Update On Western North Dakota Fertilizer Plant -- November 12, 2016

From The Dickinson Press, data points:

• $500 million urea fertilizer plant
• construction began in 2014; now past the halfway mark
• location: within the sprawling industrial complex of Basin Electric Power Cooperative's Dakota Gasification Plant, northwest of Beulah in far western North Dakota
• the gasification plant: home of four power plants; two lignite coal mines; and the synfuels plant
• Mercer County: noted a substantial rise in taxable sales at a time when that metric plummeted across North Dakota
• new Coyote Creek mine noted in the story
• due to huge summer storm on July 3, 2016, the project was set back several months
• now scheduled to open in early 2018

I sure hope Trump sets out on a tour of the US when he visits those sites where America is already great. His first stop: the Bakken; the DAPL; the BEPC industrial complex; the steakhouse in Watford City.

Note: a reader, who has worked at the site, sent me this note:

It is more correct to say that Mercer County is the home of four power plants: Stanton Station, Leland Olds, Coyote and Antelope Valley Station.

Antelope Valley, BEPC, is "across the fence" from the gasification plant/synthetic fuels plant (one and the same), that shares some facilities with AVS.

The GP/SF plant has several components: ~ 137.5  mmscfd natural gas, plus CO2 for EOR, NH3, and numerous other by-products (see Dakota Gas website).

I had completely forgotten this fact about the plant: the Great Plains Synfuels Plant is home to the largest CO2 capture project in the world. 

State May Test Clean-Lignite / CO2 Power Generation; Texas Already Testing -- November 18, 2015

The Bismarck Tribune is reporting:

 State researchers and regional energy companies want to take a promising carbon dioxide capturing technology to the lab.

The Allam Cycle, invented by 8 Rivers, uses pressurized carbon dioxide rather than steam to generate power. It is said to be more efficient, less expensive, and "clearner." 

It is already being tested on a $140 million, 50-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant in La Porte, Texas. 

Now there's an opportunity for North Dakota to test this technology using lignite.

The Lignite Research Council voted unanimously to recommend state funding of the research project Tuesday. It will go on to the Industrial Commission for final approval.

The partners in this test (dollar amounts rounded):

• Grand Forks-based Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC), funding from DOE: $1 million
• Basin Electric Power Cooperative: %150,000
• 8 Rivers (HQ in Durham, North Carolina), funding from DOE $500,000
• ALLETE with subsidiaries BNI Coal and Minnesota Power: $150,000
• request for state funding: $1.5 million

This group plans to evaluate how the fuel difference of gasified lignite might affect the Allam Cycle technology.

Coal Gasification Project In Odessa, Texas, Set To Break Ground Later This Year; Whiting To Use CO2 For Permian Basin EOR -- April 1, 2015

FuelFix is reporting:

A new power plant in West Texas that could transform coal into cleaner-burning natural gas is poised to break ground later this year, an executive in charge of the project said at a conference in Houston Wednesday.

The project, located on a 600-acre site in Odessa, uses coal as a feedstock for a 400 megawatt power plant. But instead of burning it, the plant uses a chemical process to first strip it of carbon, sulfur and mercury.

The result, project leaders say, is a hydrocarbon that can fuel the power plan but burns even cleaner than natural gas — even though it was derived from coal. The extra carbon dioxide that gets stripped away is sold to production company Whiting Petroleum, which can pump in underground through a process known as enhanced oil recovery that helps coax more hydrocarbons from the earth.

“We’re not actually burning coal; we’re unlocking hydrocarbons,” said Jason Crew, CEO of Summit Power, the Seattle-based company behind the undertaking dubbed the Texas Clean Energy Project.

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded the project $450 million in federal grants. Even though the U.S. is moving to phase-out coal in favor of natural gas-fired plants and alternative energy sources, coal is still poised to be a vital source of energy for the U.S. and other countries for years to come, said  Jason Lewis, federal project manager at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.

• Background: Texas Clean Energy Project. 
• Background: Integrated gasification combined cycle.

The Odessa project is one of three carbon-capture projects in Texas.

