CO2 Capture to Low Carbon Fuel - Merritt

[foenix]

This new CO2 capture planned for Merritt will be built by the same company "Carbon Engineering" that built the Squamish plant. As far as I know, the Squamish plant is currently an expensive and unproductive part of our economy. Perhaps pellets from the Squamish plant will be useful in Merritt? Not sure. The Merritt plant will require 315MW of power and 35,200 tonnes of hydrogen which in the way hydrogen is made, creates CO2 and needs lots of energy.

Last I saw, 315MW is 1/3rd the capacity of Site C and one third the cost of Site C is more than 5B dollars, sucked up by a non-beneficial CO2 capture plant. What an enormous waste. Not as though we are going to make 50,000 of these CO2 capture plants let alone 5 of them. Our NDP government believes in unicorns.


https://www.castanet.net/news/Kamloops/ ... or-Merritt

Shall we got back to the original OP to see how ridiculous the bolded statement is?.....because that's what I was pointing out, nothing else. So.....

Site C at 100% for the year would be 1100 MW X 8760 Hr. = 9, 636 GW/yr.....so Site C runs at 53% capacity for the year if the total for the year is at 5,100 GW and at 1,100 MW capacity.

So you've obviously misread the article thinking the green plan uses 315 MW of Site C all day everyday (instead of the yearly electricity usage).....but it's worse than 1/3 because Site C is only at 53% capacity......it's more like with your "hypothesis" it's using 54% of the output of Site C and not 1/3.

so in essence what you are saying is that the BC government built Site C for 5 Billion dollars to solely power the 2 green plants in Squamish and Merritt and nothing else. That is what I was getting at, totally ridiculous assumption.....not the other deflections and smoke screens you and Glacier keep droning on and on about.

The power usage of the Merritt site is 315 MW/year or for the day, 315 MW ÷ 365 = 863 KW/ day or 36KW/hr. I'm sure given Site C's capacity, that's nothing. It wouldn't even break a sweat.

[spooker]

I just had to laugh when someone mentioned the 'typo hypothesis' and then changed the "M" to a "K" to completely invalidate the math ...

Trying to force English misinterpretation to be the basis for calling something BS is pretty good example of a smoke screen ... the fact that the paragraph uses "annually" and "per year" in black&white doesn't really lead to misunderstanding ... unless you're using it to deflect ...

[Glacier]

Oops, ya, I can make typos too, which is why I shouldn't be too hard on Castanet for their's. 315MWh per year would make sense and support the typo hypothesis.

That means the plant will use the equivalent of approximately 30 houses. Without knowing more details, that seems reasonable.

[Jlabute]

Site C at 100% for the year would be 1100 MW X 8760 Hr. = 9, 636 GW/yr.....so Site C runs at 53% capacity for the year if the total for the year is at 5,100 GW and at 1,100 MW capacity.

So you've obviously misread the article thinking the green plan uses 315 MW of Site C all day everyday (instead of the yearly electricity usage).....but it's worse than 1/3 because Site C is only at 53% capacity......it's more like with your "hypothesis" it's using 54% of the output of Site C and not 1/3.

so in essence what you are saying is that the BC government built Site C for 5 Billion dollars to solely power the 2 green plants in Squamish and Merritt and nothing else. That is what I was getting at, totally ridiculous assumption.....not the other deflections and smoke screens you and Glacier keep droning on and on about.

The power usage of the Merritt site is 315 MW/year or for the day, 315 MW ÷ 365 = 863 KW/ day or 36KW/hr. I'm sure given Site C's capacity, that's nothing. It wouldn't even break a sweat.

Ok, let me ask another engineer I am with. I shared the article with him.
Eng#1: Yup, 315 MW basically means 315 mWh.

Me: It is the instantaneous power requirements for the whole Merritt plant. The Squamish plant barely does anything at 45mWh. A complete waste of money unless they got $1.5B of learning from it.

Now lets take a look at foenix-math, slightly edited to make foenix-sense.

The power usage of the Merritt site is 315 MW/year **OR** (315 MW ÷ 365) = 863 kW/day **OR** 36 KWh.

The Merritt plant is doing electrolysis (as the Carbon Engineering article says they are. Is this a typo?). 1kg of "H" requires 48kWh. Foenix says the Merritt plant uses 36 kWh.

48 kWh is required to make 1Kg of "H" and doing this for 24 hours would make 24Kg of "H" in a single day.
So the 36 kWh ratio would be: 48kWh/24Kg(per day) = 36 kWh/X, so foenix can make 18Kg of hydrogen per day.

