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Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

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Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby Subjectivist » Thu 10 Apr 2014, 16:54:54

Does anyone around here have any experience with Cryogenic Carbon Monoxide? Based on Wikipedia, which is not the best possible source, Carbon Monoxide turns to liquid at about the same temperature as Methane. It only has about half the energy content of Methane, but it costs under half the European Natural Gas price to produce.

This means that potentially if China or India or the US develop coal gasification in a big way, especially underground deep seam gassification that is cheaper than gasification of mined coal, they could sell it to Europe. The LNG handling equipment at all those facilities in Europe should be able to handle liquid CO. Also liquifying the produced coal gas CO would leave the H2 gas behind because the temperatures needed to liquify hydrogen are much lower than those needed for CH4 or CO.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby dissident » Thu 10 Apr 2014, 20:26:04

What would be used to produce CO? Methane? Then what's the point? There are no readily available reservoirs of carbon monoxide. Any industrial combustion process will produce mostly CO2.

Atmospheric concentrations of CO are tiny in the troposphere where it is scrubbed by OH. CO is produced in the upper atmosphere but there is not that much air mass up there (atmospheric density falls off exponentially with altitude).
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby Subjectivist » Thu 10 Apr 2014, 21:01:29

underground-coal-gassification-t69418.html

Have a look, includes links for videos about underground coal gasification. They inject oxygen and water vapor and extract H2 and CO.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby dissident » Thu 10 Apr 2014, 21:15:31

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', 'h')ttp://peakoil.com/forums/underground-coal-gassification-t69418.html

Have a look, includes links for videos about underground coal gasification. They inject oxygen and water vapor and extract H2 and CO.


What a waste of energy. Burning the coal directly and producing CO2 is the proper choice.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby Subjectivist » Fri 11 Apr 2014, 08:47:04

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dissident', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', 'h')ttp://peakoil.com/forums/underground-coal-gassification-t69418.html

Have a look, includes links for videos about underground coal gasification. They inject oxygen and water vapor and extract H2 and CO.


What a waste of energy. Burning the coal directly and producing CO2 is the proper choice.


You clearly did not read any of the info or watch the video. They are using underground gassification to extract coal seans that are too deep to mine conventionally and they recover 80% of the initial energy value of the coal. They also do not leave behind the 40% of the coal like underground room and pillar mining does.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby Subjectivist » Fri 11 Apr 2014, 08:55:45

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'C')O and CO2 belch from the exhaust pipe of ICE's, a byproduct of combustion power-generation. It just doesn't seem to make sense that the fart can feed the animal? Right?

CO comes from thousands of different sources but the two biggest deliberate human made sources are coal gassification and old style blast furnaces that use CO from burning coke to reduce iron oxide into liquid iron and CO2.

Until the 1940's in the US and the 1960's in th UK the majority of gas appliances burned town gas, made by burning coal with oxygen and steam to produce a mix that was about 50/50 CO and H2 gas. That is why methane from the ground is called Natural Gas, it was distinct from the manufactured Town Gas it replaced.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby steam_cannon » Fri 11 Apr 2014, 11:56:05

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'C')O and CO2 belch from the exhaust pipe of ICE's, a byproduct of combustion power-generation. It just doesn't seem to make sense that the fart can feed the animal? Right?
I think the problem with that would be efficiency. There's would be nothing wrong with recycling CO, if it was easy but I believe the problem is it's not very easy to separate still burnable CO. It would require cooling, filtering, then gas separation and even using an efficient gas pressure swing gas separation system, I doubt it would be efficient enough to be worth while to use with an internal combustion engine.

The main problems with CO as a fuel:
- It's been done, but it's more toxic to work and transport then most hydrocarbons. A whiff of gasoline won't kill you or build up. With CO both brief exposure and prolonged low level exposure can be deadly. It's been worked with before as a household gas, but it's got some real negatives.
- CO gas usually has hydrogen in it as well unless the gas has been separated though liquification or chemical reaction, and hydrogen tends to make materials brittle as the tiny atoms work their way into metals as well as escape pipes.
- It would probably be a more salable product if you use CO to make other hydrocarbons. As a product, there isn't a big market for CO.
- The negative for engines is it's kind of low energy as a fuel, that's why people find it difficult to make a fast woodgas powered car.

Positives CO has going for it:
- CO is well studied as an industrial chemical and as an energy source.
- It's possible to make wood gas in your backyard, you can power a car, tractor, or heating system with it. I've made a basic wood gas gasification rig before, it's pretty easy and an OK use for scrap woody matter. (Though I think I'd recommend making methane in your backyard over woodgas.)
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Fri 11 Apr 2014, 18:18:43

Modern ICEs don't emit much CO, and people who try to asphyxiate themselves in the garage are likely to fail.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby rollin » Fri 11 Apr 2014, 19:44:04

Problems with CO.
Lowered efficiency, even lower when liquefied.
Toxic gas.
End result is CO2 at the user end and the pollution from coal tars and metals at the producers end.
All the problems with coal mining.

