Source: https://eem.jacksonkelly.com/2013/07/index.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 12:29:37+00:00

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The Ohio State University is leading a joint development effort to scale up chemical looping technology at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Carbon Capture Center, operated by Southern Company in Wilsonville, Ala. Ohio State and Southern Company have a collaborative testing agreement to demonstrate the high pressure syngas-to-hydrogen chemical looping process.
Chemical looping is a novel process for effectively converting carbon-based fuels to electricity, hydrogen and/or liquid fuels with near-zero carbon emissions. This process could achieve one of the lowest cost and most efficient technologies yet developed for CO2-free energy from coal. Liang-Shih Fan, Ohio State professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and principal investigator on the project, is committed to advancing and industrializing such clean coal technology.
Typical coal-fired power plants burn coal to heat water to make steam, which turns the turbines that produce electricity. In chemical looping, the coal isn't burned with fire, but instead chemically combusted in a sealed chamber so that it doesn't pollute the air.
"In the simplest sense, combustion is a chemical reaction that consumes oxygen and produces heat," Fan says. "Unfortunately, it also produces carbon dioxide, which is difficult to capture and bad for the environment. So we found a way to release the heat without burning."
According to Fan, the breakthrough was the production of pure hydrogen and carbon dioxide during the long-term, continuous sub-pilot demonstration. The production of pure hydrogen and carbon dioxide was achieved by a combination of the moving bed concept and the iron looping chemistry. By successfully demonstrating the moving bed idea, the iron looping process can achieve one of the lowest cost and most efficient technologies to produce affordable, pure hydrogen while attaining nearly 100 percent CO2 control and complying with all environmental regulations.
The Ohio State syngas iron looping process circulates various iron oxide forms through different reaction zones. Carbon-based fuel is first oxidized to CO2, captured and sequestered, and simultaneously iron oxide is reduced to its elemental form. After the reducer, the elemental iron is oxidized by steam, producing hydrogen and an intermediate iron oxide form. The intermediate iron oxide is then burned in air to produce a more reactive iron oxide, which is circulated back to the reducer.
The patented Ohio State syngas chemical looping process uses countercurrent moving bed reducer and oxidizer and iron-based composite oxygen carriers under reduction-oxidation conditions. In particular, the unit converts coal syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, to carbon-free energy carriers. The system is unique, as it can allow both electricity and hydrogen co-production as compared to other chemical looping technologies.
"Ohio State's chemical looping technology has the potential to secure coal and biomass as fuels for reliable, low-carbon domestic energy," said Eric Toone, the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E Deputy Director for Technology. "The collaboration between project participants at the National Carbon Capture Center holds great promise to accelerate the technology from demonstration into the marketplace."
Ohio State’s demonstration project will be the largest scale-up of the chemical looping gasification technology for hydrogen generation from coal. The project is co-funded by the U.S. Department of Energy/Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and the Ohio Department of Development’s Office of Energy through the Ohio Coal Development Office, as well as industrial partners Babcock & Wilcox, CONSOL Energy Inc. and Clear Skies Consulting.
Power Engineering, “Chemical Looping for Nearly Zero-Pollution Coal Power,” Liang-Shih Fan and Elena Chung, pp. 12-19, July 2013.
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In 2011, the West Virginia Legislature enacted the Natural Gas Horizontal Well Control Act, W.Va. Code §§ 22-6A-1 to -24. The Act required WVDEP to conduct three studies: an Impoundment and Pit Safety Study; a Noise, Light, Dust and Volatile Organic Compounds Study; and an Air Quality Study. In May and June 2013, WVDEP completed the last of the required studies and provided information about all of its studies on its website. Links to all three studies and brief descriptions of each appear below.
By January 1, 2013, WVDEP was to report to the Legislature on the safety of pits and impoundments, including an evaluation of whether testing and special provisions are needed for radioactivity and other toxics held in pits or impoundments.
By report dated March 7, 2013, WVDEP concluded that the three centralized pits it studied were better designed and constructed than were pre-Act pits and that the pits posed no imminent threat to public health or the environment, though the authors conceded they had not evaluated the health effects of continued long-term exposure to the naturally occurring radiation associated with development of Devonian shale gas.
By letter of May 28, 2013, WVDEP submitted a report to the Legislature which was accompanied by noise, light, dust and hydrocarbon monitoring data compiled by WVDEP. WVDEP’s report noted that WVDEP’s noise assessment indicated that the average decibel levels were below the 70 dB guideline used for establishing a lifetime risk of hearing loss, but occasionally exceeded lower thresholds designed to prevent nuisance impacts and other hearing effects. WVDEP found no impact from nighttime illumination or airborne radiation. It did, however, find elevated benzene levels near some pads, a result that WVU investigators said could be attributed to diesel engines instead of direct emissions from well sites. Some press accounts have suggested that WVDEP has downplayed the significance of the benzene findings.
After reviewing well pad site restrictions in other states, WVDEP concluded that the Legislature should reconsider applying site restrictions as measured from the center of the well pads and use the “limit of disturbance” associated with the pad as the point of reference for measuring the location standards (625? from occupied dwellings) as is done with surface mining.
By July 1, 2013, WVDEP was to advise the Legislature on the need for further regulation of air pollution from well sites.
