Technologies for Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil Fuel Fired Installations

Abstract

All mitigation scenarios proposed to date either tend to slow down the rate of atmospheric CO₂ emissions or level out the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere. A unique system has been devised which offers a method of actually reducing the CO₂ concentration in the atmophere while still generating energy from fossil fuel. The only economically and technically reasonable method for removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere is by the process of solar photosynthesis which extracts carbon from atmospheric CO₂ by formation of biomass, e.g., ligno-cellulose. The biomass is then thermochemically converted by the HYDROCARB technology with fossil fuel, gas, oil or coal to produce carbon black and methanol. The carbon is returned to the earth, for long-term storage, while the methanol is used as fuel. In this manner, methane gas and oil co-processed with biomass results in a net removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere of about 78 lb CO₂ per million Btu of methanol generated energy. There is also large energy enhancement in utilizing gas and oil for producing methanol compared to conventional methanol processes using these fuels. Co-processing with bituminous coal results in no net CO₂ emitted or removed per unit of methanol energy generated. The process chemistry system is described and quantified in this paper.