Clean coal?

[KRonn]

Is it going to be possible now? This process seems to work so far in testing and is almost completely pollution free.

Between this and the expanding oil and natural gas exploration plus any gains in wind/solar it would be great if the US could become energy self sufficient. I've seen predictions that just with the increases in oil/gas exploration, plus the more fuel efficient auto fleet, the US could become self sufficient within ten years. This clean coal seems to be a biggie if it works since the US also has huge reserves of coal.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/02/20/coal-cleanest-energy-source-there-is/

Researchers have discovered a stunning new process that takes the energy from coal without burning it -- and removes virtually all of the pollution.

The clean coal technique was developed by scientists at The Ohio State University, with just $5 million in funding from the federal government, and took 15 years to achieve.

"We've been working on this for more than a decade," Liang-Shih Fan, a chemical engineer and director of OSU's Clean Coal Research Laboratory, told FoxNews.com, calling it a new energy conversion process. "We found a way to release the heat from coal without burning."

The process removes 99 percent of the pollution from coal, which some scientists link to global warming. Coal-burning power plants produced about one-third of the nation's carbon dioxide total in 2010, or about 2.3 billion metric tons, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).


'We found a way to release the heat from coal without burning.'
- Liang-Shih Fan, a chemical engineer and director of OSU's Clean Coal Research Laboratory


Retrofitting them with the new process would be costly, but it would cut billions of tons of pollution.

"In the simplest sense, conventional combustion is a chemical reaction that consumes oxygen and produces heat," Fan fold FoxNews.com. "Unfortunately, it also produces carbon dioxide, which is difficult to capture and bad for the environment."

And simply put, the new process isn't.

Heating, Not Burning, Coal
Fan discovered a way to heat coal, using iron-oxide pellets for an oxygen source and containing the reaction in a small, heated chamber from which pollutants cannot escape. The only waste product is therefore water and coal ash -- no greenhouse gases. As an added benefit, the metal from the iron-oxide can be recycled.

"Oxidation" is the chemical combination of a substance with oxygen. Contrast this with old-fashioned, coal-fired plants, which use oxygen to burn the coal and generate heat. This in turn makes steam, which turns giant turbines and sends power down electric lines.

The main by-product of that old process — carbon dioxide, known chemically as CO2 — is released through smokestacks into the earth's atmosphere.

Fan's process, called "coal-direct chemical looping," has been proven in a small scale lab at OSU. The next step is to take it to a larger test facility in Alabama, and Fan believes the technology can be commercialized and used to power an energy plant within five to 10 years, if all goes smoothly. The technology generated 25 kilowatts of thermal energy in current tests; the Alabama site will generate 250 kilowatts.

Can Coal Ever Be 'Clean'?
Some environmentalists are skeptical of the technology, and of the idea of clean coal in general.

"Claiming that coal is clean because it could be clean -- if a new technically unproven and economically dubious technology might be adopted -- is like someone claiming that belladonna is not poisonous because there is a new unproven safe pill under development," wrote Donald Brown at liberal think tank Climate Progress.

Yet the federal Department of Energy believes that the process can create 20 megawatts to 50 megawatts by 2020, said Jared Ciferno, the agency's director of coal and power-production research and development, in a statement.

The government plans to continue to support the project, as well as the concept of "clean coal" in general.

Meanwhile, Fan is exploring the possibility of establishing a start-up company and licensing the process to utilities, and has the potential to patent 35 different parts of the process.

Other scientists and experts are enthused about the prospects for this technology.

Yan Feng with Argonne National Laboratory's Environmental Science Division, Climate Research Section, called it "an advancement in chemical engineering. "It is very important that we act on CO2 capturing and sequestration as well as emission controls of other warming agents like tropospheric ozone and black carbon."

Adds Rebecca Taylor, a spokesman for Kingsport, Tenn.-based Eastman Chemical Company, a global Fortune 250 chemical manufacturer that works in clean energy, "researchers continue to uncover innovative ways to use coal efficiently/sustainably."

Concludes Dawei Wang, a research associate at OSU, the technology's potential benefits even go beyond the environment and issues like sustainability.

"The plant could really promote our energy independence. Not only can we use America's natural resources such as Ohio coal, but we can keep our air clean and spur the economy with jobs," he said.

[CountDeMoney]

That's only if the energy sector wants to invest in it, and they won't.  Hell, it was tough enough to get them to install scrubbers to meet EPA standards, and you know how they feel about building nuclear power plants.

It's a pipe dream.

[fhdz]

That's only if the energy sector wants to invest in it, and they won't.  Hell, it was tough enough to get them to install scrubbers to meet EPA standards, and you know how they feel about building nuclear power plants.

It's a pipe dream.

I'm sure we could find a way to incentivize it if we really wanted to.

[The Minsky Moment]

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/02/20/coal-cleanest-energy-source-there-is/
. . . Yet the federal Department of Energy believes that the process can create 20 megawatts to 50 megawatts by 2020, said Jared Ciferno, the agency's director of coal and power-production research and development, in a statement. . . .

