Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts
Monday, March 23, 2015
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
USDA Helps a Texas Rancher Reach His Dream of Operating a Successful Ranch
From USDA:
Rickie Roddy (left) of McLennan County Texas has worked closely with the Natural Resources Conservation Service on a conservation plan on conservation practices ranging from pasture planting to establishing water sources for his cattle herd. NRCS photo by Clete Vanderburg.
One central Texas rancher is fulfilling a childhood dream. Rickie Roddy bought his first cow when he was 14 years old. By the time he was 19, he had grown his herd to 13 head of cattle.
“I have always been fascinated by cattle,” Roddy said. “I didn’t know if I was ever going to be able to have any land, but I wanted to be a rancher since I was a little kid.”
Roddy grew up on two acres his parents owned near Waco, Texas, but that didn’t stop Roddy from raising cattle. He would talk people into letting him graze empty lots and also lease small tracts of land for his cows.
As a young man, Roddy married and bought a house with 13 acres in McLennan County. He slowly bought neighboring acreage as it became available. Today, he owns more than 300 acres where he runs his herd of 40 cows that are a cross between Angus and Hereford.
Recently, Roddy was looking for some expert advice on how to improve the production of forage, or food, on his ranch. This led him to a nearby office of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, (NRCS).
“I had heard people talk about the NRCS before and the type of assistance they could offer landowners,” Roddy said.
Working alongside Jeff Brister, NRCS soil conservationist, Roddy developed a conservation plan to serve as a roadmap toward accomplishing his goals. When Roddy walked into the NRCS office, he was thinking they might look at clearing some brush clearing and planting grass. A couple site visits later, Roddy had developed an aggressive improvement plan that included pasture planting to improve forage diversity and density, cross fencing for rotational grazing, brush management, along with developing water sources for the herd.
To help meet his goals, Roddy learned he was also eligible for financial assistance through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. The funding came through USDA’s StrikeForce for Rural Growth and Opportunity, an initiative to focus high-priority assistance in rural communities in 20 states, including Texas, with a special emphasis on historically underserved farmers, ranchers and communities in counties with persistent poverty. McLennan County is one of 96 counties in Texas that are part of the initiative.
With the funding assistance, Roddy will be able to fulfill all his conservation plans for his land. Roddy said everything on the land was old and worn out when he bought it. He has a full time job, but works on his ranch on evenings and weekends repairing fences and barns and clearing out old junk. His kids, ages 21, 12 and 8 enjoy helping every chance they get.
“These land improvements that NRCS is helping me with are really going to make the place look nice and help me achieve my stocking rate goals,” Roddy said.
“My dream is becoming a reality, and that’s a pretty neat thing,” he added. “It makes me feel good to think this is a legacy I can leave for my kids someday.”
Friday, January 20, 2012
Utility to Purchase Low-Carbon Power from Innovative Clean Coal Plant
Blog post from the U.S. Dept of Energy web site. The photo doesn't seem to go with the story, except that the photo depicts a coal gasification facility.
Utility to Purchase Low-Carbon Power from Innovative Clean Coal Plant
January 19, 2012
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory demonstrated coal gasification in large-scale field experiments at the Rocky Mountain Test Facility (above) near Hanna, Wyoming. Coal gasification and sequestration of the carbon dioxide produced are among the technologies being used in the Texas Clean Energy Project. | Photo courtesy of llnlphotos.
Carbon emissions for this plant will be...
- less than 10 percent of a conventional coal plant of similar output.
- less than 25 percent of an high-efficiency natural gas-powered power plant.
The Department of Energy is working with industry to keep the United States at the forefront of carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies. An innovative clean coal demonstration project in Texas, supported by the Department’s Office of Fossil Energy, recently took a big step forward.
The Energy Department announced that CPS Energy of San Antonio will purchase approximately 200 megawatts of power annually from the Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP) when the facility is complete in 2015. The $2.4 billion plant will receive $450 million in funding from the Department’s Clean Coal Power Initiative; of this, $211 million comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
This is the first purchase in the United States of low-carbon power from a power plant that uses carbon capture technology.