• The Petra Nova project, a joint venture involving NRG Energy Inc., is under construction in Fort Bend County. Technology added to an existing power plant is designed to capture carbon before it’s emitted into the atmosphere.
• Air Products and Chemicals is capturing carbon from a hydrogen production facility in Port Arthur. All three projects have received federal support.

Combined Cycle Gas Turbine Plants And Mississippi Power -- September 13, 2014

This story is now tracked here. 

Background for a combined cycle electric power generating plant (wiki):

In electric power generation a combined cycle is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem from the same source of heat to produce electricity.

The principle is that after completing its cycle (in the first engine), the working fluid of the first heat engine is still low enough in its entropy that a second subsequent heat engine may extract energy from the waste heat (energy) of the working fluid of the first engine. By combining these multiple streams of work upon a single mechanical shaft turning an electric generator, the overall net efficiency of the system may be increased by 50 – 60 percent.

Combining two or more thermodynamic cycles results in improved overall efficiency, reducing fuel costs.

In stationary power plants, a widely used combination is a gas turbine  burning natural gas or synthesis gas from coal.

This is called a Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) plant, and can achieve a thermal efficiency of around 60%, in contrast to a single cycle steam power plant which is limited to efficiencies of around 35-42%. 

Press release:

Mississippi Power announced today (August 14, 2014) that the Kemper County energy facility's combined cycle has been placed into commercial operation marking the facility's most significant milestone to date.

Putting the combined cycle unit into operation means it will be available to serve Mississippi Power customers' energy needs during the remaining summer months.

The unit was originally synchronized to the grid on Oct. 5, 2013 during testing using natural gas as fuel. 

Another significant milestone – the first gasifier heat up – is scheduled for later this year.  

The gasifiers at Kemper are the core of the integrated gasification process, which will be used to convert lignite into synthesis gas. The use of Mississippi lignite adds fuel diversity at low costs and stable prices for Mississippi Power's customers.

So, if I got this right, the new plant will use natural gas in one "unit" and gas derived from lignite in the second "unit" to achieve an efficiency of around 60% compared with less than 40% efficiency for "conventional" gas generating electric power plants.

Question: what does North Dakota have a lot of? Natural gas and lignite.

PowerOfCoal.com is reporting:

Since 1988, North Dakota’s lignite production has consistently been about 30 million tons per year, making North Dakota one of 10 major coal-producing states in the United States.

It seems one could have a combined cycle gas turbine plant using natural gas OR lignite-derived gas in each unit, but there may be good reasons for using both. I can certainly think of some.

Coal Ain't Dead Yet

IndyStar is reporting:

After years of ethics controversies and cost overruns, Duke Energy’s new $3.5 billion coal-gasification power plant in Edwardsport is up and running.

Officials with the Charlotte, N.C.-based energy company announced Monday that the high-tech 618-megawatt plant, located near Vincennes, has officially started commercial operations.

The plant is billed as one of the largest, cleanest coal-fired power generating facilities in the world. It uses advanced technology to gasify coal, strip out pollutants, and then burn the cleaner gas to produce electricity.

The company said the new plant will produce 10 times as much power as a former plant at Edwardsport, but emit about 70 percent less sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulates combined.

Coal ain't dead yet. 

China To Build One of Country's Largest Coal-to-Natural Gas Projects

Earlier this year MDW noted, from Reuters:

The Alberta government said on Monday it canceled C$285 million ($278 million) in funding for a carbon-capture project tied to a proposed synthetic natural gas plant, the second withdrawal of such an environmental initiative in less than a year.

Alberta said the privately held company planning the project, Swan Hills Synfuels, has delayed it because lower-than-expected North American gas prices have made producing coal-to-gas fuel uneconomical.

In China, it is a different story. China announced that it will be building a huge, $11 billion, coal-to-gas facility. Reuters is reporting:

China's state energy giant Sinopec Group envisages investing 70 billion yuan ($11.3 billion) to build the country's largest coal-to-gas project in 8-10 years to meet a rising demand for natural gas, a newspaper said on Sunday. 

