Can Captured Carbon Save Coal?; June 2009; Scientific American
Earth 3.0; by David Biello; 8 Page(s) Like all big coal-fired
power plants, the 1,600-megawatt-capacity Schwarze Pumpe plant
in Spremberg, Germany, is undeniably dirty. Yet a small addition
to the facility—a tiny boiler that pipes 30 MW worth of steam to
local industrial customers—represents a hope for salvation from
the global climatechanging consequences of burning fossil fuels.
To heat that boiler, the damp, crumbly brown coal known as
lignite—which is even more polluting than the harder black
anthracite variety—burns in the presence of pure oxygen,
releasing as waste both water vapor and that more notorious
greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2). By condensing the water in
a simple pipe, Vattenfall, the Swedish utility that owns the
power plant, captures and isolates nearly 95 percent of the CO2
in a 99.7 percent pure form.