patentECO - Almost No Carbon Dioxide Emissions

No CO₂ from Carbon-based Fuel

Sounds like a bumper sticker. It’s actually the subject of Patent Number 8,047,007 issued  to Robert M. Zubrin (Indian Hills, CO) and Mark H. Berggren (Golden, CO) on November 1, 2011. Their invention, “Methods for generating electricity from carbonaceous material with substantially no carbon dioxide emissions,” assigned to Pioneer Energy, Inc. (Lakewood, CO), provides in claim 1:

“A method for generating power from carbonaceous material, comprising:

boiling water into steam;

reforming the carbonaceous material with the steam to generate a high-pressure gas comprising carbon dioxide gas and hydrogen gas, wherein sufficient steam is provided to ensure a substantial majority of the carbonaceous material is converted into carbon dioxide gas and hydrogen gas;

exchanging heat from hot gas exiting the reforming step with the steam entering the reforming step;

separating at least a portion of the carbon dioxide gas from the high-pressure gas to generate a carbon dioxide-rich gas and a hydrogen-rich gas;

utilizing the carbon dioxide-rich gas in an industrial process;

and generating power in a power generation system from a portion of the hydrogen-rich gas, wherein waste heat from the power generation system is used to provide heat to the boiling water step.”

The carbonaceous material is selected from coal, biomass, natural gas, crude petroleum, ethanol, methanol, and trash, according to claim 2. The industrial process which uses the CO₂-rich gas is fuel production, growing algae and growing plants in greenhouses, or carbon sequestration in a saline aquifer, depleted oil field, depleted gas field, or unmineable coal seam, according to claims 15-17. Claims 19 and 20 require that the power generation system is either a gas turbine or a fuel cell.

The invention is classified as 60/780, for power plants having a fuel conversion (e.g., reforming, etc.) process. It was one of the patents issued from the USPTO’s Green Technology Pilot Program, which accepted applications for accelerated examination from December 8, 2009 through mid-February 2012. The patent issued 6 months after the application was filed; the average pendency for Tech Center 3700 (the Tech Center responsible for this subject matter) in 2011 was 37.4 months according to the USPTO’s Data Visualization Center’s Patent Dashboard.

In this case, the inventors and assignee were well-served in achieving an accelerated examination for their clean technology, found within the patentECO Energy Index.

patentECO - IP Aspects of a New EPA Regulation

Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, the first national standards to regulate power plant emissions of mercury and toxic air pollution like arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium, and cyanide. Early reviews (for example, here and here) suggest that EPA, in its typical bureaucratic, centralized control fashion, has ignored the costs of the new regulations as well as advances in technology. Other pundits suggest that these regs are part of Obama’s pre-election promise and plan that electricity rates “would necessarily skyrocket” (YouTube video).

Are there patents pertaining to the control of atmospheric emissions of the targeted pollutants from coal-fired power plants? Has the nation’s utility industry done nothing about emissions of these compounds?

Yes and no.

A Google Patents search returned 144 patents issued between January 1991 and December 2011 (generally, those patents still enforceable) pertaining to reducing or mitigating emissions of the aforementioned compounds.

Patent number 7,758,827, “Reducing mercury emissions from the burning of coal” was issued on July 20, 2010 to Douglas Comrie of Stow, OH and assigned to NOx II, Ltd. (Port Clinton, OH).

Of passing interest, Comrie received his patent on the 41st anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s and Buzz Aldrin’s little stroll the moon, and Mike Collins’ time as the most isolated human in the universe; Comrie’s city of Stow is about 172 miles from Armstrong’s birthplace of Wapakoneta, OH, 0.07 percent of the distance Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins travelled to the moon.

Comrie’s invention is classified in the USPC system as 423/210. This places the mercury reduction patent within inorganic chemistry technologies, and specifically those that modify or remove components of a normally gaseous mixture. The invention adds sorbents containing calcium, alumina, silica, and halogen to the coal before combustion and/or are added into the flame or downstream of the flame. When used together, the components reduce emissions of mercury and sulfur (an acid-gas forming compound), reduce emissions of elemental and oxidized mercury, increase the efficiency of the coal burning process through de-slagging of boiler tubes, increase the level of mercury, arsenic, lead, and/or chlorine in the coal ash, decrease the levels of leachable heavy metals (such as mercury) in the ash, and make an ash product that is very non-susceptible to leaching.

This patent should be very attractive to the EPA bureaucrats.

Another patent, 7,276,217, “Reduction of coal-fired combustion emissions”, was issued to Jerrold Radway and Thomas Miller; Thomas M. ( both of El Cajon, CA) and assigned to Premier Chemicals, LLC of Conshohocken, PA. The grant date was October 2, 2007; this patent is also classified as 423/210.

This invention is for a process for mitigating fouling deposits within the coal combustion zone, capturing toxic metal emissions, and reducing visible sulfur emissions attributable to sulfuric acid mist during coal combustion.

Yet another patent that should be pleasing to Lisa Jackson and her staff.

The point is that the free market (which isn’t really, and even less so of late, but I digress) and the innovation community will and do develop solutions to problems. The two patents highlighted here represent a small portion of the energy (or is it industry? or perhaps air pollution control?) clean technology patent ecosystem. These inventions are captured by patentECO.

A shame the US EPA doesn’t.