This works out to 6,570 Kg (18Kg x 365) of hydrogen per year. Sorry, this is not even close to the 35,200,000 Kg they say they need. Therefore, 36 kWh is NOT a smidgen compared to what is really needed let alone power everything else the plant does. So your math and ideas are completely wrong by many orders of galactic magnitude.

I'm sure given Site C's capacity, that's nothing. It wouldn't even break a sweat.

That's right, you won't sweat without working (Watts is a measurement of electrical work). 36 kWh is nothing in industry.

This is why hydrogen is not normally make by electrolysis. This is why smelting is not done with electricity. This is why intermittent Wind and Solar with truckloads of batteries will not power the future in a meaningful way.

[foenix]

Oops, ya, I can make typos too, which is why I shouldn't be too hard on Castanet for their's. 315MWh per year would make sense and support the typo hypothesis.

That means the plant will use the equivalent of approximately 30 houses. Without knowing more details, that seems reasonable.

So according to the US Energy Information Agency, the average household for the year consumes 10,800 kW per year of energy which translates into 1.25 kW per hour X 30 houses = 37.5 kW per hour....so the Merritt plant per hours is......

The power usage of the Merritt site is 315 MW/year or for the day, 315 MW ÷ 365 = 863 KW/ day or 36KW/hr. I'm sure given Site C's capacity, that's nothing. It wouldn't even break a sweat.

How about that? 36 kW/hr is about the same as 30 houses. Finally, we are seeing some light here.

So energy equivalent of 30 houses per year is not the same as 1/3 of the capacity of Site C, is that what we are agreeing here?

[foenix]

So you've obviously misread the article thinking the green plan uses 315 MW of Site C all day everyday (instead of the yearly electricity usage).....but it's worse than 1/3 because Site C is only at 53% capacity......it's more like with your "hypothesis" it's using 54% of the output of Site C and not 1/3.

so in essence what you are saying is that the BC government built Site C for 5 Billion dollars to solely power the 2 green plants in Squamish and Merritt and nothing else. That is what I was getting at, totally ridiculous assumption.....not the other deflections and smoke screens you and Glacier keep droning on and on about.

The power usage of the Merritt site is 315 MW/year or for the day, 315 MW ÷ 365 = 863 KW/ day or 36KW/hr. I'm sure given Site C's capacity, that's nothing. It wouldn't even break a sweat.

Ok, let me ask another engineer I am with. I shared the article with him.
Eng#1: Yup, 315 MW basically means 315 mWh.

Me: It is the instantaneous power requirements for the whole Merritt plant. The Squamish plant barely does anything at 45mWh. A complete waste of money unless they got $1.5B of learning from it.

Now lets take a look at foenix-math, slightly edited to make foenix-sense.

The power usage of the Merritt site is 315 MW/year **OR** (315 MW ÷ 365) = 863 kW/day **OR** 36 KWh.

The Merritt plant is doing electrolysis (as the Carbon Engineering article says they are. Is this a typo?). 1kg of "H" requires 48kWh. Foenix says the Merritt plant uses 36 kWh.

48 kWh is required to make 1Kg of "H" and doing this for 24 hours would make 24Kg of "H" in a single day.
So the 36 kWh ratio would be: 48kWh/24Kg(per day) = 36 kWh/X, so foenix can make 18Kg of hydrogen per day.

This works out to 6,570 Kg (18Kg x 365) of hydrogen per year. Sorry, this is not even close to the 35,200,000 Kg they say they need. Therefore, 36 kWh is NOT a smidgen compared to what is really needed let alone power everything else the plant does. So your math and ideas are completely wrong by many orders of galactic magnitude.

I'm sure given Site C's capacity, that's nothing. It wouldn't even break a sweat.

That's right, you won't sweat without working (Watts is a measurement of electrical work). 36 kWh is nothing in industry.

This is why hydrogen is not normally make by electrolysis. This is why smelting is not done with electricity. This is why intermittent Wind and Solar with truckloads of batteries will not power the future in a meaningful way.

Take a look at this flow chart.....there is no electrolysis in making the CO2....perhaps that comes afterwards in making the fuel but it doesn't appear that's in the plans right now for the Merritt plant.

[Jlabute]

The process diagram is the Squamish plant. The Squamish plant only makes pellets. The Squamish plant does NOT do electrolysis. The Merritt plant DOES electrolysis. You should read the articles.

Refer to "spooker" url.