That's nice, but the United States consumes almost 4 billion MWh per year.  Assuming constant operation with no downwtime, 50MW would supply 438,000 MWh of that, or just over .01% of consumption needs.

[Admiral Yi]

"Claiming that coal is clean because it could be clean -- if a new technically unproven and economically dubious technology might be adopted -- is like someone claiming that belladonna is not poisonous because there is a new unproven safe pill under development," wrote Donald Brown at liberal think tank Climate Progress.

What question was hippy boy responding to? 

[mongers]

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/02/20/coal-cleanest-energy-source-there-is/
. . . Yet the federal Department of Energy believes that the process can create 20 megawatts to 50 megawatts by 2020, said Jared Ciferno, the agency's director of coal and power-production research and development, in a statement. . . .

That's nice, but the United States consumes almost 4 billion MWh per year.  Assuming constant operation with no downwtime, 50MW would supply 438,000 MWh of that, or just over .01% of consumption needs.

I'm assuming the Fox news item is badly worded and it's better to look at that 20-50MW vs total installed capacity.

Perhaps even that that's the improvement they're expecting on each large power station, in which case a couple of percentage improvement would be big news and worthy of a report ?

edit:
Oops, mis-scanned the OP, seems it's an entirely new process. 

So the only thing standing in it's way, assuming it pans out, is the issue of the capital investment in replacing or retro-fitting the existing plants. 

[Iormlund]

... the process can create 20 megawatts to 50 megawatts by 2020...

I'm hoping there's a 'per facility' missing there.

[MadImmortalMan]

They're working with a 5 million dollar mini-version of what it would be in practice. How well would it scale is a question.

[mongers]

"Claiming that coal is clean because it could be clean -- if a new technically unproven and economically dubious technology might be adopted -- is like someone claiming that belladonna is not poisonous because there is a new unproven safe pill under development," wrote Donald Brown at liberal think tank Climate Progress.

What question was hippy boy responding to? 

Who knows, I didn't know people were prescribed belladonna, that is outside of renaissance Italy.

[CountDeMoney]

That's only if the energy sector wants to invest in it, and they won't.  Hell, it was tough enough to get them to install scrubbers to meet EPA standards, and you know how they feel about building nuclear power plants.

It's a pipe dream.

I'm sure we could find a way to incentivize it if we really wanted to.

Meh, utilities are dropping fossil fuel plants whenever and wherever they can.  I don't see any incentives working for them regarding investing in new technology unless it's a marginal thing that makes the local greens happy.

[mongers]

They're working with a 5 million dollar mini-version of what it would be in practice. How well would it scale is a question.

Yes, I'm assuming the 20-50MW is the output from prototype facilities. 

What they've not saying is what are the necessary energy inputs to get this process going, I can't be just magic, stick these things together and presto low cost energy.  Since it's appears to be melting the iron that must be quite a temperature gradient maintain.

[Neil]

Did anyone else notice that the director of OSU's Clean Coal Research Laboratory is a PRC spy?

[Admiral Yi]

Did anyone else notice that the director of OSU's Clean Coal Research Laboratory is a PRC spy?

I also noticed they used the definite article.

[Caliga]

 

On the one hand, Kentucky is a state that produces a lot of coal.
On the other, I have a significant position in Entergy, which is a major nuclear operator in the US.

[Viking]

1. When us Chemical Engineers talk about what is colloquially called "burning" we use the word Oxidization.
2. As Minsky pointed out this is a ridiculously small amount of electricity.
3. This process produces the same amount of CO2 as regular coal burning.
4. This process is ridiculously convoluted and user unfriendly.
5. This process manages to capture and segregate all waste products.

Points 1-3 suggest journalistic science illiteracy, point 4 is the reason why the amount of energy in point 2 is so small and point 5 can be achieved by building a flue gas separator in the building next to the power plant using proven technology.

It is not a big deal.

In laymans terms what happens in this process that is different from regular coal burning is that it replaces oxygen from the air with oxygen from rust (that what us chemical engineers call iron-oxide). The rust and coal are then funneled mechanically as solids into the reactor where as with coal water, co2 and nasty shit are produced. The claim here seems to be that the water, co2 and nasty shit can all be captured. Water released, co2 used in carbon sequestering (pumping back into the ground) and the nasty stuff dealt with some other way.

The mechanical transport of solids is bad, since it doesn't work anywhere. You either need lots of men shoveling coal or you need repeated and near constant maintenence. Modern coal power plants grind the coal into coal dust which they then pump into the reactor with air, as a "sandstorm" like process with coal dust rather than sand. The coal dust burns and then the flue gas is then sent on to get rid of the co2 and water in smokestacks and cooling towers allowing the nasty shit to escape. This process promises to prevent the nasty stuff from escaping and that seems to be it's only advantage.

All the goals of this technology can be achieved at lower cost with lower technological difficulty while producing less CO2 by going all in on shale gas and replacing the existing coal reactors with natural gas ones.

This technology only makes sense if you have shitloads of money and no natural gas.