StoppingClimateChange.com            The Deep Decarbonization of Our Capitol's Building Complex            Prolog   About

The Race to suck Climate Change out of the air has begun!
Check out: https://globalthermostat.com/    https://netpower.com/the-cycle/    https://carbonengineering.com/   
https://www.climeworks.com/    http://www.cleanenergysystems.com/    https://www.carbfix.com/ 
The U.S. Capitol Building Complex and thousands of other facilities - hospitals, etc., can join in removing Climate Change from the air while saving on their energy bills! 

Wood Bioenergy
Getting our economy on track for zero emissions by adding wood pellet burning carbon-capturing equipment to the Combined Heat and Power (CHP) power plants of our building complexes.
Over 15,000 large building complexes worldwide - Colleges, Military Bases, Hospitals, Apartments, Office Complexes, Large Manufacturing, Airports, plus dozens of other types of building complexes - are major contributors to global Climate Change.
https://www.epa.gov/chp/what-chp 
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Decarbonizing the U.S. Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C., as the world's first national Capitol Complex to achieve NET-ZERO EMISSIONS.

                  

U.S. Capitol Building Complex (Campus) in Metropolitan Washington, D.C.                                                                      U.S. BIOMASS FACILITIES:  https://www.usabiomass.org/   Click to enlarge.

                         
More detail as to why the Architect of the Capitol selected a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system.
- from U.S. EPA Catalog

 

                  
Adding a carbon-neutral fuel (in this case, wood) to a pair of natural gas burning industrial combustion jet turbines equipped with heat capturing boilers to provide both heat and electricity to a building complex.
This creates a "Carbon-neutral" facility that does not add to Climate Change emissions because the synthetic gas's carbon was previously removed from the air by the wood pellets.

By powering the U.S. Capitol Building Complex with synthetic natural gas made from wood pellets, the stack emissions become "CO2-neutral" (Green) and do not add to the world's Climate Change burden.
No other country's capitol could make that claim unless they did the same thing.
Several European countries are working hard to develop synthetic natural gas technology.
It shouldn't be too expensive to add synthetic natural gas to any building complex that is already set up with combined heat and power like the U.S. Capitol.

This is not a trivial thing. Everyone pays attention to what the power centers of the world do.

Worldwide, perhaps 15,000 thousand large building complexes such as colleges and universities, hospitals, factories, airport terminals, military bases, industrial and business centers have central power plants like the U.S. Capitol Building Complex.  Combined, these thousands of large building complexes are major contributors to global Climate Change and many could be modified to "Repair the Air" like the U.S. Capitol Building Complex.

Large companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon are beginning to make commitments to become "Carbon-Neutral" by some time in the near future such as 2030 or 2040.  No reason the Government shouldn't clean up it's operations.

This is the direction the troops are marching.

It's time the Capitol Building Complex, which began marching in this direction in 2007, resumed leading the country.

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 2. Roll back existing Climate Change:   Repairing the Air  using the Capitol's Power Plant

Carbon-Capturing the U.S. Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. as the world's first Capitol to REMOVE climate-changing CO2 FROM the air.

               
Use wood (i.e., Biomass) to capture the Climate Changing CO2 from the air.  Coal, Oil, Gas, Nuclear, Hydro, Wind, Solar, won't work.          Places in the World where almost infinite amounts of CO2 can be stored.

BECCS is one of the few technologies that is capable of removing past CO2 emissions remaining in the atmosphere. As this enhances the 'when' (i.e., temporal) flexibility during the design of mitigation scenarios considerably, BECCS plays a prominent role in many low-stabilization pathways. Potential risks associated with BECCS technologies are related to those associated with the upstream provision of the used biomass as well as those originating from the capture, transport and long-term underground storage of CO2 that would be emitted otherwise. (This was written before CarbFix came on the market.) - Energy Systems, Chapter 7, 7.5.5, p533.

How BECCS works: Climate Changing CO2 is removed from the air by trees. The trees are processed into synthetic natural gas (SNG). Ideally, the SNG is used to power the new city-sized Allam Cycle electricity generator.
The Allam Cycle engine (below) adds a chemical called CarbFix to it's liquid CO2 emission to slowly turn the CO2 into solid limestone, then the CO2 is pumped into a porous underground CO2 disposal vault forever.
If this is done on a big enough scale with many of the world's cities, all the Climate Changing CO2 in the air will eventually be removed from the air and stored underground forever, ending Climate Change forever.
The world has enough porous underground storage strata to store more than 4 centuries of CarbFix CO2 being produced at today's burn rate.
The sketch below shows the same process being done with less efficient old CO2 technology patented in 1930. This CO2 technology is still considered state-of-the-market and can be purchased from multiple vendors today.

