Where coal and clean tech meet

SOMERSET, Mass.--When it comes to covering green technologies, the color can sometimes be black as coal.

On Monday I drove to Southern Massachusetts to visit GreatPoint Energy's $37 million Mayflower Clean Energy Center, a demonstration plant for converting coal to natural gas. Built down the road from the state's largest coal plant at the mouth of the Taunton River, the plant started producing natural gas last month and is now gathering data to optimize the operation.

(Credit: GreatPoint Energy)

As a technology reporter, it's fascinating to see the energy industry's version of "hardware"--a 200-foot-high reactor, silos holding thousands of pounds of feedstock, and all manner of pipes of valves. I also got to wear a hardhat.

Most people associate green tech with renewable energy--sun, wind, biomass, geothermal. In reality, a lot of energy technology is aimed at making conventional fuels cleaner, which is exactly GreatPoint Energy's mission: to convert dirty coal into cleaner-burning natural gas and to bury carbon dioxide emissions underground.

From a business perspective, GreatPoint Energy is one of many green-tech start-ups taking those first steps from labs to commercialization--a precarious transition that few have been able to make. The project itself is a test case for some potentially significant energy technologies--gasification and underground storage of carbon dioxide.

Gasification, which appears to be undergoing a quiet resurgence in energy, is being used to turn many different feedstocks--coal, biomass, and even municipal trash--into a gas that can later be burned for heat or electricity. Whether gasification technologies qualify for "clean energy" government incentives is still unclear, but backers say that it's a cleaner process than burning.

Successful storage of carbon dioxide, meanwhile, is one of the keys to making coal less polluting. The idea of so-called clean coal is to make electricity with coal, while removing pollutants and storing carbon dioxide underground at a power generation plant.

Chemistry class
GreatPoint Energy's hydromethanization process treats coal with steam, mixes it with a catalyst, and then puts that mixture into a gasifier--essentially a 200-foot-tall metal tube under high heat and pressure.

Inside the gasifier, the feedstock breaks down into different gases and the solid material collects at the bottom. GreatPoint Energy engineers are tuning the process to generate and separate methane, the primary component of natural gas, and carbon dioxide.

The natural gas can be shipped in existing pipelines and used for heating or to make electricity.

What about the carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas? GreatPoint Energy's plans call for building plants in areas, such as Wyoming, where there are both coal and existing oil and gas wells. Injecting CO2 into these wells lets drillers extract more from wells, while keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere. Otherwise, company executives envision using underground geological formations like salt caverns to store the CO2.

Using existing scrubbing equipment, GreatPoint can remove other pollutants, including mercury, nitrogen, and sulfur. An important facet to its test facility is finding methods for recuperating the catalyst and those pollutants, which can be sold for other uses such as ammonia fertilizer.

Steel in the ground: the feedstock-handling equipment at GreatPoint Energy's coal-to-natural gas demo plant.

(Credit: GreatPoint Energy)

The company's analysis found that it can produce natural gas with a lower carbon footprint than extracting natural gas from the ground, assuming a carbon storage site can be found. Its financial target is making gas at between $4 and $5 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), which is in the range of today's prices but lower than natural gas prices before the global recession hit.

At the facility on a piece of land called Brayton Point, the company plans to spend the next several months fine-tuning the process to produce the desired gases and to deal with different qualities of coal, which vary greatly.

Next stop: China
As a company, GreatPoint Energy has gotten a fair amount of attention. It attracted renowned venture capital company Kleiner Perkins as one of its first investors, and a $115 million investment from a collection of energy corporation companies was the largest green-tech investment in 2007.

Photos: Inside one company's quest to clean coal

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick played a key role in getting its demonstration facility sited and quickly approved. It took just 18 months to build and get its plant online.

Its next project is to open a larger pilot facility in China at a coal-fired power plant with Datang Huanyin Electric Power, one of the biggest polluters on the planet. "If we can show (Datang) that they can make more money being clean rather than dirty, then we can make a real impact," says GreatPoint Energy CEO Andrew Perlman.

