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A Little Background
Today, 40 percent of total domestic electric power is produced by combusting natural gas. It is reliable
for both baseload and peak demand power requirements. The downside of combusting natural gas is the
carbon-dioxide in the vented exhaust. Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas which contributes to global
warming.
Some have proposed capturing the carbon-dioxide from existing powerplants exhaust and converting or
sequestering it. However, existing domestic fossil fuel plants produce an estimated 550 million tons of
carbon-dioxide annually, too much to capture from existing plants.
Renewable sources such as wind and solar produce power without producing green house gases but only when
the wind blows and the sun shines. To provide power when the source is interrupted, an energy storage
device is required such as a battery.
Joint Fuel Technology LLC
has demonstrated a practical method of removing the
carbon from natural gas fuel prior to combustion. By removing the carbon, one is left with hydrogen. When
hydrogen is combusted, it produces steam which when condensed forms water.
The manufacturers of existing power plants gas fired turbines have demonstrated that their hardware can
operate properly by substituting a hydrogen rich fuel mixture thereby greatly reducing greenhouse gases.
Additionally, existing gas fired turbines can be modified to further reduce such emissions.
Hydrogen can be produced by reacting steam and natural gas in a high temperature plasma together with
by-product carbon gas compounds that can be separated prior to combustion. The hydrogen produced is
derived from both natural gas and steam thereby reducing the amount of natural gas consumed by roughly
half of the amount now consumed by existing gas turbines. The lesser cost due to reduced consumption of
natural gas more than offsets the cost to produce the hydrogen.
Joint Fuel Technology LLC
will develop and test a full-scale prototype device
by year's end and then produce the necessary hardware to demonstrate it is possible to fuel an existing
500 mega-watt power plant next year.
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