Northwich CO2 plant 'worth 22,000 cars off the road'

[Mark]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-m ... r-48785945

The UK's first major carbon capture plant will be built in Cheshire. Tata Chemicals Europe has been given a £4.2m government grant towards the £16.7m project, which will recycle 40,000 tonnes of waste carbon dioxide for use in manufacturing. It will have the same effect as taking 22,000 cars off the road, energy ministers claim. Carbon capture is part of the government's plan to hit its own zero net emission target by 2050. Environmental campaigners said funding for carbon capture was "a step in the right direction". The Northwich plant will be the UK's biggest carbon capture facility when it begins operating in 2021, Tata Chemicals said. It is also claimed that it will be the first in the world to purify and liquefy CO2 as a raw material to make sodium bicarbonate, which is used in food and pharmaceutical processing.

'Hugely exciting'
The plant will extract the CO2 - which contributes to climate change - by exposing waste gases to chemical solvents known as amines. It will represent 11% of the total emissions from Tata's power plant, which provides steam and power for the company's Northwich operations and other businesses in the area. Tata Chemicals managing director Martin Ashcroft said the project was "hugely exciting" and hoped it would "demonstrate the viability of carbon capture and utilisation". Other carbon capture plants exist in the UK, most notably at the Drax power station in Selby, North Yorkshire, which is capable of recycling a tonne of CO2 each day. Drax was granted a further £500,000 towards a £1m project by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, which announced on Thursday a total of £26m of funding for nine projects that encourage industry to recycle waste CO2. Energy minister Chris Skidmore said: "If we are to become a net zero emissions economy and end our contribution towards global warming, then innovative schemes like Tata Chemicals' will be essential." In 2015, the government scrapped a proposed £1bn grant for the development of carbon capture projects. Friends of the Earth's head of policy Mike Childs said: "While this funding is a step in the right direction, far greater support is needed to drive up efficiencies and force down costs.
"However, carbon capture must not be used as an excuse to keep the UK hooked on fossil fuels."

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

Carbon capture is nice. The article doesn't say what it does with it.

[careful_eugene]

Carbon capture is nice. The article doesn't say what it does with it.

From the article

It is also claimed that it will be the first in the world to purify and liquefy CO2 as a raw material to make sodium bicarbonate, which is used in food and pharmaceutical processing.

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

Carbon capture is nice. The article doesn't say what it does with it.

From the article

It is also claimed that it will be the first in the world to purify and liquefy CO2 as a raw material to make sodium bicarbonate, which is used in food and pharmaceutical processing.

I didn't catch that. My bad.

So I wonder if the world needs or can afford to make 40 gigatons of bicarbonate to solve the CO2 emissions problem?

[woodburner]

It would make a lot of fire exitinguishers, and the carbon would remain locked up as long as they were never used. Maybe also stop bread making, and beer and wine making as they produce CO2. No more fizzy drinks either.

[kenneal - lagger]

That's just greenwash!! It will sequester CO2 for a couple of months at the most until the bicarb is used in cooking to produce bubbles which will then be vented into atmosphere again.

Anyone know if carbon fibre can be made from waste CO2. That used in the car industry instead of steel would be a much better use and with lightweight electric cars designed for a long life would be an even better use.

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

That's just greenwash!! It will sequester CO2 for a couple of months at the most until the bicarb is used in cooking to produce bubbles which will then be vented into atmosphere again.

How dare people trumpet greenwash! <sarcasm off>

You aren't seriously surprised, are you KL? Just as there are popular doom memes (we all know which one I'm thinking of!) there are popular save the world memes.

CCS isn't a bad idea overall, the problem is more the cost of this particular engineering solution. Having been involved in carbon capture estimates and modeling of various sorts with government scientists, there are intrinsic problems that can be overwhelmed by throwing dollars at the projects, but holy cow, the amount of those dollars made it just look impossible.

Anyone know if carbon fibre can be made from waste CO2. That used in the car industry instead of steel would be a much better use and with lightweight electric cars designed for a long life would be an even better use.

I'm a fan of making limestone. Bricks, specifically. And then using the bricks to build stuff.

[woodburner]

Carbon fibre is evil stuff. It makes very strong composites, but when that breaks the broken edges can cut just about everything softer than tyre rubber, as it does a good job cutting that. And why the hell are you making composites? Un-bio-degradabe, and made from refined fossil fuels and near non-recyclable.

[kenneal - lagger]

............. Un-bio-degradabe, ............

Is just the point it will lock up carbon for a very long time. Hopefully it would be longer lasting than steel, and lighter so that less energy is used to move it around. Resins can be made from natural materials as well as petroleum. Anyway if they are made from oil based materials that is less oil being burned and chucking CO2 into the air.

[woodburner]

You could try growing trees. Carbon fibre and its resins release plenty of CO2 when disposed of in waste incinerators. Or are you having massive landfill pits for disposal. Where of course the microbes will begin their relentless decomposition. There is a effin lot of composite aircraft chugging around. You will need a big pit.

[Mark]

The plant will capture, purify and liquify CO2 from the flue gases from a 96MWe gas-fired CHP plant, which supplies steam and power to the company’s operations and other industrial businesses in the area. Apparently it will be capable of capturing and producing up to 40,000 tons of CO2 per year and will reduce TCE’s carbon emissions by 11 per cent....

Believe the plant makes both sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and sodium carbonate (soda ash). I always understood that soda ash was the bigger volume, and is one of the major raw materials for glass manufacture.... In days gone by lots used to go down the road the glass industry in St Helens, but not sure how much goes there these days...? Also, not sure whether the CO2 would be useable in soda ash production....?

[woodburner]

How much fuel will be needed to capture and liquify the CO2, and how does the heat extracted from the CO2 not contribute to the claimed global warming when it is released?

[kenneal - lagger]

I've been trying to find out what happens to the CO2 from the Lime and soda ash in glass production but the only reference that I've found is from Wikipedia

Of the many silica-based glasses that exist, ordinary glazing and container glass is formed from a specific type called soda-lime glass, composed of approximately 75% silicon dioxide (SiO2), sodium oxide (Na2O) from sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), calcium oxide (CaO), also called lime, and several minor additives.

which would suggest that the CO2 from the carbonate is lost to the atmosphere.

If that is true the whole process is greenwash as the CO2 captured is only sequestered for a couple of months at the most. CCS CO2 needs to be sequestered for centuries to make the process worthwhile.