chemistry

FutureGen

FutureGen is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand FutureGen rather than just read about it. In short: FutureGen was a project to demonstrate capture and sequestration of waste carbon dioxide from a coal-fired electrical generating station. The project (renamed FutureGen 2.0) was retrofitting a shuttered coal-fired power plant in Meredosia, Illinois, with oxy-combustion generators.

Key takeaways

FutureGen belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect FutureGen to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of FutureGen from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

FutureGen was a project to demonstrate capture and sequestration of waste carbon dioxide from a coal-fired electrical generating station. The project (renamed FutureGen 2.0) was retrofitting a shuttered coal-fired power plant in Meredosia, Illinois, with oxy-combustion generators. The waste CO2 would be piped approximately 30 miles (48 km) to be sequestered in underground saline formations. FutureGen was a partnership between the United States government and an alliance of primarily coal-related corporations. Costs were estimated at US$1.65 billion, with $1.0 billion provided by the federal government. First announced by President George W. Bush in 2003, construction started in 2014 after restructuring, canceling, relocating, and restarting. Citing an inability to commit and spend the funds by deadlines in 2015, the Department of Energy withdrew funds and suspended FutureGen 2.0 in February 2015. The government also cited the alliance's inability to raise the requisite amount of private funding. The Meredosia power plant that had been planned for retrofit was demolished around 2021. FutureGen 2.0 would have been the most comprehensive Department of Energy carbon capture and storage demonstration project, involving all phases from combustion to sequestration. FutureGen's initial plan involved integrated gasification combined cycle technology to produce both electricity and hydrogen. Early in the project it was to be sited in Mattoon, Illinois.

Original project The original incarnation of FutureGen was as a public-private partnership to build the world's first near zero-emissions coal-fueled power plant. The 275-megawatt plant would be intended to prove the feasibility of producing electricity and hydrogen from coal while capturing and permanently storing carbon dioxide underground. The Alliance intended to build the plant in Mattoon Township, Coles County, Illinois northwest of Mattoon, Illinois, subject to necessary approvals (issuing a “Record of Decision”) by the Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. FutureGen was to be designed, developed and operated by the FutureGen Industrial Alliance, a non-profit consortium of coal mining and electric utility companies formed to partner with the DOE on the FutureGen project. The project was still in the development stage when its funding was cancelled in January 2008. The Alliance decision of the location of the host site, subject to DOE's completing NEPA environmental reviews, was announced in December 2007 after a two-year bidding and review process. Construction was scheduled to begin in 2009, with full-scale plant operations to begin in 2012. The estimated gross project cost, including construction and operations, and excluding offsetting revenue, was $1.65 billion. The project was governed by a legally binding cooperative agreement between DOE and the Alliance. Under the agreement, DOE was to provide 74% of the project’s cost, with private industry contributing the other 26%. The DOE also planned to solicit the financial support and participation of international governments in the FutureGen project, since by 2020 more than 60% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions are expected to come from developing countries. Foreign financial support was to offset a portion of DOE’s cost-share. As of January 2008, the foreign governments of China, India, Australia, South Korea, and Japan had expressed interest in participating and sharing the cost of the project. FutureGen was to sequester carbon dioxide emissions at a rate of one million metric tons per year for four years, which is the scale a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report cites as appropriate for proving sequestration. The MIT report also states that “the priority objective with respect to coal should be the successful large-scale demonstration of the technical, economic, and environmental performance of the technologies that make up all of the major components of a large-scale integrated CCS system — capture, transportation and storage.” An injection field test similar to this was done in Norway. In March 2009 Washington Post reported that U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu expressed support for continuing the project using stimulus funds (after some changes that have not yet been specified) and making it a part of a larger portfolio of research plants developed in collaboration with other countries. Following the successful completion of the first phase, in February 2013, the Energy Department announced the beginning of Phase II of the project development with a new cooperative agreement between the FutureGen Industrial Alliance and the Department of Energy. This means that the FutureGen project has government support as it moves into its third phase, deployment of the project.

Site selection Site selection for the FutureGen facility was based on a competitive process which began in May 2006. Seven states responded to the Site Request for Proposals with a total of 12 proposals. Proposals were reviewed against a set of environmental, technical, regulatory, and financial criteria with input from external technical advisors on power plant design and carbon sequestration. In July 2006, four candidate sites were selected for further review, including an environmental impact analysis as required by NEPA. DOE issued its Final Environmental impact statement (EIS) on November 8, 2007, which concluded that all four sites were acceptable from an environmental impact standpoint and all would move forward in the site evaluation process. EPA published a Notice of Availability (NOA) for the EIS in the Federal Register on November 16, 2007. The DOE is required by federal law to wait at least 30 days after the NOA release before issuing its final Record of Decision (ROD). The waiting period legally closed on December 17, 2007. DOE chose not to issue the ROD and advised the FutureGen Alliance to delay the final site selection announcement, which was scheduled to occur at the end of the 30-day waiting period. The Alliance chose to move ahead with the announcement, citing time, money, and a commitment to proposers to select the final site by year-end. "Every month of delay can add $10 million to the project's cost, solely due to inflation," said Michael Mudd, the Alliance's chief executive.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with FutureGen

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what FutureGen claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to FutureGen before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about FutureGen ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of FutureGen

In research: FutureGen appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses FutureGen in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: FutureGen is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Carbon capture and storage, Chemical engineering, Climate change in the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for FutureGen outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study FutureGen in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what FutureGen means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain FutureGen out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is FutureGen in simple terms?

Why does FutureGen matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study FutureGen?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on FutureGen.