 

Climate Changing CO2 is removed from the air by trees and is converted to Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG).   The wood's energy heats and powers the U.S. Capitol's Buildings.   The CO2 is extracted from the exhaust and disposed of.
CO2 leakage is carbon-neutral so no environmental damage is done.

This image first appeared on this website over 10 years ago when Nancy Pelosi was on her first Tour Of Duty (2007 to 2011) as speaker of the House.  As head of the House, Nancy Pelosi is involved with projects like the above diagram. At the time, a couple of gas-fired Combined Heat and Power units were being proposed to replace the coal boilers in the Capital Complex Boiler House and I was suggesting to the world we add a carbon capture unit to make the U.S. Capitol the world's first carbon-capture Capitol.

As it turned out, coal was replaced with much cleaner Combined Heat and Power gas turbines in 2018 but no wood-to-synthetic natural gas and no gas turbine post combustion carbon capture modules were included in the upgrade project.

What is being suggested here is a good example of a current state-of-the-art "Post-combustion Carbon Capture" retrofit application that could be a small Dutch allothermal wood pellet synthetic natural gas BECCS powered turbine unit such as they have been developing in Europe.  https://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2018_107_production-of-renewable-gas-from-waste-wood.php
At 90% carbon capture for 130% capital, fuel and power output loss, that amount of parasitic burden is about as good as can be expected for non-Allam carbon capture technology BUT it can be built using developed technology and installed anywhere and used on existing power plants and hospital heating plant equipment to clean up environmentally dirty sites.

 

OVERVIEW OF SOUTH END OF CAPITOL BUILDING COMPLEX
Power Plant (top), Coal Yard (bottom) as of 7-11-2020. 
So the "Combined Heat and Power" (CHP) turbine upgrade depicted in the sketches above have been built and are on-line.

 

         

(Left image) Yellow Pushpin: Capitol Complex Power House, Red Dot: Coal Yard, (shown enlarged in Right image).   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Power_Plant 
The existing coal railroad spur, coal pile area could be used to provide space for both an allothermal wood pellet gasification facility and carbon capture facility for the two new Capitol Complex heat and power units.
Adding this facility would make the the U.S. Capitol Complex the world's first national Capitol to REMOVE Climate-changing CO2 FROM the air.

Above: Layout Images of the Capitol Complex power^● and coal storage facilities.
 

 

  

End of the U.S. Capitol Complex Climate Change Upgrade Project Presentation.
Thank you for checking it out.

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NOTE: Your author, a long-retired registered Control System Engineer, has no contact with the Architect of the Capitol or any of their staff.  All information presented above has come from open postings on the Internet or Press,
including GAO "Statement of Terrell G. Dorn, Director Physical Infrastructure Issues: ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL; Progress in Improving Energy Efficiency and Options for Decreasing Greenhouse Gas Emissions", June 18, 2008.

 

"The Architect of the Capitol (AOC) is the federal agency responsible for the maintenance, operation, development, and preservation of the United States Capitol Complex, and also the head of that agency. The Architect of the Capitol is in the legislative branch^[1] and is accountable to the United States Congress and the Supreme Court.^[2]

President Trump nominated Brett Blanton as architect of the Capitol on December 9, 2019. On December 19, 2019, the United States Senate confirmed his nomination by voice vote.^[3] He was sworn in on January 16, 2020.^[4] Blanton replaced acting architect of the Capitol Thomas J. Carroll, who replaced former acting architect of the Capitol Christine A. Merdon. Prior to that, Stephen T. Ayers served as acting architect of the Capitol since February 2007, and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on May 12, 2010, becoming the 11th architect of the Capitol.^[5] He retired on November 23, 2018.^[6] "

