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As has been observed based on
the prevalent design of power generation plants, technologies for
addressing global warming and other
environmental issues must necessarily accomplish the objectives of mitigation
within the context of the existing designs.
The reality is that wholesale
replacement of the power generation plants of the power companies is
not going to happen any time soon, as most such plants have over
twenty five (25) years lifespan. So even if the ethanol technologies
are being developed and implemented the legacy power generation
plants will continue to be operated in parallel with the ethanol
plants for close to twenty five years. On the strength of this
recognition, recently the
downstream
section of the process has suffered changes in accommodation for
the mitigation of the global warming climatic changes: The adopted
development is that most equipment or mini-processes
engineered to mitigate greenhouse gases discharge by existing coal
conversion processes will be retrofitted to this end section
of the coal burner process.
In any assessment of
Kyoto
Protocol compliant technologies, though the ethanol plants may have evolved because of the
anticipation of an ecological balance in the production and
consumption of carbon dioxide component of the greenhouse gases, the
use of ethanol as fuel for power generation companies will
undoubtedly still produce carbon dioxide quantities that would be in
violation of the protocol and therefore would best be also directly
retrofitted with mitigation technologies to bring such plants into
compliance with the protocol.
By default then the power
generation plants for which retrofit technologies enable compliance
with the protocol also include all the prospective ethanol power
generation plants.
Effectively then, there are only
two technologies that can be considered for the purposes of bringing
existing legacy and prospective ethanol power generation plants into
compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, and these technologies being the
GreenFuels Technologies bioreactor and the Carbon dioxide Sequestration
technology; both these
technologies also can be designed to reduce the greenhouse gas
emission of processes to which they are retrofitted by more than the
five percent (5%) as suggested by the Protocol.
The implementation of the
technologies raises other issues, although not as much with the
sequestration as the bioreactor technology.
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The GreenFuels Bioreactor
requires installation over the top of the flue gas discharge and
such that all the flue gas flows through the bio-reactor(s). This
mode of operation requires frequent changes of the bioreactor and
extensive monitoring of the reactor for timely replacement. For very
tall smokestacks the frequent replacement poses a potential for
hazard created by the demand to go up and down the smokestack.
Further the reuse of the algae in bio-diesel production process will
entail the shipping and receiving of the algae from the operations
site to all users of the bioreactor across nations of operations.
The carbon dioxide sequestration
technology, however, may be designed into a closed mini-process that
would require minimal attention over long periods of operations. The
engineering requirement as well as the
installation would, of course, be relatively more capital intensive.
In any event, for a technology
to enable compliance with the Protocol, the technology must be
designed such as to be retrofitted to the downstream of the greenhouse gas
generator plants and also allow for easy maintenance or require
minimal maintenance.
A recently
proffered GHG
effects remediation technology also is applicable for the
purposes of GHG emission abatement for a legacy operation to come in
compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. This technology consists of
three primary technologies:
however, for the purposes of
enabling legacy power plants to come into compliance with the Kyoto
Protocol, the Solar Power Technology may be excluded. The technology
gets retrofitted to the downstream of the power plants by simply
feeding the effluent stream of the power plants directly into the
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Extraction Chemical Process of the
remediation technology. The carbon dioxide in the effluent stream is
extracted by the process resulting in the reduction GHG emission
content of the final discharge into the atmosphere. The extracted
carbon dioxide is then processed in the Elemental Carbon Extraction
Process resulting in the stripping of the carbon from the carbon
dioxide and consequentially, permanently reducing the quantity of
carbon dioxide discharge.
Clearly the remediation
technology gives the most flexibility in bringing legacy systems in
compliance
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with the Kyoto Protocol, because
of the capacity to vary the operating conditions of the carbon
dioxide extraction process to remove as much carbon dioxide as is
necessary to meet the graded stipulation increasing reduction in
carbon dioxide discharge.
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