China and Australia sign 'clean coal' agreement - steps to carbon-negative bioenergy
In what they see as an important step towards a 'cleaner' coal future, Australia and China signed a formal international agreement for joint research into carbon capture from coal plants. The agreement, between CSIRO and China’s Thermal Power Research Institute (TPRI), will see TPRI install, commission and operate a post-combustion capture pilot plant at the Huaneng Beijing Co-Generation Power Plant as part of CSIRO’s research program. The agreement formalises an earlier partnership (previous post).
Biopact tracks carbon capture developments, because the technology can be applied to biomass power plants to yield "negative emissions" energy, that is, bioenergy which actively removes CO2 from the atmosphere. The logic is: if the coal industry, especially in China, is putting money into developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies anyways, then we would rather see those being applied to renewable biomass from the start as this results in the most radical tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Post-combustion capture (PCC) is a process that uses amines to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from power station flue gases and is a technology that can potentially reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing and future coal-fired power stations by more than 85 per cent. If coupled to biomass power plants, energy with negative emissions as large as -1000 tons CO2/GWh can be achieved (that is: for each GWh of electricity generating it takes a large amount of CO2 from the past out of the atmosphere).
Benefits of PCC include:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: carbon capture and storage :: post-combustion capture :: bio-energy with carbon storage :: carbon-negative :: negative emissions :: bio-energy with carbon storage :: climate change :: Australia :: China ::
Director of CSIRO’s 'Energy Transformed National Research Flagship', Dr John Wright, said low emission energy generation was a key research area for the Flagship and he welcomes the support of the Australian Government.
The Chinese partners are aiming for the Beijing pilot plant to be up and running before August this year.
The installation of the PCC pilot plant in Beijing is a CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship research project and forms part of the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate initiative (APP). The APP program for PCC also includes a pilot plant installation at Delta Electricity’s Munmorah power station on the NSW Central Coast, with an additional Australian site currently under negotiation.
The Energy Transformed National Research Flagship is also undertaking PCC research outside the scope of the APP program with a $A5.6 million project in the Latrobe Valley, which focuses on brown coal.
References:
CSIRO: Clean coal agreement with China - March 6, 2008.
CSIRO: Post combustion capture (PCC) - Fact Sheet.
Biopact: Australia and China partner to develop carbon capture and storage technologies - September 07, 2007
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Biopact tracks carbon capture developments, because the technology can be applied to biomass power plants to yield "negative emissions" energy, that is, bioenergy which actively removes CO2 from the atmosphere. The logic is: if the coal industry, especially in China, is putting money into developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies anyways, then we would rather see those being applied to renewable biomass from the start as this results in the most radical tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Post-combustion capture (PCC) is a process that uses amines to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from power station flue gases and is a technology that can potentially reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing and future coal-fired power stations by more than 85 per cent. If coupled to biomass power plants, energy with negative emissions as large as -1000 tons CO2/GWh can be achieved (that is: for each GWh of electricity generating it takes a large amount of CO2 from the past out of the atmosphere).
Benefits of PCC include:
- PCC can be retrofitted to existing plants and is a very prospective means of substantially reducing their greenhouse gas intensity
- PCC can be integrated into new plants to achieve a range of greenhouse gas intensity reductions down to near zero emissions
- in contrast to competing technologies, PCC has high operational flexibility (partial retrofit, zero to full capture operation) and can match market conditions for both existing and new power stations- for instance, during periods of high power prices, PCC can be turned off and maximum power delivered to the market
- PCC offers a lower technology risk compared to competing technologies - this is further enhanced by the ability for staged implementation, which is not possible with competing technologies
- renewable technologies can be integrated in the PCC process - in particular, PCC allows low-cost solar thermal collectors to provide the necessary heat to separate CO2 from sorbents, effectively reducing the loss of electrical output due to capture
- PCC can be applied to capture CO2 from natural gas fired power stations and other large stationary sources of CO2, including biomass power plants, smelters, cement kilns and steelworks.
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: carbon capture and storage :: post-combustion capture :: bio-energy with carbon storage :: carbon-negative :: negative emissions :: bio-energy with carbon storage :: climate change :: Australia :: China ::
Director of CSIRO’s 'Energy Transformed National Research Flagship', Dr John Wright, said low emission energy generation was a key research area for the Flagship and he welcomes the support of the Australian Government.
This project is part of a major research program to identify ways to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector. Climate change is a critical issue for Australia and internationally, and we’re delighted to be working with TPRI to help find solutions to this global challenge. - Dr WrightThe project will focus on assessing the performance of an amine-based PCC pilot plant under Chinese conditions. It will allow PCC technology to be progressed in the Chinese energy sector which will have a much greater impact than operating in Australia alone.
The Chinese partners are aiming for the Beijing pilot plant to be up and running before August this year.
The installation of the PCC pilot plant in Beijing is a CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship research project and forms part of the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate initiative (APP). The APP program for PCC also includes a pilot plant installation at Delta Electricity’s Munmorah power station on the NSW Central Coast, with an additional Australian site currently under negotiation.