Huron Clean Energy’s Merritt Electro Fuels plant in Merritt will use Carbon Engineering’s direct air capture technology to capture CO2 from the air, and use hydrogen produced from water and BC Hydro electricity to make a drop-in fuel that can displace diesel, marine fuel and aviation fuels.
...
Producing 103 million litres of green fuel will require a massive amount of electricity -- 315 megawatts – to run the direct air capture plant and produce 35,200 tonnes green hydrogen from water using electrolysis.

https://biv.com/article/2021/10/carbon- ... ed-merritt


Now that we know electrolysis is being used, you have to explain your math.

This plant is not equivalent to 30 houses. That is ridiculously tiny. You have not thought this out. The electrolysis is only half of the problem too. The plant will do a lot more than just electrolysis to make fuel.

1kg of "H" requires 48kWh. Foenix says the Merritt plant uses 36 kWh.

48 kWh is required to make 1Kg of "H" and doing this for 24 hours would make 24Kg of "H" in a single day.
So the 36 kWh ratio would be: 48kWh/24Kg(per day) = 36 kWh/X, so foenix can make 18Kg of hydrogen per day.

This works out to 6,570 Kg (18Kg x 365) of hydrogen per year. Sorry, this is not even close to the 35,200,000 Kg they say they need. Therefore, 36 kWh is NOT a smidgen compared to what is really needed let alone power everything else the plant does. So your math and ideas are completely wrong by many orders of galactic magnitude.

[foenix]

The process diagram is the Squamish plant. The Squamish plant only makes pellets. The Squamish plant does NOT do electrolysis. The Merritt plant DOES electrolysis. You should read the articles.

Refer to "spooker" url.

Huron Clean Energy’s Merritt Electro Fuels plant in Merritt will use Carbon Engineering’s direct air capture technology to capture CO2 from the air, and use hydrogen produced from water and BC Hydro electricity to make a drop-in fuel that can displace diesel, marine fuel and aviation fuels.
...
Producing 103 million litres of green fuel will require a massive amount of electricity -- 315 megawatts – to run the direct air capture plant and produce 35,200 tonnes green hydrogen from water using electrolysis.

https://biv.com/article/2021/10/carbon- ... ed-merritt


Now that we know electrolysis is being used, you have to explain your math.

This plant is not equivalent to 30 houses. That is ridiculously tiny. You have not thought this out. The electrolysis is only half of the problem too. The plant will do a lot more than just electrolysis to make fuel.

1kg of "H" requires 48kWh. Foenix says the Merritt plant uses 36 kWh.

48 kWh is required to make 1Kg of "H" and doing this for 24 hours would make 24Kg of "H" in a single day.
So the 36 kWh ratio would be: 48kWh/24Kg(per day) = 36 kWh/X, so foenix can make 18Kg of hydrogen per day.

This works out to 6,570 Kg (18Kg x 365) of hydrogen per year. Sorry, this is not even close to the 35,200,000 Kg they say they need. Therefore, 36 kWh is NOT a smidgen compared to what is really needed let alone power everything else the plant does. So your math and ideas are completely wrong by many orders of galactic magnitude.

I read it but there was no information provided for the "configuration D" of the CE plant so until we see the actual figures, guessing isn't going to do much.......but that's not what my discussion was about anyway.....It was you assuming the 315MW was going to use 1/3 of the capacity of Site C which it's not going to come close to with the figures given in the Castanet article and the BC government website.

[Jlabute]

I read it but there was no information provided for the "configuration D" of the CE plant so until we see the actual figures, guessing isn't going to do much.......but that's not what my discussion was about anyway.....It was you assuming the 315MW was going to use 1/3 of the capacity of Site C which it's not going to come close to with the figures given in the Castanet article and the BC government website.

Electrolysis, carbon capture, plus all the intermediate processes use a dam-load of power. Your calculation doesn't make sense on electrolysis alone which you have not yet disproven. 315 MW or 315 mWh would be correct and the math works out. 315 MW is just under 1/3 or 1100 MW Site-C. If you add up all the power needed by electrolysis and carbon capture over a year to give you the specified amounts of H produced and CO2 removed... the math works out. 315 mWh is right.

I know it is a lot. Carbon Engineering say they need a lot. 30 houses of power is not a lot. Me and my engineering co-worker agree on 315 MW every hour of operation. Everything else after that is fine-tuning.