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architect_of_the_Capitol 

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You are looking at something very new and very different. Invented and owned by NET Power, and built by Toshiba, it is a pilot version of a natural gas power plant that has no emissions stack. IT NATURALLY CARBON- CAPTURES FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS. It has been feeding test power electricity into Exelon's nearby grid for a couple of years in La Porte, Texas, with a team of Exelon's utility power plant operators who are working up an easy-to-run control room from the same room NET Power's scientists used to get the plant up and running. This new thermodynamic cycle, the Allam-Fetvedt cycle, has never been built and run before and everyone wants to know if the "natives are really long-term friendly".  https://netpower.com/technology/ 

A production 300 megaWatt full city-size version (about the size of a typical large U.S. coal power plant unit) is currently under construction in Japan. The Allam cycle power plant makes NO EMISSIONS that can get loose. Versions that burn coal and lignite have been engineered, patented, and are beginning testing. An oil version should be easy. Both steam and jet engine power plants have been set up worldwide over the years to burn either natural gas or oil.

This small test version strikes your author as being a very good commercial size for powering "Combined Heat and Power" plants such as the one powering the Capitol Building Complex depicted above. It is much more efficient.

There are thousands of building complexes around the world that could make good use of a HVAC power plant that burns fossil fuels. Like everything powered by fossil fuels, the plant does make emissions but they come out as the liquids water, argon, and liquefied CO2, each contained in a separate pipe. The liquefied CO2 that comes out can be mixed with "Carbfix" liquid CO2 solidifying solution and then pumped into deep underground storage vaults, becoming a form of solid limestone forever.

The Carbfix folks claim there are nowhere near enough fossil fuels on earth to fill up the known storage vaults with CO2 so mankind is good to go in that direction. Having said that, I would be remiss if I didn't remind you about coal's and lignite's ashes. But ashes don't easily get loose and float up into the air if you bury them in landfills or use them to make roads.   https://www.carbfix.com/ 

This technology could give a real boost to the IPCC's drive to achieve some form of Deep Decarbonization in the world's energy industry by 2050.

           
Click To Enlarge            For details of natural gas, synthetic natural gas and proposed coal and lignite processing components see pdf 2.306.02

   

Above images from: "Progress Update on the Allam Cycle Commercialization of NET Power and the Net Power Demonstration Facility", GHGT-14, (2018), Melbourne, Australia.

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Captured Carbon's Underground CO2 Storage Vault Locations:
U.S. and Global Deep Underground BECCS Negative CO2 Storage Zones

The United States' Carbon Capture and Storage Situation:
"The United States has the technological potential to offset roughly only a decade’s worth of its current CO2 emissions through biological sequestration (i.e., planting trees, etc.,) but a few hundred years’ worth of emissions through carbon dioxide capture and sequestration." - from Congressional Budget Office "The Potential for Carbon Sequestration in the United States, 2007" - Summary, page 2.

There is about 4 centuries of fossil fuel at the current burn rate on Planet Earth. It is estimated there is storage space for several times Planet Earth's carbon dioxide. Far more than is needed to bury all of Climate Change's CO2.  

See CarbFix: CO2 Locked in the ground forever. Watch:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zDZmIDbDO0   (Skip the ad someone inserted in front of the video.)
If water is added to the liquid CO2 as it is pumped into the ground, the CO2 will turn into limestone [carbonate] after a few years. This locks the CO2 underground forever.

               
Maps Showing various UNDERGROUND CARBON CAPTURE STORAGE STRATA LOCATIONS 
See:  "Geospatial analysis of near-term potential for carbon-negative bioenergy in the United States" by Ejeong Baik, et al.  https://www.pnas.org/content/115/13/3290  (pdf)
Locations without carbon disposal will have to rely on renewables - wind, solar - for their electricity.

Bottom Line: BECCS Power Plants for rolling back Climate Change can be located over CO2 storage zones almost anywhere and connected to the electrical grid.

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   On The Horizon
0 Discussion & Strategy Page
1 Repairing the Air - Removing Climate Change
2 Repairing the Water With Next Generation Micro Nuclear Combined Desalination And CO2 Extraction From Sea Water
3 The Very Different Next Generation Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Micro Nuclear Reactors
4 Deep Decarbonizing: Details for USA Implementations
5 A World Powered By Wood Synthetic Natural Gas BECCS Power Plants
6 Why Fossil Fuels Matter  
7 Methanators To Make Cheap Synthetic Natural Gas Out Of Wood Pellets
8 Allam Supercritical CO2 (sCO2) Power Plant
9 Deep Underground CO2 Sequestration Vault Technologies