Coal — The Other Alt Fuel

This Wired piece is really a round-up about Coal: The Other Alt Fuel. One of the main stories is about an initiative to convert low-grade coal to other uses — like diesel fuel and so forth, but of course that nasty issue of carbon production comes up again.

Comments

Write much?

[Anonymous Coward]

These are Wired piece that is really a round-up about Coal: The Other Alt Fuel.

English, motherfucker! Do you speak it?!

Re:Write much?

[SoVeryTired]

It's quite impressive that you managed to sound like Samuel L. Jackson *in text*

The issue is not the pollution

[BadAnalogyGuy]

The issue is whether we can sustain our usage at current levels indefinitely. The answer is of course, no. Can we then sustain current usage until a substitute energy source comes along? Possibly.

In the meantime, coal will have to do, but we need to keep an eye on the clock because the longer we push off the transition to sustainable fuel sources, the sooner we'll hit the limits of our environment.

Re:The issue is not the pollution

[Shakrai]

The issue is whether we can sustain our usage at current levels indefinitely. The answer is of course, no.

Sure we can. It's called Nuclear Fission.

What would you rather deal with? An energy source that dumps massive amounts of CO2 and radioactivity into the atmosphere or an energy source that is carbon neutral and produces nuclear waste that can be reprocessed into more fuel and/or stored somewhere (i.e: it's not released into the atmosphere)?

There's no reason to accept a reduction in our standard of living and there's certainly no compelling reason to use coal over fission. We know that the waste can be reprocessed (the US just chooses not to), we know that the technology works and is safe. We also know that coal dumps massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Re:The issue is not the pollution

[Shakrai]

With oil reserves limited, attention is turning to other energy sources. Natural gas and Nuclear Power are the obvious choices.

Unfortunately, natural gas isn't infinite, and while it will last a while, its loss will be accelerated by oil substitution. In other words, it will peak not long after whenever oil peaks.

Nuclear power is contentious, difficult, and actually not in infinite supply. The world would consume all the nuclear power in a couple of decades; and there isn't any easy way to make its energy available for transportation.

Have you ever heard of fuel reprocessing? Have you ever heard of breeder reactors that use U-238? How about using thorium? Estimates are that we have anywhere from 10,000 to 5,000,000,000 years worth of nuclear fuel remaining with these technologies that are largely already available. If by "contentious" you mean "NIMBY" then I suppose people will have to consider whether or not they'd rather accept a lower standard of living or nuclear power. I choose the latter.

Geothermal, hydro and tidal power all have much promise, but many parts of the world have no access to any of these options.

Some people think that hydro power winds up dumping almost as much greenhouse gas into the air (mainly methane) as a coal plant does. Why? Decaying vegetation in the reservoirs. In any case hydro and tidal are hardly eco-free options (and we've already used most of our hydro resources in the West) and geothermal spots eventually go cold.

Energy is going to get more expensive. Transportable energy for cars, trucks and planes will be really difficult; and nobody is going to be flying around cheaply in 10 years time.

I liked the idea of the hydrogen economy for transportable energy and nuclear fission/fusion for the backend (i.e: the grid). Whether or not hydrogen would scale (odds are it works for a SUV -- will it work for a 747?) is another matter and outside my area of expertise.

In any case I don't see why nuclear isn't being seriously considered as an option. We know that renewables won't scale. We also know that nuclear technology works and properly used is safe.

As a North Dakotan

[alexwcovington]

"Clean Coal" is a bunch of BS; the coal industry lobbies as much for relaxed pollution restrictions as they spend time implementing the air-quality mandates -- Even going to the point of flying in entire state legislatures for a meet-and-greet.

I can appreciate the impact the coal industry can have on areas with depressed economies, but development must be done in an environmentally responsible manner; once the coal's gone, it's gone, but pollution damage can last a long time.

Hg, S, Fe, NOx & CO

[grolaw]

To name a few of the really, really serious biproducts of Coal usage. Hg precipitates out from exhaust at an alarming rate (*those states with coal-fired power plants all have massive Hg and CH2-Hg contamination: see, http://www.dnr.mo.gov/pubs/pub2100.pdf/ and, http://www.moenviron.org/airqualitymercury.asp/ for one central US state's Hg warnings). Sulphur fom coal burning is the primary source of H2SO4 in acid rain that has decimated the lakes in the Northeast US and etched limestone (Cleopatra's Needle http://members.aol.com/Sokamoto31/ny.htm/ has been in NYC since 1881 and the two sides facing the prevailing wind have been etched free of inscription (perfect on all four sides when it was put it into place) due to acid rain) building materials. Nitrates (NOx) are the secondary sources of acid (HNO3 Nitric Acid being the most common) and a product of incomplete combustion of coal. About 75% of the coal-fired power plants scrub NOx out of the exhaust - but there appear to be no small-scale scrubbers consistent with vehicle use.

Releasing more Carbon from the carbon sink is just one more addition to the ever-increasing load of greenhouse gasses on the planet.

Iron - in its various forms will "poison" any catalytic converter small enough to fit on a vehicle.

The cost of scrubbing or converting Coal into a cleaner-burning fuel is problematic and the energy used to scrub may well exceed the energy realized from the converted coal.

Fisher Tropsch

[marcovje]

Isn't the Fisher-Trops 65 years old already? Germans used it in WWII for aux fuel, and so did South Africa during the boycott (SASOL).

The Club of Rome also named this as possibility in 1980 (I never read the first report, only the revised one)

green coal

[hamburger lady]

Venners acknowledges that the gasification process produces four times as much carbon dioxide as simply burning the coal.

yeah, that's green all right.

Just point out

[Colin Smith]

That none of our power stations (including nuclear, fission and fusion) are going to get much above 40% efficient until we stop treating waste heat as waste. Overall efficiency can be doubled to the 80%-90% region by selling the heat for industrial processes, domestic water, space heating and to power chillers which can distribute cold water in hot regions.

Most of our electricity is used to create or move heat from one place to another. It's highly ironic that power stations produce more energy as heat than they do as electricity. With District Heating and District Cooling it's possible to distribute heat and cold such that the requirement for space heating and air conditioning is massively reduced.

This isn't going to happen any time soon, economically it simply isn't worth while, it's much cheaper to dig up coal or pipe oil or gas. That could change with the flick of a pen though. At the moment every working individual pays 30%-40% of their income as taxation, get rid of it and add the equivalent level of taxation to fuel sources, in particular the non green methods of generation. The utilities will then squeeze every Watt out of the fuel, and customers will make sure they don't waste any energy either. As a side effect, people will become much cheaper to employ.