[foenix]

I read it but there was no information provided for the "configuration D" of the CE plant so until we see the actual figures, guessing isn't going to do much.......but that's not what my discussion was about anyway.....It was you assuming the 315MW was going to use 1/3 of the capacity of Site C which it's not going to come close to with the figures given in the Castanet article and the BC government website.

Electrolysis, carbon capture, plus all the intermediate processes use a dam-load of power. Your calculation doesn't make sense on electrolysis alone which you have not yet disproven. 315 MW or 315 mWh would be correct and the math works out. 315 MW is just under 1/3 or 1100 MW Site-C. If you add up all the power needed by electrolysis and carbon capture over a year to give you the specified amounts of H produced and CO2 removed... the math works out. 315 mWh is right.

I know it is a lot. Carbon Engineering say they need a lot. 30 houses of power is not a lot. Me and my engineering co-worker agree on 315 MW every hour of operation. Everything else after that is fine-tuning.

There is no way the BC government, the people of BC and even me will allow 2 "green" plants in dinky Meritt and Squamish to monopolized the entire output of Site C (Site C as figured is running at 53% capacity).

So where is the outrage Jiabute? Why aren't there people screaming that these 2 plants will suck back the entire output of Site C that cost the taxpayers 5 Billion dollars to build? There is no outrage because the two sites aren't sucking up the entire output of Site C.....instead as reported in Castanet and BC website, they are using an energy equivalent of 60 homes per Year......anything else is bring your bias and guesses into it. I'm just going by your original OP article and the figures that were in it.

[Jlabute]

I am outraged. It is worse than outrage knowing money and energy is wasted to do this in the first place.

35,200,000 Kg (35,200 tonnes) of Hydrogen. You agree on this?
Electrolysis at the Merritt plant. You agree on this?

You already know electrolysis will be done by the company which Carbon Engineering has partnered with, Huron Clean Energy. It is well understood 39kWh (100% efficiency) is required to make 1 Kg of Hydrogen. Their process is not 100% efficient, and today it typically uses 48kWh.

You can calculate how much energy is needed to create 35,200,000 Kg of Hydrogen and get back to me. I think you might not get an understanding of this until you calculate it yourself.

[foenix]

I am outraged. It is worse than outrage knowing money and energy is wasted to do this in the first place.

35,200,000 Kg (35,200 tonnes) of Hydrogen. You agree on this?
Electrolysis at the Merritt plant. You agree on this?

You already know electrolysis will be done by the company which Carbon Engineering has partnered with, Huron Clean Energy. It is well understood 39kWh (100% efficiency) is required to make 1 Kg of Hydrogen. Their process is not 100% efficient, and today it typically uses 48kWh.

You can calculate how much energy is needed to create 35,200,000 Kg of Hydrogen and get back to me. I think you might not get an understanding of this until you calculate it yourself.

I was just commenting on this

Last I saw, 315MW is 1/3rd the capacity of Site C and one third the cost of Site C is more than 5B dollars, sucked up by a non-beneficial CO2 capture plant

I don't agree with what you wrote and it's apparent you misread the article......other stuff you're talking about, there isn't enough information to comment on as the second stage of the Merritt plant haven't been released. It's no use guessing about what might happen without more info. As it stands now, the energy input is the same as the plant in Squamish......about the equivalent of 30 homes for the year......diddly squat.

Perhaps, they will be using geothermal energy to acquire their energy in their next phase to "configuration D" like this contraption in Iceland.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/20/world/ca ... index.html

[Jlabute]

I was just commenting on this

Last I saw, 315MW is 1/3rd the capacity of Site C and one third the cost of Site C is more than 5B dollars, sucked up by a non-beneficial CO2 capture plant

I don't agree with what you wrote and it's apparent you misread the article......other stuff you're talking about, there isn't enough information to comment on as the second stage of the Merritt plant haven't been released. It's no use guessing about what might happen without more info. As it stands now, the energy input is the same as the plant in Squamish......about the equivalent of 30 homes for the year......diddly squat.

Perhaps, they will be using geothermal energy to acquire their energy in their next phase to "configuration D" like this contraption in Iceland.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/20/world/ca ... index.html

Everything you said above is completely unrelated and/or fabricated by you alone. First, there is no Merritt site yet. Second, your 30 home thing is only your miscalculation and you deflect from calculating electrolysis. Third, Squamish is peanuts in comparison because Merritt will capture MORE CO2. Forth, there is no process diagram we have. Just statements like the following:

Huron Clean Energy’s Merritt Electro Fuels plant in Merritt will use Carbon Engineering’s direct air capture technology to capture CO2 from the air, and use hydrogen produced from water and BC Hydro electricity to make a drop-in fuel that can displace diesel, marine fuel and aviation fuels.