Most likely it would be transported to Europe as coal and in certain applications coal gas would be produced in country and piped to the user. No real need for cryogenic liquids.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby Subjectivist » Sat 12 Apr 2014, 04:42:03

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'I') am in no way a chemist, but this just feels craxy. CO2 is reduced. Entropy. What burns in a gasifier is the H2 and the char, ie the carbon, the C. CO2 is a waste product. How can a waste product be a fuel source?Sounds like perpetual energy to me.


There are several types of gasifiers so there are different products you can get out. The earliest systems designed to produce useable gas just roasted coal or wood without letting any air in so the gasses that came out were tar aka pitch used to preserve wood and caulk seams on ship hulls, the flammable gasses were either a bonus or a problem depending on who was roasting the wood or coal. Once the oven stopped putting off gas the remaining mass was charcoal or coke and was a useful fuel.

The next step was to add limited air after all the chemical gas had been produced from the char. By using regular air that was 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen more or less and limiting the amount put through the oven causes the char to form CO2 at first, but because the Oxygen input is limited and the cha is red hot the char robs Oxygen from the CO2 and makes CO. The gas produced by this method is still 78% Nitrogen and it will burn but it has a weak flame because it so diluted.

The next step after that was to make carburated water gas, the coke or charcoal is heated white hot by blowing regular air through it until it is glowing hot, then switch the input from air to steam. The gas produced during the Blow phase is CO2/Nitrogen and just discarded up the smokestack. When steam is blown through glowing carbon the char robs the oxygen from the water vapor because the Carbon-Oxygen bond is stronger than the Hydrogen-Oxygen bond. The CO2 is then robbed by the glowing carbon of half its Oxygen forming CO. The carburated water gas produced is almost half Hydrogen and half CO, but the chemical reaction to break the water vapor robs heat from the char so after a few minutes the reaction stops when the char cools off. In this type of plant as soon as they start getting water vapor out of the production side they switch back to another Blow Cycle pumping air through the oven to heat the carbon mass back up to white hot.

The step after that was to pump pure oxygen into the hot oven instead of air so that the produced gas was CO instead of a mix of CO2/Nitrogen, but Oxygen is expensive. By adding just enough Oxygen to the Steam to replace the energy lost breaking the water vapor into H2 and CO.

The final step so far as I can tell is injecting the steam and Oxygen mixture into deep coal seams that are not mineable by conventional excavation and gasifying the coal before anything else is done too it. The gas produced this way has all the volatile chemicals like Methane, Creosote, Asphalt, Kerosene mixed in with the H2 and CO. In some places the produced gas is sent straight into a gas turbine power station and burned to make electricity. In other places the produced gas is put through a chemical plant and they reformulate it into 'synthetic Natural Gas' and 'synthetic Diesel/Kerosene/Gasoline'. The Chinese seem to be very interested in using underground gasification technique.

Anyhow you can read up on the topic by searching the internet for Carburated Water Gas or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... ctured_gas
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Sat 12 Apr 2014, 11:59:55

With gasifiers, I've always assumed that the smokeless blue flames after the initial burn contain lots of CO turning into CO2. I have no citation for that, that's just been my assumption.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Sat 12 Apr 2014, 12:21:23

Interesting discussion. But we have tech to make fuel out of many substances. In the end all that matters is the net cost to do so on a commercial scale. So what is that number for carbon monoxide conversion?
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby Subjectivist » Sat 12 Apr 2014, 17:20:22

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'I')nteresting discussion. But we have tech to make fuel out of many substances. In the end all that matters is the net cost to do so on a commercial scale. So what is that number for carbon monoxide conversion?


Sorry for the delayed answer, I have been hugging the porcelain throne all day with the flu. It came on like a train wreck and its awful, my wife came home yesterday early after puking at work and it hit me about 7:30 this morning. I tried to answer earlier but just could not focus on what I wa reading well enough to make a coherent answer.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8184

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')everal estimates have been made of the cost of an electricity plant based on UCG syngas. The main physical variables are the quality of the coal, depth and thickness of the coal seam, linking distance of the injection and production well, distance between the cavities, and sweep efficiency. The calculations based on theoretical and actual operations point to a cost range of 1 to 8 USD per GJ of produced syngas. The main cost variation is the usage of air or enriched oxygen for injection, the thickness of the coal seam, and the depth of drilling. The later two factors determine the number of wells that need to be drilled and their required length. Oxygen-blown gasification is preferred in case of adding Carbon Capture and Storage technology.

