Steven Tedesco
Atoka Inc., USA
Title: Conversion of methane gas from coal and oil and gas sources as a stop gap for the electrical grid and reduction in climate change gases
Biography
Biography: Steven Tedesco
Abstract
Because of growing concerns about climate change and methane emissions, US and Canadian federal, state and provincial governments are addressing how to remove methane gas from the atmosphere in an economical way. Methane is generated from a variety of industrial, geologic and biological sources but specifically discussed here are stranded or shut-in gas wells, well flaring, coal mine leakage and coal bed methane well sources. In the US in 2016 $201 BCFG was flared or vented with an economic loss of $522M+. In conjunction with this problem is the decommissioning of significant numbers of coal-fired and nuclear power plants in the US and Canada. The trend is toward more power plants driven by natural gas and renewable sources excluding hydro. Governmental and industry concern is that the decommissioning of power plants with a capacity of 72GW will not be replaced as quickly as needed by natural gas and renewable sources. In addition, many states in 2018 will be enact significant fines for flaring and leaking oil and gas industry facilities that do not cease methane emission and achieve zero emissions. The equipment to process non-marketable or secondary gas has been around for some time. However, simply converting this gas to electricity still creates significant emissions. The goal of several states is to create zero emissions for which the technology does exist and is an additional add on. In addition, converting gas to electricity and selling it to the grid today is more easily done in many oil, gas and coal areas then historically. A specific need for electricity is the Internet industry which has projected electrical demand for “server farms” or “data centers” for data mining to require 50 power plants at 500 megawatts each by 2020. These “server farms” require tremendous amount of electricity to cool and heat the facilities year round which will cause distress in the electric grid in the US and Canada. If all of the “server farms” were combined worldwide they would be equivalent to a country consumption between Italy and Spain. The application of this technology is worldwide. As governments and regulators seek to eliminate natural gas emissions from both natural gas wells, factories and biomass sites the need for technology will grow. As the world economy grows the need for sources of electricity will be benefited by this technology. The opportunity for the coal, oil and gas industry is clearly present in converting stranded, flared and abandon gas wells into profit centers and minimize negative public view point of these type of operations.