Coal: the cleanest energy source there is?

Pretty darn amazing... We gots lots of coal up here.

Wait, I thought foxnews wasn't allowed here?

 

Cool!

...er....well, not 'cool' but you know....

Now all we have to do is figure out how to get the coal out of the ground without disturbing the sensibilities of the ...(*!*) er.... extremely ecologically minded people...

 

We can do that by digging from China.

 

The skeptic in me would like to see some more details. I've been jaded ever since the whole "cold fusion" debacle.

 

April Fool's six weeks early?

Until they provide more information on the chemistry involved, I must file this under "Yet Another Supposed Miracle, Too Good To Be True". The bulk of the available energy in coal is released by combining the carbon with oxygen, producing --- notice closely ---> carbon dioxide. Having the whole process inside a closed container makes it easier to capture the CO2 for sequestration, but it is still the same stuff.

 

Strip mining, and especially mountain to mining like they do in Appalachia, is not a "sensibility"!

That said, if we can use it "cleanly" from mine to ash waste, then I have no problem, but let's not think this a panacea for our profligate waste of energy, along with it's environmental cost.

Icarud

 

Hey this sounds like really good R&D...I'll try to keep on eye on it...I have an interest.
Just keep in mind it is incredibly difficult to develop a successful new technology:
first it has to work technically in small scale,
then you have to scale it up (difficult),
then after all that, it has to be economic versus existing clean coal technology (Gasification)
then the preference/politics factor, people gotta want to use it vs. say cheap clean nat gas.

I am ready to build more clean coal gasification plants now.

PS- Cleanest? the waste dumps always seem to end up in my backyard.

 

Here are the details from ohio state, its pretty straightforward it is oxidized with iron oxide (rust ) in a controlled reaction instead of burned.
New Coal Technology Harnesses Energy Without Burning, Nears Pilot-Scale Development

You still need to store the captured carbon and dispose of the ash, but this process makes the capture much easier.

DOE-Supported Project Advances Clean Coal, Carbon Capture Technology | Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

 

^^ Thanks for this find, it fills in a serious hole in the Fox report:

In reality this process still does create greenhouse gas, CO2, but allows much easier capture so that it can be sequestered.

 

The rust has to be heated up to drive the reaction. I wonder what the net energy gain is.

Yep. I may be wrong, but I thought the elephant in the room is what to do with the stuff, not the capture part.

 

Among fossil C forms, I like coal, because it is solid and (often) there are no liquid or gas phases running away to create externalities. A few 1000s miners killed per year, but it appears that we accept that. Unlike oil, nobody chases coal beneath km's of sea bed, and that's nice.

Once you have reduced hydrocarbons in your hand, you can do anything with them. Anything. It is just a matter of energy balance and finding the right catalysts. Perhaps those catalysts are not poisoned by coal's S and Hg and other metals. One would want to check.

Doing reforming on a local scale means that evolved CO2 is handy for sequestration. I like that too. Reveal the net costs, and I'll get interested, for sure.

My inner skeptic sees this as a last gasp of fossil-C diggers trying to compete with renewable energy. Perhaps some later posts here will show that I am wrong.

 

Let's see if anything comes of it.

If it does, and our mining techniques are less environmentally damaging, coal could make a comeback in the US.

Expect the Chinese to aggressively pursue if this gets anywhere - 70% of their energy is from coal.

 

This is about coal surviving in a regulatory environment. If the sulfur and nitrogen do indeed stay in the ash, then it will be vary valuable technology for the Chinese to be able to reduce pollution from power plants using low grade coal. I think the utility AEP is gong to spend $5B soon just adding scrubbers to old coal plants. I'm not sure what the challenges to commercialization are as they are talking about only a 250 kw demo plant in Alabama. It sounds like if they get it right they could retro fit fluidized

Island importers like Japan and Hawaii also might benefit. Let's face it, in the US the East coast is addicted to coal. They also are not moving to renewables like Texas or California, and don't seem to want to move fast into natural gas. This may help east coast interests reduce pollution and fight less hard against regulations.

 

That is the biggest elephant, and it is unfortunate that Fox News swept it under the rug. But I believe efficient capture is still a significant advance in dealing with one of the several smaller elephants also in the room.

 

I suppose one alternative is incomplete oxidation that ends up with a product that is still a solid or liquid phase. I actually thought that was what the Prof was suggesting when I read the article the first time.

At that point though, as pointed out earlier in this thread it is probably just cheaper to produce PV or wind sourced electricity.

 

Any chem majors reading this thread who can do stoichiometry?

The final products of the complete combustion of hydrocarbons are H2O and CO2. From that perspective, you don't really give a crap if the oxygen is delivered via Fe2O3 in stead of O2. Same stuff comes out the end. Has to. Still have to deal with it.

You still have to sequester the resulting C02. Says so right in the US DOE summary.

Looking at the research, it's possibly more efficient than using atmospheric oxygen, it may have engineering advantages, but ... it still produces the same amount of CO2. Conservation of matter still occurs, despite what Fox News tells you. You oxidize C, fully, you get CO2.

This may make it easier to deal with -- presumably the waste stream is purer, because you have in effect provided pure oxygen to the reaction -- but that's the extent of it. You still have billions of tons of C02 to deal with. Can't deal with that now, unlikely to deal with that with this new exotic process. And, as noted above, to provide that pure oxygen, you bear the energy penalty of regenerating the iron oxide.

 

You know, I think you are right and Faux News thought that no CO2 is produced. That IS funny.

There is an interesting side to this joke though. When the reporter thought the CO2 problem had been solved, he did not feel obliged to dismiss AGW.

 

You probably should look a few posts up for details, but yes co2 is one of the products in the reaction, but it is not the same as trying to separate it from a smokestack. The key take aways

Read more: http://priuschat.com/threads/coal-the-cleanest-energy-source-there-is.122464/#ixzz2Lbx0ffA2

The reason DOE funded the research is it may be a less expensive process to capture carbon dioxide, at the present time in these small reactors it can be sold. The cool thing is it may keep the unhealthy pollutants in the coal ash to be disposed of instead of put out the smoke stack. I don't think this will be more efficient than current igcc coal plants, but igcc with carbon capture is very expensive and creates more water pollution than this process.