burner on the boilers can be combusted alongside the coal, greatly reducing the amount of coal that has to be combusted to  generate the required steam for the turbines.                            The calcium carbonate will be collected/ sold and transported off site and be delivered to it's respective customers.                         The Coal Fired Power Plant will be the main benefactor as it will be putting into the atmosphere less CO2 than a natural gas power plant and any emission credits that is has previously been having to purchase will no longer be necessary.                      Opportunities also exist to make other thermoelectric plants more efficient and less carbon intensive (eg: natural gas power plants and super critical CO2 cycle generation power plants)   Our approach makes centralized thermoelectric power plants more efficient and less carbon intensive by a number of measures and technologies which will be detailed in our proposal. We believe it is very possible to upgrade older power plants and engineer new power plants to efficiency levels which will result in greatly reduced RoI's. This will be due to increased fuel savings, increased electricity generation compared to applying other forms of carbon capture, the creation of fungible products and byproducts produced by capturing the CO2, and also by the recovery and utilization of products in the exhausts such as the ash and mercury and other particulates, and all of the water that is in the combusted flue gas. We believe rather than venting all of the exhaust into the atmosphere it is more efficient to technically upgrade the current and older versions of CFPPs to achieve all of the above stated results.


Who will take these actions?

In our opinion the best approach to bring about the desired environmental change is to empower, fund and incentivize the companies innovating and involved/ committed to this change.    The best method to convince users of a technology and to desire to shift to a better technology is to empower the creators of the technology to make it attractive and reachable to the users.   Example, Tesla did more to drive the switch to EV's than any amount of pushing consumers by tax breaks or other incentives. Empowering Tesla led to the further creation of EV's which consumers deeply desired. Once the product was manufactured  and was available, a huge demand and shift away from fossil fuel vehicles was generated. This emphasis on the power of pull rather than push should confirm the policy.              If other companies like ours as we strongly believe, who are engineering total packages for CFPP's which will be attractive to the power producing industry, we believe the Utilities will be drawn to them rather than being pushed. Part of the empowerment process is to give a fair opportunity to test and demonstrate proof of viability. Unfortunately at a time when more and more technologies should be given a chance to be tested and validated, it doesn't seem to be happening. The enabling of access to testing for companies irrespective of their size and clout should not be the deciding factor.


Where will these actions be taken?

Our desire is to first do the coal power plants in North America and then the natural gas power plants. Our Sidel Carbon Capture Utilization System can also be applied at industrial facilities where large volumes of natural gas or coal is used as a fuel source.        At this point we hope to have an engineering and sales team that will be capable of going to all countries of the world, first applying this technology to their power plants and then to their energy intensive industries.


In addition, specify the country or countries where these actions will be taken.

United States


Country 2

Canada


Country 3

Australia


Country 4

Russia


Country 5

India


Impact/Benefits


What impact will these actions have on greenhouse gas emissions and/or adapting to climate change?

It is a common fact that fossil fuel fired power plants are the worlds largest polluters of GHG Emissions. We want to eliminate over 90% of the CO2 emissions of the power plants where we can apply our Sidel Carbon Capture Utilization Systems.              One of our other processes is to recover the heat energy from the combusted exhaust. This recovered heat energy will be used to generate the created bio-fuel into a bio-fuel that can be combusted alongside the coal in these power plant boilers.          There are other particulates like the sulfur and the mercury and the ash that will be recovered and sold as useable products.


What are other key benefits?

One of the other benefits is, that even before we start applying our Sidel Carbon Capture Utilization System at a facility, the agriculturally grown plant out in the farmers field is already absorbing CO2 out of the atmosphere.                                     The second main benefit is going to be the ten's of thousands of full time jobs that will be created. These jobs will be in agriculture and in transportation and at the facilities where our technology is being applied, and at all the companies locations where our produced end products will be shipped to, to be transformed into other products again. It's a snowball effect. The more it moves, the bigger the snowball.


Costs/Challenges


What are the proposal’s projected costs?

Our main "competition" today is Carbon Capture Sequestration. This is where the CO2 in the combusted exhaust is captured and then with a Lot of heat energy from the power plant this CO2 is "stripped out" of the amine. Then this CO2 must be cooled to a temperature to where it can be compressed to a very high pressure where it is then put into a million dollar per mile pipeline and transported to a location where it is then again compressed and pumped into the ground and used as EOR or stored forever. This buried CO2 must be monitored forever to ensure that it does not leak back out into the atmosphere because of one reason or another.                                                                          This Carbon Capture Sequestration process on site costs approximately $70/ ton to remove.                                                 Our Sidel Carbon Capture Utilization System will remove the CO2 out of the combusted coal exhaust for less than $20/ ton and it gets transported off site by transport trucks. There is no monitoring required as it can't leak back into the atmosphere.


Timeline

Let's just concentrate on short term. CO2 numbers are already over 400 ppm and rising. The amount of waste heat energy that is being released into the atmosphere every day is staggering. The meteorologists say every year is warmer than last year. It is creating a Climate Change where today August 17th in California where we are was only 84F where 94 to 104F is the norm. California just went through a 6 year drought. Other parts of the country are having flooding because of unexpected excess rains. In Canada they are not getting the snow as they used to get. The farmers need the snow melt to irrigate their fields. 2017 is the worst forest fire years in British Columbia ever recorded.            What's happening in other parts of the world? Heat, Cold, Wet, Dry, abnormally. I am sure.                                                          What can happen, or what will happen if 60% to 80% of the heat energy in combusted fossil fuel exhaust is recovered and is utilized, and cooled exhaust is vented into the atmosphere?        What will be the result if 80% of the CO2 being vented into the atmosphere is captured, keeping it from going into the atmosphere?                                                                                  It's not for me but for our grandkids and their grandkids that we want to do this, because we do not know for a fact what will be the results if nothing is done about it. What we want to do, is do our best to Take Care Of Our Fathers World and put the atmosphere if we can in better condition than it is today.


About the author(s)

Sid Abma is the CEO of Sidel Systems and Sidel Global. The company Sidel was started in 1978 and specialized in the design and installation of warm water heating systems in commercial greenhouses. Heating large glass and plastic buildings efficiently is what led the company to have a focus towards achieving maximum energy efficiency. Working together with the greenhouse companies and the builders and other involved companies, building teamwork is what helped this industry to become one of the most focused towards always staying on top, looking for those methods of producing the most product prduced per sq.ft at the least cost.

In 2011 the company took on a slightly different focus. Sidel's Chief Technology Officer was watching what was happening to America's coal industry. Partho Mukherji had a lot of knowledge and experience with power plants in other countries where most of them were combusting coal. The next 3 years were focused   at developing a technology that was affordable for the industry, and would remove over 90% of the CO2 out of the combusted coal exhaust, and would transform the CO2 into useful-saleable products. We wanted a system that would create many full time jobs in a number of supporting industries, that would be good for the environment as well as the economy. That is what we have created.

Even before our Carbon Capture Utilization System is implemented at a coal fired power plant, our System is already removing CO2 out of the atmosphere. The agriculturally grown plant that is a big part of our CO2 capturing amine, while it is growing and developing in the fields is every day absorbing CO2 out of the atmosphere for it's own enrichment purposes.

Tracy Bible Raulerson is Sidel's Chief Marketing Officer. She has had extensive years training in the navy and experience working with ESCO companies engineering and putting together proposals for government and large corporations. Her expertise is at steering the company forward.


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References

 

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