Coal-to-gas production facilities in Zhundong in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang will have annual production capacity of 8 billion cubic metres of gas (bcm) .... Coal extracted from two mines in Zhundong will be used to feed coal-to-gas production facilities nearby, the daily said. The coal mines have annual production capacity of 15 million tonnes each. 

Something tells me Sinopec will have no trouble with the permitting process. The CO2 emissions, I imaging, will flow eastward over Portland, OR.

Canada Pulls Funding for Carbon-Capture Project

Reuters is reporting:

The Alberta government said on Monday it canceled C$285 million ($278 million) in funding for a carbon-capture project tied to a proposed synthetic natural gas plant, the second withdrawal of such an environmental initiative in less than a year.

Alberta said the privately held company planning the project, Swan Hills Synfuels, has delayed it because lower-than-expected North American gas prices have made producing coal-to-gas fuel uneconomical.

Same goes for wind, solar, and algae. Don't tell the US Navy.

What Can You Do With Coal Gasification?

Updates

December 18, 2012:  The Weyburn oil field in Canada gets its CO2 from the Dakota Gasification Corporation in Beulah, North Dakota.

The native of Croatia noted that his company operates the world's largest carbon sequestration project, the Weyburn-Midale Carbon Dioxide Project in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. The Weyburn field has been producing since the mid-1950s and currently produces 27,000 gross barrels a day. Researchers representing more than 30 countries estimate about 30 million tonnes of CO2 will be sequestered over the life of the project.

See point #3 below in the original post. 

 

Original Post

Let me count the ways:

• ammonium sulfate, an agricultural fertilizer
• anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer and feedstock for various chemicals
• carbon dioxide, for EOR
• dephenolized cresylic acid, for pesticides, enamel solvents, epoxy resins
• krypton and xenon gases, the former to stop Superman, otherwise specialty lighting
• liquid nitrogen, for food processing
• naphtha, a gasoline blend stock
• phenol, for resins

Now, possibly a ninth: urea, a granular farm fertilizer.

At the Minot Daily News:

One of the most unique energy plants in the nation is looking at the possibility of expanding its portfolio of byproducts, which would be beneficial to not just the plant, but farmers, as well.

Dakota Gasification Co., which is a subsidiary of Basin Electric Power Cooperative, is conducting a study to determine the viability of building a urea plant at the Great Plains Synfuels Plant near Beulah. The main product of the plant is synthetic natural gas, which is manufactured from coal through a gasification process.

The Great Plains Synfuels Plant is the only commercial-scale coal gasification plant in the United States that manufactures natural gas.

Underground Coal Gasification (UCG)

Another source of energy to keep track of.

Link here to Forbes.

Coal Gasification is a well-known, tried and true technology, dating back to the mid-1800s.  Town gas, as it was then known, lit the streets of London and other cities in the 1860s, (thereby helping to save the sperm whale – whose oil was used in lighting municipalities around the globe – from extinction).

UCG essentially involves a process that captures the imagination: heating underground coal seams to the point of combustion.  It involves drilling two wells – at some distance from each other – into the coal seam.  The first well supplies oxidants (a mixture of water and air or water and oxygen), which are injected into the location where the process is actually occurring.  The second well permits the syngas produced to escape under pressure to the surface.  This gas contains approximately 80% of the original energy content of the coal, and is a combination of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane.

What We Will Be Talking About Thursday; Wells Coming Off Confidential List; China To Build 400 MW Power Plant Near Odessa, Texas; Will Build an Adjacent Coal Gasification Plant

New record: 674,000 bopd.

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Google household income sinks to '95 level, and based on polls, no one seems to care:

Annual household income fell in 2011 for the fourth straight year to an inflation-adjusted $50,054. Median annual household income—the figure at which half are above and half below—now stands 8.9% below its all-time peak of $54,932 in 1999, at the end of the 1990s economic expansion.   

It's not worth looking up, but I've seen the phrase "for the fourth straight" too many times to count this past year. 

But everyone seems content; the gap widens; and life goes on.  But everyone seems content, this is what I mean: it's a close Senate race in Massachusetts AND North Dakota; California is likely to vote to increase taxes on themselves; California elite say they should pay more taxes. As does Warren. 

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Google weather woes sow worry on wheat and look at the graphic. 

