Capturing and storing coal carbon emissions in China

Science : In the coming weeks, on the plains of Inner Mongolia, China plans to launch its first large-scale effort to capture and store carbon emissions.A new coal-to-liquid plant in Erdos will burn coal to make, at the outset, a little over 1 million metric tons per year of diesel and other petrochemicals. Operated by China’s biggest coal producer, Shenhua Group , the plant will generate as a byproduct about 3.6 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) a year. In an effort to make carbon capture pay, much of the gas will be sequestered in nearby oil reservoirs, where pressure from the CO ₂ will force hard-to-get oil to the surface.Shenhua’s plant is one of two pivotal carbon capture and storage efforts in China. The other is GreenGen , an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant that the Chinese government approved last June for construction in Tianjin.Instead of pulverizing coal as a conventional power plant does, IGCC plants turn it into gas, which allows for easy separation of CO ₂ from combustible gases—and far easier CO ₂ capture. If successful, GreenGen could redefine how power is generated from coal in China, says Richard Morse of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. “You could make a very strong case that it’s the leading carbon-capture project for coal-fired power in the world,” he says.