Why Clean Coal Is Years Away
Coal is here to stay, but efforts to cut emissions are ambitious, expensive, and have largely stumbled
Reader Comments
clean coal
no matter how clean u make it our minners have to go down in the nines to get the coal and what a waste of money if were going down the dran let use were bin so much depth that theres no way out cdleaning coal is a wast of life aqnd time
Bixby Energy (first post)
Bixby is all talk and no production. They have a new concept every couple of years. Give us your money an we will give you empty promises. Blah Blah Blah.
Bixby Energy
I'm a shareholder of Bixby Energy and I've seen their video (that will be available to the public sometime in the near future) proving Bixby Energy's amazing technology (assuming it's not special effects) to heat coal producing clean energy at a much lower cost than other "dirty" coal burning methods.
Look for Bixby to become a public trading company sometime soon.
Go Bixby Energy!
clean coal/fuel cels
Clean coal,what a waste of time and energy.If we are serious about our future energy needs and global warming, we should be building neculear power plants and fuel rod recovery plants. Europe is way ahead of us in this respect.We should also be pursuing the infra-structer to support fuel cell powered automobiles. They exist today, but the goverment and industry will not commit the billions it will take to convert. Instead we are pouring these billions down the clean coal and ethonol rat hole.
You can't polish a turd
Re: Clean Coal.
"You can't polish a turd".
Wind, sun; this is where we need to be investing.
The only way coal can be clean is by not using it!
As far as I know, CO2 isn't the least bit "dirty" it's just undesirable because it's ruining the planet.
Coal on the other hand is very dirty. That's it's nature.
Stop wasting all this money for useless technology and spend it on American renewable technologies that already exist. Build solar panels in this country, build windmills, build new version of hydro and geothermal plants, build energy efficient appliances, TVs, computers. Provide jobs to a lot of people building and installing.
And stop using coal!
Energy Indepdedence
I am so tired of seeing my hard earned money
spent on things like trying to clean up coal.
Tired of losing our manufacturing jobs so products can
be made in China.
Tired of spending tens of billions of dollars overseas
on needless wars
Angry at watching bailout money prop up banks
instead of putting people to work.
Keep my tax refund, give me a solar panel made
in the U.S.
I would like nothing better than to plug my U.S.
made electric car into my solar powered house
Take a nice hot shower from my U.S. made solar water
heater
And on a cloudy day fire up the natural gas powered
cogenerator......
and oh wait yea I forgot U.S. doesn't make one of those either
They only make them in Japan............
because they don't have any coal
which they only make in Japan right now because
coal is way to cheap
up generator keep my warm and toasty during
a bad storm.
Clean Coal
Coal gasification is a very viable option. Though electricity generation by cola gasification may be costlier as compared to coal combustion, it still makes sense as we cut costs due to the harmful emissions. Also, efficiency of coal gasification power plants is much more than coal combustion.
We will be glad to prove our point, if required.
Clean? Coal. Sure, 'long as you leave it in the ground, it's clean.
What amazes me is that I keep hearing the same mantra over and over "...clean coal...photovoltaics....windpower....thermal energy...". Mantras are great, repeating them puts you into a nice transcendent state of non-mind; nice for meditation, lousy for brainstorming your way out of this energy debacle.
Will someone Pleeeeze get the energy czar a copy of
"Alcohol Can Be a Gas!"? It outlines a KISS philosophy:
feed various sugar-rich by-products to humgry yeasts,
THEIR by-product is good ol' alcohol, up to 180 proof.
Since it has a much higher octane rating than gasoline
(a hmmm *by-product* of the oil refining process, originally
just dumped as waste) you go farther, it burns cleaner, can be produced for about $1 a gallon...
If it works for Brazil, you can brew it in your own backyard, sell it to your friends, even consume it (if properly distilled). Bye-bye, Shell, Mobil, Exxon, who needs ya?
Well, *we* do, at least right now. Want to create jobs?
Grow sugarcane, make alcohol, be energy-independent forever.
...Nahhh, they'll never go for it, it's too much like common sense...
Sigh.
Coal Gassification
Approximately 25 years ago, Texaco,Southern California Edison and other participants constructed a relatively large coal gassification project near Daggett, CA. The project met it's objective of proving clean coal gas could be made from coal through a gassification process. Due to the availability and competitive low cost of natural gas fuel for generation, there was limited interest in constructing additional coal gassification facilities. The Texaco project was shut down, dismantled and the gassifyers sold. Technology for producing clean coal electric energy exists and has been proven. However, it remains far more expensive than electric energy produced by burning direct fired coal with emission controls, If neither coal, nuclear or natural gas fired plants are constructed in the near future, buy plenty of candles to provide lighting for night time use when solar and wind power facilities are useless.