The Energy Transformed National Research Flagship is also undertaking PCC research outside the scope of the APP program with a $A5.6 million project in the Latrobe Valley, which focuses on brown coal.
References:
CSIRO: Clean coal agreement with China - March 6, 2008.
CSIRO: Post combustion capture (PCC) - Fact Sheet.
Biopact: Australia and China partner to develop carbon capture and storage technologies - September 07, 2007
Article continues
Friday, March 07, 2008
Scientists discover signaling pathway that determines plant cell wall growth: could lead to 'third generation' biofuel crops
The researchers report their findings in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study also will be published in the journal's March 11 print issue.
Cell growth signals
The biochemical pathway moves materials that determine cell shape and size through a system of signaling proteins, said Dan Szymanski, plant geneticist and cellular biologist at Purdue and lead researcher. By learning more about the growth and development process, it may be possible to engineer plants with improved properties such as cell walls that are more massive or are more easily fermented in the biofuel process.
The research team investigated plant growth and cell wall development from several scientific approaches in determining the cascade of events that leads to changes in the cell wall. They discovered that a protein called "SPIKE1" directs the protein signaling pathway.
Plant cells grow by expansion, which is cell wall synthesis coupled with an increase in cell size. The key questions scientists need to answer in trying to create plants more valuable for biofuel production center on understanding how plants integrate metabolism, cell growth and biomass production.
To answer those questions and be able to engineer plants for improved growth of biomass for alternative fuels, Szymanski and other scientists investigated complex molecular functions:
Uncovering the mechanism
Actin filaments comprise the cytoskeleton, which is the roadway for delivery and recycling of materials that drive plant growth and determine the cell shape and size. Actin is an abundant protein in organisms that have multiple cells with nuclei:
SPIKE1 is a master regulator of many growth control pathways, including the protein signaling pathway that produces the cytoskeleton. The researchers were able to demonstrate that one of SPIKE1's functions is to control production of actin filament, which defines localized cell regions for delivery and recycling of growth materials.
The signaling pathway, headed by SPIKE1, is responsible for organizing activities during construction - delivering materials and recycling materials that are used during growth, he said. After SPIKE1 initiates communication among proteins along the pathway, actin filaments are produced and changes in cell shape and size occur:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy crops :: cell wall :: cell biology :: bioconversion ::
Cells also must coordinate with the activities of surrounding cells that have different shapes and functions.
Szymanski and his colleagues used an altered version of the mustard family laboratory plant Arabidopsis to study SPIKE1's function and find the proteins that it activates and to which it binds.
They found that when they created mutant plants by switching off the SPIKE1 gene so that the function is lost, one result was improper growth that manifested as holes in the leaf epidermis.
By studying the results of turning off various other protein complexes in the pathway, Szymanski's team was able to follow the sequence of events that occur during signaling.
They also found that plants in which the function of one of the pathway's signaling proteins was altered resulted in mutants that all looked alike. This suggested that the three major protein complexes the scientists investigated all function in a common pathway.
The Purdue research team confirmed this by making double mutants - plants in which two of the proteins had been switched off. One of the pathway's protein complexes, called "WAVE," functions the same way in both humans and Arabidopsis, and the SPIKE1 signaling pathway is likely to function in other plants including rice and corn.
However, in other organisms with SPIKE1-like genes, switching off the gene kills the organism. This lethality has made it difficult for scientists to understand the function of SPIKE1 and comparable genes in other organisms, including humans. Since Arabidopsis survives when SPIKE1 is disrupted, the Purdue team was able to determine the signaling pathway.
Potential implications
The scientists hypothesize that SPIKE1 may both generate and organize protein complex signaling. They also need to discover what activates SPIKE1. When the researchers understand enough about the processes involved in plant cell growth and development, then they may be able to design plants that are bigger with more cell wall that can be processed into biofuel.
The other researchers involved with this study were graduate student Dipanwita Basu, postdoctoral students Jie Le and Taya Zakharova, and research technician Eileen Mallery. All are in the Purdue Department of Agronomy. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Purdue Agricultural Research Program.
Image: A Purdue research team is studying plant growth and cell wall development. By investigating plant cells at the molecular level, they may be able to design plants that are better sources of alternative transportation fuels. In these three slides, green outlines the outer epidermal cells. The red is from chloroplasts from the underlying cell layer. The final slide shows cells of a mutant plant in which a gene called SPIKE1 has been turned off. These mutant cells form abnormally and the cell walls won't properly adhere to each, resulting in holes in the epidermis that you can see through. Credit: Dan Szymanski, Purdue University.
References:
Dipanwita Basu, Jie Le, Taya Zakharova, Eileen L. Mallery, and Daniel B. Szymanski, "A SPIKE1 Signaling Complex Controls Actin-Dependent Cell Morphogenesis through the Heteromeric WAVE and ARP2/3 Complexes", published online on February 29, 2008,
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0710294105
Purdue University: Newly defined signaling pathway could mean better biofuel sources - March 6, 2008.
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posted by Biopact team at 7:35 PM 0 comments links to this post