"Dry water" is actually tiny droplets of normal wet water coated in silica. The result is a powder that resembles fine sugar but is 95% water. It was discovered in 1968 and has been used in the cosmetics industry.

Scientists at Liverpool University have found that "dry water" has a powerful ability to absorb gases. For example, "dry water" can absorb up to 180 times as much methane as normal water in the same time. One possible use is to store methane gas for transportation. In principle, a pressurised tank of "dry water" containing methane could be used to fuel a car.

The researchers have also shown that it can absorb more than three times as much carbon dioxide as ordinary water and silica.  It is therefore seen as an ideal candidate for research into finding ways to absord and store greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, (The problem with simply placing it in the chimney of a coal-fired power atation is that the heat would make the water evaporate.)

EU member states have approved a plan to share out €4 billion ($au6.3 billion) to develop carbon capture and storage and fund some other high tech renewables projects.

At least eight carbon capture and storage projects will receive funding. Ocean thermal energy conversion technologies and systems to convert cellulose from plant waste into biofuels, biogas or electricity will also be considered.

Specific proposals for projects to be up and running by 2015 must be submitted this year. The European Investment Bank will assess the proposals and determine which projects will receive funding during 2011. It is expected that most of the funding will go to the carbon capture and storage projects.

Australian clean coal technology specialist Linc Energy  has signed a major new partnerhip with British fuel cell firm AFC Energy for a demonstration project that the two companies believe could revolutionise the coal industry.

The firms believe that combining underground coal gasification techniques with hydrogen fuel cell technologies will provide a significantly cleaner and cheaper way of generating energy from coal.

Underground coal gasification is an established energy generation technique, which involves burning coal underground to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can then be used to power gas turbines. However, under the plans proposed by Linc Energy and AFC, the resulting gases would be mixed with steam to produce carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The hydrogen would then be used to power fuel cells, while the CO2 will be captured and injected back underground.

The fuel cells would use the hydrogen to produce electricity and heat, with distilled water the only by-product from the process – a 1,000 megawatt power station would produce over 2.5 billion litres of clean water a year.

Advocates of the technique argue that it is cheaper and less environmentally damaging than mining, transporting and burning coal in a standard coal-fired power plant and then capturing the carbon dioxide emissions afterwards. Linc Energy also argues that underground coal gasification can reach coal fields that would be too expensive to mine traditionally.

"The future of this concept is simply staggering," said Peter Bond, chief executive of Linc Energy. "It could easily be the ultimate answer for clean coal power many of us are looking for, and it’s only one or two years away from reality."

A new type of natural-gas electric power plant, which has been proposed by MIT researchers, could provide electricity with zero carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, at costs comparable to or less than conventional natural-gas plants, and even to coal-burning plants.

Postdoctoral Associate Thomas Adams and Paul I. Barton, the Lammot du Pont Professor of Chemical Engineering, have proposed a system that uses solid-oxide fuel cells, which produce power from fuel without burning it. The system does not require any new technology but combines existing components or ones that are already well under development, in a novel configuration.

According to Thomas Adams, unless a price is placed on carbon emissions, "the cheapest fuel (for  generating electricity) will always be pulverized coal." But as soon as there is some form of carbon pricing at more than about $15 per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide "ours is the lowest price option."

Although no full-scale plants using this system have yet been built, the basic principles have been demonstrated in a number of smaller units including a 250-kilowatt plant. Prototype megawatt-scale plants are planned for completion around 2012.

Utility-scale power plants would be on the order of 500 megawatts but because fuel cells, unlike conventional turbine-based generators, are inherently modular, once the system has been proved at small size it can easily be scaled up. "You don’t need one large unit," Adams explains. "You can do hundreds or thousands of small ones, run in parallel."

He says that practical application of such systems is "not very far away at all" and could be ready for commercialization within a few years.

The world’s first retrofit of a power plant with carbon capture and storage technology will begin operating this month in the south of France. It is the first project to link together all parts of the carbon capture chain from burning natural gas to isolating CO2 from flue gases and burying it underground.