In a report dated June 28, 2013, WVDEP advised that no new rules need to be issued “at this time,” but noted that there are additional air studies underway that will result in more complete information over time. WVDEP also indicated that it already extensively regulates extraction facilities, compression stations and dehydrators and that EPA has increasingly regulated internal combustion engines.
The Fourth Circuit has expanded liability for private injuries resulting from abandoned waste sites by pre-empting state laws that limit the time in which civil actions may be brought against prior site owners. In a decision issued on July 9, a three judge panel by a 2-1 vote concluded that that “the discovery rule articulated in § 9658 of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Liability, and Compensation Act (CERCLA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 9601-9675, preempts North Carolina’s ten-year limitation” of such actions. The complex analysis of the CERCLA discovery rule and the operative North Carolina statute will result in a former landowner being unable to dismiss suits at the outset of a proceeding. Instead, it is more likely to be required to defend the claims at trial.
The case involves an electroplating site in Asheville, NC where electronic parts were manufactured and disposed of that contained a variety of toxic substances including TCE, cyanide, chromium and lead. The former owner and defendant, CTS Corporation, sold the site in 1987 to a company which in turn sold parcels to persons who built homes on the property. In 2011, 25 landowners sued CTS under a variety of legal theories. CTS last used the property for activities that were identified as causing the plaintiffs harm in 1985. CTS moved to dismiss the action under a North Carolina statute of repose, similar to a statute of limitation. The district court granted the dismissal. “The court reasoned that the ten-year limitation is a statute of repose and that because [CERCLA] § 9658 mentions only statutes of limitations, it is inapplicable here.” The plaintiffs appealed.
The three judge panel analyzed § 9658 of CERCLA at length. It acknowledged that CERCLA is a complex statute, and explicitly found the statutory section at issue ambiguous. Before the CERCLA provision has any operative effect, “a state limitations period must meet two conditions before the federally required commencement date applies to a cause of action: (1) it must be an “applicable limitations period” that is “specified in the State statute of limitations or under common law” and (2) it must “provide a commencement date which is earlier than the federally required commencement date.” Id. § 9658(a)(1). The panel concluded that “in spite of § 9658’s repeated use of the phrase “statute of limitations,” the text is susceptible to an interpretation that includes repose limitations such as North Carolina’s.” This conclusion had the effect of setting aside the ten year limitation under North Carolina law, and applying the more generous federal provision which allows the suit to proceed to trial.
The case is Waldburger v. CTS Corporation, No. 12-1290 (July 10, 2013). For more information contact Blair Gardner in Jackson Kelly’s Charleston office at 304 340-1146.
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While the EPA announced April 30, 2013, that it will not require GHG air permits for underground coal mines, operators of underground coal mines must still report the GHG emissions from underground mines. Maximum penalties for failure to report are to be calculated under Clean Air Act Section 113 and are presently $32,500 per day per violation.
Some background on these seemingly contrary requirements: On June 16, 2010, Earthjustice, on behalf of WildEarth Guardians, Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Integrity Project, and the Sierra Club filed a petition requesting that EPA “exercise [its] authorities under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act and: (1) list coal mines as a category of stationary sources that emit air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare; (2) establish federal standards of performance for new and modified sources within the newly listed stationary source category for coal mines; and (3) establish federal standards of performance to address methane emissions from existing sources within the newly listed stationary source category for coal mines.” Acting Administrator Robert Perciasepe rejected the petition in his April 30, 2013, letter, citing budget sequestration and other cutbacks to EPA’s budget. Interestingly, he did not address the merits of the petition itself.
Despite this apparent success in avoiding GHG permitting, operators of underground coal mines must still report the GHG emissions from underground mines. Regulations promulgated in 2009 at 40 CFR Part 98 require the reporting of GHG emissions (in units of CO2e) from any underground mine (NAICS 212113, 212112) with emissions greater than 25,000 metric tons CO2e starting with emissions in calendar year 2011. Those reports were due by March of 2012. Reports for each subsequent calendar year are due by March of the following year. The reporting requirement applies to all “active underground mines,” defined as any site at which “mine development is underway, coal has been produced within the last 90 days, mine personnel are present in the mine workings, mine ventilation fans are operative, OR the mine is designated as an ‘intermittent’ mine by MSHA.” Reports must be filed electronically using the EPA electronic reporting tool, known as e-GRRT.
This article was authored by Skipp Kropp, Jackson Kelly PLLC. For more information on the author, see here.
West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s (“WVDEP”) Watershed Assessment Branch in now accepting water quality data for its 2014 Integrated Water Quality Monitoring and Assessment Report, which is a required report under Clean Water Act Sections 303(d) and 305(b). The data should have been gathered from state streams by individuals, groups, or agencies between the dates of July 2008 and June 2013. Instructions on how to prepare the data for use in the report may be found here.
Data must be submitted by October 18, 2013. It may be emailed to Steve Young, Stephen.a.young@wv.gov, or Chris Daugherty, chris.a.daugherty@wv.gov. Hard copies may be sent to WVDEP at: Division of Water and Waste Management, Attn: Steve Young, 601 57th St. S.E., Charleston, WV 25304.
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