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RBN Energy: need for new natural gas processing plants will spur preparation sooner than later

Significant increased natural gas demand for power generation will require not just the operational and scheduling coordination that the FERC discussions are spearheading, but also infrastructure changes to supply new generating facilities. The conclusions of the MISO study, although preliminary, provide useful insight into issues that will be faced by utilities across the country as lower gas prices and coal plant retirement increase dependence on gas supplies for power generation. Given the time it takes to plan, permit and develop new infrastructure, the MISO study appears to indicate that preparation to hookup the next generation of gas fired plants should be happening sooner rather than later.

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Speaking of clean-coal power plants, which we weren't, take a look at this. Google China takes big role in Texas plant: Sinopec, that would be a Chinese company will manage construction of a critical portion of a new clean coal power plant near Odessa, Texas, and ALL funding will come from a Chinese bank. 

The changes mean that China will take a leading role in the project, which underscores the country's ambition to invest more heavily in the U.S. energy sector and play a direct—and more visible—role in managing technically challenging projects. The undertaking near Odessa, Texas, includes a 400-megawatt power plant and an adjacent chemical facility where coal will be turned into a clean, combustible gas to reduce pollution when the gas is burned to generate electricity at the power plant.

The trend continues: everyone is looking east. China looks east to North America. The US looks east to Yemen.

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Heckmann shares jump almost 10% today. No explanation. (Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.)

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Harold Hamm will be testifying (I would prefer to use the word "presenting," in this case) at the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday. A snippet of his prepared remarks are here; his full testimony will be available later.

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Wells coming off confidential list on Thursday.
20298, 514, OXY USA, David Sadowsky 1-11-14H-142-96, Manning oil field; t3/12; cum 31K 7/12;
22159, 655, Hess, BW-Hedstrom-149-100-1201H-1, Ellsworth, t6/12; cum 30K 7/12;
22230, 560, SM Energy, Torgeson 2-30HNB, West Ambrose, t5/12; cum 29K 7/12;
22325, drl, XTO, Wallace 21X-2B, West Capa, cum 26K 7/12; no IP yet;

The XTO well:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	7-2012	31	7563	7629	6090	8790	7205	1523
BAKKEN	6-2012	30	10635	10707	10343	13933	0	13873
BAKKEN	5-2012	31	2804	2109	12417	3541	0	3523

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Portland to Fluoridate Water

Portland is the largest US city not to fluoridate water. The council voted 5-0 to fluoridate water by 2014. This is my favorite line:

Fluoridation has been a touchy issue for decades, with opponents contending that the chemical is linked to lower intelligence in children ....

I have spent a a fair amount of time in Portland over the past few years; it's where my younger daughter lives. Based on what I've seen in Portland, the lack of fluoridation might be associated with lower intelligence in adolescents. "Keep Portland weird" is not just a motto for this city. Having said that, Portland has the best bookstore in the country: Powell's.

North Dakota Coal Story: Nothing To Do With the Bakken

UND's Energy and Environmental Research Center and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne have partnered to study ways to make "coal cleaner."

Data points:

• the joint venture has introduced a prototype gasification system that uses dry coal
• current process requires large quantities of water
• new system burns coal more efficiently, more cleanly according to spokesman
• coal is pulverized and kept under pressure to behave like a fluid
• no additional water is used
• 2015: will start looking for commercial plants worldwide

Back on July 20, 2010, I blogged about New Zealand shipping lignite to North Dakota to test a coal-drying process.

Wyoming Coal-to-Liquid (CTL) Project One Step Closer

Before reading this update, you might want to review the various coal technologies in North Dakota at this posting. In addition to the Bakken, the coal potential in North Dakota is huge, perhaps made bigger by the Japanese nuclear disaster.

Now back to the news coming out of Wyoming. The Wyoming Supreme Court agrees with the proponents of coal technology and against the environmentalists regarding an air permit for a coal-to-gasoline.

A planned multibillion-dollar operation that would convert coal into gasoline and diesel fuel near Medicine Bow is getting a boost from a Wyoming Supreme Court ruling upholding a state air permit for the facility.

