Clean and secure energy from coal, oil shale, and oil sands: Revised quarterly progress report: April 1, 2009 to June 30, 2009

reportThe University of Utah Clean and Secure Energy (CASE) project is pursuing interdisciplinary, cradle-to-grave research and development of energy for electric power generation and for liquid transportation fuels from the abundant domestic resources of coal, oil sands, and oil shale. Its work is divided into three programs: the Clean Coal Program, the Oil Shale and Sands Program (OSSP), and the Policy Environment, and Economics Program (PEEP). Emphasis will be on minimizing the environmental impacts associated with the development of these resources, including reducing the carbon footprint through the use of CO2 capture for subsequent storage (sequestration). During this quarter, the CASE team attended the project kickoff meeting for the Clean Coal Program, recruited two students for the NETL internship program, and hosted the first Advisory Board meeting. In the Clean Coal Program, investigators are continuing to integrate the experimental work with the simulation efforts with an emphasis on the oxyfuel and gasification areas. Progress continues on the simulation and experimental studies. Specifically, the simulation work is now being extended to provide a series of oxy-coal and air-coal combustion cases. In addition, the Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC) Team completed construction of their laboratory-scale reactor, and the Oxyfuel Team is upgrading the oxyfuel combustor (OFC), repairing the drop-tube reactor and developing a coal burner for the advanced diagnostics work. The Oxyfuel Team also obtained circulating fluidized bed (CFB) results during a brief test campaign, and the advanced diagnostics obtained an initial PIV dataset for a gas flame. The Gasification Team continues to refine an equilibrium model of the 1 ton/day gasifier and operating the 1 ton/day gasifier on isopropyl alcohol. They have also drafted papers on in situ and ex situ measurements of ash emittance, thermal conductivity, sintering rates, and related properties under both reducing and oxidizing conditions Research efforts in the six tasks that are the Oil Shale and Sands Program (OSSP) continued this quarter. The Task 17.0 team has completed building a 20-unit kerogen model and is proceeding to develop additional models to further assess the pairwise distribution function obtained from X-ray scattering experiments on a representative kerogen. The Task 18.0 team has completed an experiment to measure the composition of products as they evolved during the pyrolysis process using thermal gravimetric analysis/mass spectrometry. The Task 20.0 team has simulated a pyrolysis process followed by in-situ combustion. Work by the Task 21.0 team this quarter focused on the development of a reliable tool for creating reaction tables for oxy-fuel combustion application and is now preparing to work on a demonstration simulation of an oxy-gas burner. To explore the fate of a chemical dissolved in water, the Team 22.0 team solved the advective-dispersion equation using COMSOL. The problem was solved with and without sorption and with various hydrogeological controls. Also during this quarter, the Policy, Environment & Economics Program continued research and data-gathering efforts on the Climate Change Legislation and Regulatory Gap, Oil Sands and Oil Shale Resources, CO2 Emissions, Policy Analysis of the Canadian Oil Sands Experience and Policy Analysis of Water Availability and Use Issues in the Context of Domestic Oil Shale and Sands Development projects. The Task 23.0 team has largely completed the compilation of a database identifying roughly 500 industry players involved in CCS implementation and advocacy and has finished a reviewing and analyzing legislation generated by the last three Congresses in order to build a comprehensive list of possible regulatory gaps. The Task 24.0 team met to better define production scenarios for heavy oil, oil shale, and oil sands and identify potential sources of data for the economic impact analysis modeling. Progress also has been made on the subtasks associated with Task 25.0, with approximately 280 documents added to the repository, several new GIS datasets and functional enhancements of the map server developed this past quarter, and development of a water geodatabase schema to support water-energy management in the Uinta Basin