The French energy company, Total, has upgraded an existing gas-fired boiler at its power plant at Lacq, France. The €60 million ($au110 million) project will transport some 60,000 tonnes of CO2 every year and store it, at a depth of 4,500 meters, in the nearby depleted gas field at Rousse. The CO2 will transported by reusing an existing pipeline that had been transporting natural gas from the Rousse field.

The project will run for two years, to determine if the CO2 can be safely stored in the Rousse field.

Swedish energy utility Vattenfall has launched an emissions-free coal-fired test plant at Schwarze Pumpe near Berlin.

Carbon dioxide emitted when the coal burns will be compressed to a liquid and injected "for permanent storage" in a gas field in northern Germany.

The 30-megawatt pilot plant is very small compared to conventional power stations but it is the first coal-fired power plant in the world able to capture and store its own carbon dioxide emissions. Vattenfall plans to build two demonstration plants, ten times the size of the pilot plant in Germany and Denmark by 2015 at the latest. The company aims to commission its first large-scale carbon capture and storage power station in 2020.

Tuomo Hatakka, the chief executive of Vattenfall Europe, said that the process was viable because companies will have to buy EU allowances for every ton of carbon dioxide they release into the air. "In tandem with EU-wide trading in emission rights, carbon capture and storage will be economic. At 30 to 35 euros per emission certificate, the technology breaks even," he said.

A study published in the Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control has highlighted a problem with carbon capture that has not been widely discussed. While carbon capture technology will probably be able to reduce the carbon dioxide emission from coal-fired power plants by between 71 and 78 percent, the cost of doing so is will be the need to produce additional power to compress the carbon dioxide for storage.

Production of this power will mean that about 30% more coal need to will be burnt. The production, transport and burning of this additional coal would result in an increase in the nitrogen oxides and sufur oxides produced by about 40%. These chemicals are linked with the production of acid rain, water pollution and destruction of the ozone layer.

Presumably, additional coal mining would also result in a proportional increase in the number of miners killed – which has been betwwen 5,600 and 7,000 a year in the past decade.

Shell Oil is funding a feasibility study into adding lime to seawater as a cost-effective way to fight global warming by sequestering large amounts of carbon dioxide in the world’s oceans.

Adding lime to seawater increases its alkalinity, thereby increasing the ocean’s capacity to absorb CO2. The process actually generates CO2 emissions but, according to Tim Kruger, a consultant with Corven, the company running the trial, it sequesters twice as much as it produces, making the process ‘carbon negative’.

Corven believes that the process will be cost-effective if it is carried out in an area which is rich in limestone and has large energy resources. "Australia’s Nullarbor Plain would be a prime location for this process, as it has 10 000km3 of limestone and soaks up roughly 20MJ/m2 of solar irradiation every day," said Kruger.

The UK Government  today announced a shortlist of four companies in a tender to build the world’s first commercial-scale power plant to burn coal and oil with with carbon capture and storage (CCS). The firms shortlisted are BP Alternative Energy International, E.ON UK, Peel Power and Scottish Power Generation.

"It is the great panacea." said Michael Grubb, chief economist at Britain’s Carbon Trust. "The trouble is that while everybody says it can be done, no one has yet done it. There are very big companies out there with very deep pockets but even they are not doing it."

It is estimated that capital cost will be 30 to 50% higher and that running costs will be about 15% higher for a power station with CCS.

The incentive for power firms is that, if CCS can be made commercially viable, demand for the technology could be huge. "Potentially the market for this technology is going to be worth trillions — of whatever currency you name," said Jeff Chapman of Britain’s Carbon Capture and Storage Association.

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Scientists at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, report that they have developed a technique which is potentially twice as cost-effective as current methods of carbon capture. Currently, flue gases are bubbled through a solution of monoethanolamine which binds with the carbon dioxide. The solution is then heated to separate the carbon dioxide for storage and to release the monoethanolamine for re-use. This process costs about $50 a tonne.

Past research has shown the activated carbon (a porous carbon-based material) strongly absorbs carbon dioxide at high pressures. The Wyoming scientists have now shown that activated carbon can selectively absorb carbon dioxide at lower pressures and temperatures. They believe that, if their process can be scaled up sufficiently, it could reduce the price of separation to around $20 a tonne.