When completed, the plant would produce 21,000 barrels of gasoline a day from locally mined coal.

Houston-based DKRW Advanced Fuels is still waiting for a reply from the Department of Energy for a loan guarantee for which they applied in 2009.

Australia, Wyoming, and Enhanced Oil Recovery -- Denbury

Before reading the rest of this post, you may want to review coal beneficiation, above-ground coal gassification, and below-ground gassification.

Although this story pertains to an event in Wyoming, it is relevant to the energy story in North Dakota.

An Australian company has bought three oil fields in Wyoming. These are old fields but may give up more oil with enhanced oil recovery (EOR), i.e., flooding the reservoirs with carbon dioxide.

Linc Energy Limited, an Australian firm has plans to conduct underground coal gassification in the Powder River Basin. Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of the gassification process and will be used for EOR in these Wyoming oil fields.

An American company most associated with EOR (at least in my mind) is Denbury. Denbury recently entered the Bakken in a big way by acquiring Encore.

Denbury Promotional Presentation on EOR

Update on Coal Projects in the Area

Updates

July 23, 2011: Update on Basin Electric coal gasification/CO2 generation and capture, as well as new calls for government policies to support EOR. 

October 30, 2010: Update on Coal Creek Station. This is Great River Energy's benefication plant located between Bismarck and Minot where lignite is dried to produce a better fuel. The concept is working and engineers from as far away as China are coming to visit. The company's patented process is called DryFining. This appears to be more successful than most people initially thought. A synopsis of this plant:

The Coal Creek Station in Underwood, ND, has a coal drying process they have been working on for years. "They" claim a 29% moisture reduction in the lignite, causing a 14.5 % increase in heat content of lignite. This process also causes a reduction of 52 % of SO2, a 37 % reduction in mercury and a 32% reduction in NOX2. This plant is also going to dry coal for a new power station being built in Jamestown, ND.

October 6, 2010: The nation's only commercial-scale plant producing natural gas from lignite paid off its last loan to the US government (long story, see link). The company is Dakota Gasification Company, a subsidiary of Bismarck-based Basin Electric Power Cooperative.

Original Blog

Call me obsessive-compulsive, but it often leads to good things.

It's a long, convoluted story -- too long and too convoluted to go into here -- but my obsession with DKRW has led me down a strange but interesting path, with lots of dots to connect.

I am a novice when it comes to coal, so this posting is simply for me to start understanding what is going on in North Dakota with respect to coal. Yes, it's a bit off-topic from the Bakken but there are too many stories about coal "in the Bakken" for this site to ignore. Again, this is for my benefit, and anyone who can shed light on what is transpiring is welcome to comment.

First, we all know about the South Heart Gasification Plant, or at least I thought I did. But I am getting a bit more confused. It's possible that there are three projects in the works in and around South Heart, Stark County, North Dakota (USA) regarding the use of coal.

Hopefully others will help me out.

The three projects:

• Beneficiation: A coal-drying process to transform lignite into a more efficient coal.
• Above-ground gasification: A coal-gasification plant.
• Underground gasification: An underground coal gasification project.

Beneficiation: The coal-drying process

This was the first story I linked: New Zealand shipping lignite to North Dakota to test the concept. Recent reports suggest that the New Zealand test was successful.

The plant in North Dakota, operated by GTL Energy and slated to open at the end of December, aims to prove that new technology can remove much of that water content and impurities to make the fuel more cost efficient and increase its energy value. French said the company hopes the plant will reduce lignite water content to 10 percent using a process called beneficiation.

The plant, which is designed to process about 240,000 tons of lignite annually, is the first commercial-scale project of its kind.

The coal-gasification plant

South Heart Coal (SHC) is a subsidiary of Great Northern Power Development (GNPD), which is affiliated with Great Northern Properties, the nation’s largest private coal reserve holder. In January, 2008, these two entities (SHC and GNPD) announced their intent to move forward with a $1.4 billion proposal for a coal-to-gas plant and coal mine at the same site. If the proposal is approved, construction could begin in December, 2009, (need to find update), and the plant would be operational in 2012. Subsequently (in 2009), SHC has changed its permit (due to legal wrangling) to forego the gasification plant and simply become an electrical generation plant.  [Update, November 4, 2010: South Heart Coal has resubmitted its proposal, but limits it to strip coal mining; promoters says coal-drying technology licensed from GTL will be used by a new plant to be built three miles west of South Heart.]