When operational, the 400-MW facility located just west of Midland-Odessa, Texas, will be the cleanest coal-fueled power plant in the world. Using a state-of-the-art process known as integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), the total amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere from this plant will be less than 10 percent of a conventional coal plant with similar energy output, and less than 25 percent of a high-efficiency natural gas-powered power plant.
It will also be capable of capturing 90 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) it produces, as well as 99 percent of sulfur dioxide, 90 percent of nitrogen oxide, and 99 percent of mercury.
In the gasification process, coal is not burned as if you were shoveling coal into a furnace or a steam locomotive boiler. Instead, the coal is sealed in a gasifier -- an airtight chamber that allows only controlled amounts of oxygen to enter. Starved for oxygen, the coal bakes rather than ignites and creates enough heat and pressure in the chamber to squeeze hydrogen and carbon monoxide out of the coal. The gases squeezed from the coal are then processed into synthetic gas, or syngas.
Next, water vapor is added to the syngas, which chemically reacts with the carbon monoxide to create additional hydrogen and also carbon dioxide. The gas is then cleaned of impurities, and separated into pure streams of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen powers an advanced turbine to generate electricity and its carbon-free exhaust heats water to generate steam that’s fed to a turbine to produce even more electricity.
Of the nearly 2.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to be captured annually at the Texas plant, 83 percent will be used in the West Texas Permian Basin for enhanced oil recovery -- a technique where carbon dioxide is pumped into a known reservoir where it expands and forces the oil out of the well. The rest of the captured carbon dioxide will go to producing urea -- a valuable compound with many industrial applications.
Today, approximately 80 percent of the energy consumed in the United States comes from coal, petroleum, and natural gas, with coal-fired power plants accounting for approximately half of the electricity generated. The implementation of clean, state-of-the-art coal-based technologies will help ensure America’s energy security while mitigating the environmental impacts of fossil fuel use.
The Energy Department announced that CPS Energy of San Antonio will purchase approximately 200 megawatts of power annually from the Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP) when the facility is complete in 2015. The $2.4 billion plant will receive $450 million in funding from the Department’s Clean Coal Power Initiative; of this, $211 million comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
This is the first purchase in the United States of low-carbon power from a power plant that uses carbon capture technology.
When operational, the 400-MW facility located just west of Midland-Odessa, Texas, will be the cleanest coal-fueled power plant in the world. Using a state-of-the-art process known as integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), the total amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere from this plant will be less than 10 percent of a conventional coal plant with similar energy output, and less than 25 percent of a high-efficiency natural gas-powered power plant.
It will also be capable of capturing 90 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) it produces, as well as 99 percent of sulfur dioxide, 90 percent of nitrogen oxide, and 99 percent of mercury.
In the gasification process, coal is not burned as if you were shoveling coal into a furnace or a steam locomotive boiler. Instead, the coal is sealed in a gasifier -- an airtight chamber that allows only controlled amounts of oxygen to enter. Starved for oxygen, the coal bakes rather than ignites and creates enough heat and pressure in the chamber to squeeze hydrogen and carbon monoxide out of the coal. The gases squeezed from the coal are then processed into synthetic gas, or syngas.
Next, water vapor is added to the syngas, which chemically reacts with the carbon monoxide to create additional hydrogen and also carbon dioxide. The gas is then cleaned of impurities, and separated into pure streams of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen powers an advanced turbine to generate electricity and its carbon-free exhaust heats water to generate steam that’s fed to a turbine to produce even more electricity.
Of the nearly 2.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to be captured annually at the Texas plant, 83 percent will be used in the West Texas Permian Basin for enhanced oil recovery -- a technique where carbon dioxide is pumped into a known reservoir where it expands and forces the oil out of the well. The rest of the captured carbon dioxide will go to producing urea -- a valuable compound with many industrial applications.
Today, approximately 80 percent of the energy consumed in the United States comes from coal, petroleum, and natural gas, with coal-fired power plants accounting for approximately half of the electricity generated. The implementation of clean, state-of-the-art coal-based technologies will help ensure America’s energy security while mitigating the environmental impacts of fossil fuel use.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)