These facilities aren't cheap: the pilot plant in China will cost between $100 million and $200 million, financed primarily by Datang. A full-scale operation would cost $1 billion to build, a reminder of how vital it is for start-ups to get access to large amounts of capital, either through equity partnerships with large corporations or government loans.

Back home in Massachusetts, the company is seeking to build expertise in the core technologies behind its process--carbon capture, gasification, and mineralization, through a partnership with the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, said Chief Financial Officer Daniel Goldman.

"The concept is to create a 'green line,' a research and development corridor down here," Goldman said. "There's been a lot of research in these fields but very little commercialization."

[sting7k]

Oh cnet, please don't get on their PR wagon. There is nothing "green" or good that will ever come from this.

[gertruded]

This process does not pass the laugh test. What a crock.

Yes, I am a Chemical engineer with advanced degrees.

[sting7k]

As a Biologist I am tired of all this "clean coal" non-sense. Haven't you seen those commercials cnet? That's about how real it will ever be.

[carlhage]

Even if the excess CO2 from coal is sequestered, the CO2 from the methane fuel is still equally bad as fossil fuel (fossil carbon still gets put into the atmosphere), so is not the same as renewable methane (or other fuel) created from biomass. I suppose you could say it's not as brown as straight coal, but being less brown doesn't make green. It would be sad if this company received carbon credits for re-burying the carbon they dug up instead of having to pay for the carbon in the methane produced. If we only had a straight price on fossil carbon release, then it would be much more obvious.

[shepsters]

There is no such animal as "clean coal". Witness the recent tragedy with 5.4 million cubic yards of "fly ash" from a TVA power plant inundating some 3000 acres one foot deep with the stuff and polluting all of the water (both streams and ground) with the likes of mercury, arsenic,and the like! And this is the same stuff that "comes out the bottom" of the GreatPoint Energy gasification tower. Also, their process generates MUCH MORE CO2 than just burning the stuff to start with. All in all, CNET needs to be a lot more circumspect else it/you risk becoming just another shill for big coal! Also a great big UGH to Dartmouth for even getting involved in a project like this one.

[folivier]

I am amused to think someday enough data will demonstrate that solar power devices will be more damaging to "Global Warming". The increased heat caused by the reflective surfaces and excess heat dispersed into the atmosphere will have greater impact on weather patterns than what is believed to be caused by CO2. How ironic!

[Angmarr]

Clean Coal - Oxymoron!


@ folivier

Youre kidding right!? thats not how surface reflective heating works. The greenhouse effect works because of the Co2 in the atmosphere reflecting the heat back!
Besides what makes you think that IF THE STUPID ENERGY COMPANIES start investing in solar power that we will still be using the same old solar panels???

SCIENTISTS - ya the people who actually know whats going on - as opposed to Politicians/lobbyists agree that Solar is the one of the BEST form of sustainable energy for our future!

[gertruded]

folivier, you are correct, of curse. However, solar power will not be commonplace until the corporations find a way to meter your use of sunlight.

Free power is not in the interest of the politicians/lobbyists or the corporations.

[Admirable]

Before you go all green tech why don't the energy companies clean up the mess they have already made? The following url relates to one of thousands of incidents involving the rape of this country by the energy companies. Do an article on that to balance your propaganda for these money hungry blood suckers...

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/24/spill_at_tennessee_coal_plant_creates

[JayWes]

Tennesee is only one, although probably the worst, example of this problem. In the lower Susquehanna valley, somebody had a nice fish pond using the waste heat from a coal fired generatoring plant (there is plenty from both coal-fired and nuclear plants, all of which are 30% or less efficent.) The Power company run out of space for fly-ash, so the fish pond had to go. The space was needed for a fly ash sump. Go look at this if you are in the vincity, If this lets loose, the fish kill will be from Unsafe Harbor to the mouth of the Cheaspike. ?Not to mention what would happen in a flood. The term "Clean coal{" is the best Lebanon bologna ever sprrung on the public. Speaking of fly ash did you here about a country that sent alot of Wallboard to the USA w, and used flt ash as a filler, Seems it is loaded with sulfer and there may be 100,000 homes contaminated,