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Carbon-Based Fuel Cells: Clean Coal?

UserID 3.14 writes: "I got this story from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab web site. The idea for carbon anode electrochemical cells has been around for a long time, but waste ash was always a problem. The new system uses very fine particulate carbon for full conversion to CO2. The CO2 has non-polluting industrial uses, including refilling the used up oil wells (so they don't collapse). Of course, the greatest benefit of the whole scheme is how it almost doubles power extraction efficiency (up to around 80%)." The article has some good information about the differences between the types of carbon found in nature, too.

5 comments

  1. Wow by mjoconnor81 · · Score: 1

    I work for a power company, just the amount that this would save us in fuel costs would be amazing, not to mention the enviromental aspects.

    --
    Pseudocode is code to demonstrate a concept, not designed to be run. Like certain M$ software.
  2. Re:What the hell is going on? by __aasfhc1949 · · Score: 1

    Hello:

    This article was posted to the "Science" section and not to the "Front Page", so that is why there are not a lot of comments posted.

  3. Re:What the hell is going on? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Obviously its not geeky enough for the main page. It never ceases to
    amaze me what I find on the 'net that don't make it onto the mainstream
    media, let alone make it to the front of slashdot.

    I'll give you a good for-instance, this was announced nearly two years ago, why was this not announced more in the media? After all you would have thought true computer speech recognition, that can out perform human beings, would be big news but apparently not. I think its an unspoken conspiricy by the middle class media.

    Go here and check it out

    http://www.usc.edu/ext-relations/news

    Peter

  4. Electric Cars by Squiffy · · Score: 1
    The stream of carbon dioxide, already only a fraction of current processes, can be sequestered or used for oil and gas recovery through existing pipelines.

    This could be a good answer to the question, "What's the point of low-emission electric cars if they're just going to draw from a grid that is powered with high-emission techniques?" If power plants use this carbon fuel cell technology, little to no CO2 emissions will be released to the atmosphere.

    The question now is, how nature-friendly is the generation of the fuel itself?