Huron states "WATER" and "BC HYDRO ELECTRICITY" to make HYDROGEN. Do you disagree with the company? This has been posted a few times already. Not that it matters WHERE BC Hydro gets the power from... what matters is HOW MUCH POWER IT IS! As a tool to understand how much power the Merritt plant would need, it is easier to understand if it is provided as a fractional quantity of a known site.



Lets do the calculations and comparison

Huron/Carbon Engineering as they state
315 mW is the same as 315 mWh, like a 30W bulb this is the instantaneous power usage.
The amount of energy this uses in a year would be 315,000,000 Wh x 24 x 365 = 2759.5 GWH.
Now as stated, they can't possibly have 100% up-time so lets just say up-time is 90%? We would still be around 2483 GWH.


jlabute plus second engineer as they state
Electrolysis will obviously be used to make 35,200,000 Kg of hydrogen. They say this. 48 kWh is needed for 1 hour, to make 1Kg of Hydrogen. Wiki says 50 kWh is needed so I am being easy on you with 48kWh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water

35,200,000 x 48000 Wh = 1689.6 GWH just for electrolysis and this is 33% of 5100 GWH Site-C.
Lets just assume that CO2 extraction and all the other processes going on are half of what the electrolysis is at 800MWH...
we then get a total 2489.6 GWH.


Summary
jlabute + second engineer get the same amount of power that Huron and Carbon Engineering calculate!!!!!
2483 GWH (90% up-time) is very close to 2489.6 GWH theoretical Merritt plant 100% up-time.

foenix's calculation is off by more than 5000%.

[foenix]

I was just commenting on this

I don't agree with what you wrote and it's apparent you misread the article......other stuff you're talking about, there isn't enough information to comment on as the second stage of the Merritt plant haven't been released. It's no use guessing about what might happen without more info. As it stands now, the energy input is the same as the plant in Squamish......about the equivalent of 30 homes for the year......diddly squat.

Perhaps, they will be using geothermal energy to acquire their energy in their next phase to "configuration D" like this contraption in Iceland.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/20/world/ca ... index.html

Everything you said above is completely unrelated and/or fabricated by you alone. First, there is no Merritt site yet. Second, your 30 home thing is only your miscalculation and you deflect from calculating electrolysis. Third, Squamish is peanuts in comparison because Merritt will capture MORE CO2. Forth, there is no process diagram we have. Just statements like the following:

Nope I'm just commenting on your original statement reading the article and the government website and using their numbers.
You're the one that didn't read the annual energy requirement.....here, I'll post it again...

Once the plant is built and operational, it is expected to capture 250,000 tonnes of carbon annually, using 315 megawatts of electricity and 35,200 tonnes of hydrogen to produce 103 million litres of low-carbon fuel PER YEAR.

i'm just going by this alone, you're the one that assumed the 315 MW was going to eat up 1/3 ( actually 53%) of Site C's capacity AND that just isn't true according to the figures in the article. That's all I was pointing out, you're the one that want to assume things further even as you point out the plant isn't even built yet. Perhaps hold on to the ranting before all the facts and info are available. Even if they do go and build the "config D" part of the CE's carbon capture, there is yet to be any information on it.......so it's just ranting off of assumptions......not worth much.

I'm not the one that wrote about the Merritt plant as written in the article would consume about the equivalent of 30 homes, I just confirmed the figure and that conclusion is in line with mine so........

[TylerM4]

Good lord this thread is painful to read.

Maybe an analogy would help: Let's compare to speed and distance traveled.

Distance travelled is like energy consumed. To understand the distance travelled, we need to know both the speed of travel and how long that speed was maintained.

Distance = Speed x Time 100km/hr x 0.5hr = 50Km
Energy consumed = Rate of energy draw (AKA speed) x time 315MWhr x 0.5Hr = 157.5 MW

In this case, we've been confused as the Speed (rate of energy draw) did not contain a time reference. When that happens it means either one of two things
1) They purposely showed just the instantaneous energy draw to allow the audience to better understand/calculate the energy usage on their own.
2) It's a typo

I personally think this was a case of they did it on purpose instead of a typo. The plant draws 315MW of energy while it's running. Just like your oldschool lightbulb consumes 60W of energy when it's on. We don't advertise lighbulbs as 60w/hr why would we advertise a carbon capture plant like that?