The project is located 30 miles west of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and air status concerns for the park make the location problematic (need to find update). From SourceWatch.com.

Note: SourceWatch states the project would be WEST of the Theordore Roosevelt National Park. Folks living in the area tell me that the project is EAST of the park.  UPDATE: the folks at SourceWatch replied to my e-mail and said that yes, indeed, they will correct that. For me that makes the "air status concerns" a lot less problematic.

It is my understanding that South Heart Coal was also considering an IGCC power plant there (it is confusing to me whether this is a new project or related to the "coal-to-gas plant" noted above).

Integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants are believed to be the type of power plants that will predominately be used to add to our electrical power supply, replace our aging coal power plants and out increasingly expensive natural gas power plants. Source: The Energy Blog.

Near Beulah, North Dakota, a coal gasification plant. 

Basin Elecric Power Cooperatiave (Basin Electric), through its for-profit subsidiary, Dakota Gasification Company (Dakota Gas), owns and operates the Great Plains Synfuels Plant (Synfuels Plant). The Synfuels Plant is the only commercial-scale coal gasification plant in the United States that manufactures natural gas. It is also the cleanest energy plant operating in the state of North Dakota, according to a comparison of emissions data available from the North Dakota Department of Health.

• Average daily production of natural gas is about 153 million cubic feet, the majority of which is piped to Ventura, IA, for distribution in the eastern United States.

• The Synfuels Plant supplies carbon dioxide to the world’s largest carbon capture and storage project in the world in Saskatchewan, Canada. Dakota Gas currently captures between 2.5 and 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

• The $2.1-billion plant began operating in 1984. Using Lurgi gasifiers, the Synfuels Plant gasifies lignite coal to produce valuable gases and liquids. Located five miles northwest of Beulah, ND, the Synfuels Plant has been owned and operated by Dakota Gas since 1988.

• About $477 million has been invested in the Synfuels Plant since 1988 to achieve environmental compliance, improve efficiency, and invest in new byproduct development. 

DKRW is promoting a coal-to-methane-to gasoline project in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, in the far southeastern corner of the state. I assume this is an above-ground gasification project taking the process one step farther along, to make gasoline. 

Underground gasification concept
I first came across this concept earlier this month in a Bismarck Tribune.com story.

"It could be the bridge to a low-carbon, energy-rich future," said Friedmann, a researcher in carbon management for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "I consider this to be the cleanest coal."

The technique can be used on deep-underground coal seams that are shielded from groundwater. The process works by injecting oxygen and steam into a seam, sparking a chemical reaction that converts the coal into a gas that is collected through a boring injected into another part of the coal vein. The synthetic gas - "syngas" - that is produced can be used in electrical generation or processed into synthetic fuels and natural gas feedstocks.

"It's not a new technology, but it's one that is new to a lot of people," said Mike Fowler, who works on climate technology for the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group in Boston. The process has been around for decades, but has not been used in North America until recently.

This needs to be updated, but at least I'm starting to get a clearer picture.

The importance of all this is to figure out politically where coal stands. I think the DKRW site is most helpful:

The CTL facility will utilize General Electric Company’s coal gasification technology to produce synthetic gas, which will be cleaned to remove substantially all of the sulfur and carbon dioxide (CO₂). This process significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts associated with traditional uses of coal.  The cleaned syngas is conditioned, modified and converted to methanol.

It is my understanding that GE and the current administration get along with each other very nicely. The administration sees GE as a "green" company with GE's emphasis wind turbines (albeit a losing proposition). The DKRW site promotes its efforts by prominently including the corporate logos of Arch Coal, XOM, and GE.

This speaks volumes and suggests to me that despite all the anti-coal rhetoric coming out of Washington, coal as an energy source for America is going to be around for a long time.

By the way, remember: Warren Buffett bought Burlington Northern Railroad, which I believe is the largest mover of coal.