Cleaning Up coal possible but is it profitable?

[Travisbmoore]

Clean coal was made using the distilation of coal to make cleaner burning coke. This yeilded hydro carbons that were boilded off from 900 to 1200 degrees Farinhiet. This was combined with a high temperature steem heating process to also generate eletricity and it was profitable. It only competed with the oil companies. And it got locked up in red tape.

 

Methane from coal can be made. Insitue coal conversion is less than successful though. But coke or carbon can be eletrolysed with Aluminia to make aluminum carbide. This make methane when reacted with water. The carbon monoxide made could be burned in molten carbonate fuel cells. Or reacted with steem over a catalyst to make methane.

 

Methane a clean burning fuel puts out less carbon than coal and can be burned in gas turbines. The Methane can be converted directly into eletricity in fuel cells or with a reformer and fuel cell combination. If the SOFC is used waste heat could be used to drive a thermal engine such a stirling engine or use a working gas to run a turbine generator as well with either amonia or alcohol.

 

Methane can be reacted over palldium sheets or high temperature steel sheets eletroplated with palladium to make carbon nano tube forest for use in composites to make lighter cars that save fuel. It can also act as a collector for ions in the atmosphere from 150 to300 feet and up. There are many ions in the air. The higher the surface area the more ions can be collected to deposit a charge.

 

That charge between the ground and atmosphere can be used to recharge batteries and run inverters. Run eletrolysers to make hydrogen gas to run fuel cells. Excess hydrogen can be stored for later use.

 

And then transformers can also be used to convert the high voltage charges into usable current and ac power to be sold over power lines.

 

There is also the the fact that coal can make diamonds and artificial diamonds can be made from coal.

 

Coal heated with greese can be turned into graphite. Graphite can be used in eletrodes for batteries and be used as a composit material. Lubricating oils and greeses as well can be made using graphite.

 

So that is how coal can be made clean and used in other things as well.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Um. I'm really not sure what the point of this post is, but I'd recommend looking a little more into the chemistry and energetics of what you're saying. In particular, synthesis of methane is hardly practical. Methane is very abundant, the problem is transporting it. Generating it from other fuels would have generally lower energy yields. One of the biggest pushes in "clean" hydrocarbon energy is the functionalization of methane to methanol, which, being a liquid, is much easier to transport. If you want some real reading on the subject, I can dig through some references to find papers published through ACS, although they're not written for the layperson.

[Travisbmoore]

Chemistry of nano technology allows methane to be made rapidly from steam and carbon monoxide though costly making aluminum carbide from alumina may be profitable using cheap eletricity.

 

Why the need for cleaner coal plants in America and Asia mainly china the one nation that dumps pollution by the jet stream on the US, It is simple by looking at the chemisty of exhaust from coal plant.

 

Sulfur dioxide: makes acid rain.

 

Methyl mercury: caused mental retardation and cuases baldness and other toxid effects by bio aculation in fish.

 

Nitrogen oxides: makes nitric acid and come to earth to feed toxic algea blooms br increased nitrogen.

 

Urnanium and Thorium: heavy moderatly radioactive elements found in the exhaust of coal. These can cause genetic damage, mutation and cancer. By fine particles of burning coal we dump tons of the stuff into the enviroment when coal is burnt in conventional power plants.

 

Carbon dioxide: Green house gas or food for plants. But can too much carbon dioxide work as a refrigerent to cool the planet by being cooled to low temperatures on the south pole. But more likely makes carbonic acid in sea water killing coral reefs. May also increase sea temperatures. If super saturated oceans become too acidic from carbonic acid it could kill some forms or life. But if it out gasses in large enough eruptions it may have adverse effects on global temperature. But that may not happen untill the oceans become as carbonated as your soda pop.

 

Would it be possible to convert coal into something cleaner. Coke is cleaner in some ways. Methane is the cleanest and Nanotube forest may be the cleanest energy source on earth.

 

IF this is not relevent to you just consider the air you breath every day and makes you think.

[Travisbmoore]

Transporting methane can be done by conversion into methane hydrates.

 

Compressing methane gas with micro carbon structures or nano carbon sturctures it is possible to cram more gas in a space at a lower pressure.

[Level 1 Hermit]

Wait a few decades and it will be profitable. If not, the government will probably subsidize the cost with taxpayer dollars. I say this because I am pretty sure clean energy is in our future.

[keira]

I think, more likely, we will see hydrogen emerging as the next "fuel of the future". Recent research in solar cell research is quickly making it trivial to electrlyze water into its component hydrogen and oxygen.

 

The only real thing holding back hydrogen as a fuel source has been making enough of it through a clean method. We've already got prototype/productipn-esqe hydrogen vehicles, we've just needed a way to cleanly get the stuff.

[Level 1 Hermit]

I hope steam power makes a come back.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Sylae, hydrogen fuel poses a similar problem to current production of natural gas - low density and high flammability. That said, I'm pretty sure (not at all my area of work) that materials science and such is working on solid-phase "meshes" to trap large amounts of fuel gas for safer, easier transport.