• The estimate of Marc Mostade of Clean Coal is a production cost of 2.5 to 4.5 USD per GJ of syngas, based on a 800 meter deep 500 MW thermal size UCG plant and a coal seam of 4 to 6 meters thickness at 800 meters of depth. The difference is caused by the usage of air-blown or oxygen-blown syngas. Information about the variables underlying his calculation can be found in his ASPO 9 presentation.

• Based on the Chinese ENN Pilot a total cost of 0.9 to 1.7 USD cents per cubic meters of syngas was documented, which translates into 1 to 1.9 USD per GJ of syngas assuming a higher heating value of 9 MJ/Nm3

• In 2007, GasTech carried out an analysis of costs based on coal in the US Powder River Basin using air-blown and oxygen-blown gasification. These were estimated at a cost of 1.5 to 2.4 USD per GJ of syngas.

• In 2011, the School of Public and Environmental Affairs of Indiana University calculated the production costs for air-fired syngas via UCG in the state of Indiana in the US at 4.6 to 7.7 USD per GJ of syngas for respectively syngas produced via enriched or air, assuming a coal seam thickness of 2 to 3.5 meters at 200 meters of depth or more.

These cost levels are when averaged equal to or below the present day price of natural gas in the US, EU and Asian markets, as shown in figure 4 below. The lower cost range is on par with today’s coal price on a GJ energy basis.


The following link gives the April 2014 cost of Natural Gas in dollars per GJ.
http://www.directenergyregulatedservice ... rates.aspx

Hope you all stay well!
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Sat 12 Apr 2014, 23:51:39

Sub - I feel you pain, bro, really. Such nausea is one of my worst fears. I actually feel like I've been beaten with a baseball bat. So OK: some apparent positive results with pilot projects and such. So how many commercial operations have been built... or at least under construction today? I'm not implying that it won't happen. Just that it doesn't matter until it does. Remember: I've spent four decades listening to hundreds of folks telling how their projects were going to make money. And most of them didn't. LOL.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby Subjectivist » Sun 13 Apr 2014, 02:14:11

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ROCKMAN', 'S')ub - I feel you pain, bro, really. Such nausea is one of my worst fears. I actually feel like I've been beaten with a baseball bat. So OK: some apparent positive results with pilot projects and such. So how many commercial operations have been built... or at least under construction today? I'm not implying that it won't happen. Just that it doesn't matter until it does. Remember: I've spent four decades listening to hundreds of folks telling how their projects were going to make money. And most of them didn't. LOL.



$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Soviets' UCG efforts continued, hit and miss, until the 1960s, when they were put aside by the discovery of huge natural gas reserves. One of the Soviet-era UCG sites, dating from 1961, is still in operation in Uzbekistan. In the West, there were a number of experimental efforts until the 1980s. But interest in UCG then waned—mainly because of the relative abundance of natural gas, and because American researchers learned the process could pollute nearby groundwater supplies.


So far as I can tell the Uzbekistan underground gasification project has been running since 1961 and is still producing today. The mine is located in a spot where piping in Natural Gas is inconvenient so he economics work in that place. The way I see it the technology will be used wherever it can make a profit, so coal fields where bringing in other fuels is too expensive.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Sun 13 Apr 2014, 02:31:53

Scientists discover a novel way to make ethanol without corn or other plants
PhysOrg Apr 09, 2014$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')tanford University scientists have found a new, highly efficient way to produce liquid ethanol from carbon monoxide gas. This promising discovery could provide an eco-friendly alternative to conventional ethanol production from corn and other crops, say the scientists. Their results are published in the April 9 advanced online edition of the journal Nature.
...
"The oxide-derived copper produced ethanol and acetate with 57 percent faradaic efficiency," Kanan said. "That means 57 percent of the electric current went into producing these two compounds from carbon monoxide.
...
For the process to be carbon neutral, scientists will have to find a new way to make carbon monoxide from renewable energy instead of fossil fuel, the primary source today.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Sun 13 Apr 2014, 02:40:45

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', 'a')s soon as they start getting water vapor out of the production side they switch back to another Blow Cycle
I remember a story that the wet coal gas would corrode the (black iron?) pipes but it wasn't a problem because the corrosion would swell and plug any leaks. When they switched to NG the corrosion dried out and shrank, resulting in leaks and explosions.
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Re: Carbon Monoxide as Fuel

Unread postby sparky » Sun 13 Apr 2014, 04:30:28

.
For decade the city gas network was CO ,
it was produced from coal and stored in those huge floating tanks familiar to early 20th century suburbs
it was extremely dangerous , deadly in small dose and much prone to leak
naturally inodore a strong smelling tracing gas was added to help people detect its presence

that's why people would put their head in the oven and turn the gas on to commit suicide
CO death is quite painless ,
of course there was a pretty good chance as a side effect of exploding the building ,

since the city gas switched to Natural gas gassing oneself with the oven is not longer possible
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