"Clean" Coal? [View all]

[OnlinePoker]

I can't see if this was posted yet, but interesting work at Ohio State University:

New Coal Technology Harnesses Energy Without Burning, Nears Pilot-Scale Development

COLUMBUS, Ohio—A new form of clean coal technology reached an important milestone recently, with the successful operation of a research-scale combustion system at Ohio State University. The technology is now ready for testing at a larger scale.

For 203 continuous hours, the Ohio State combustion unit produced heat from coal while capturing 99 percent of the carbon dioxide produced in the reaction....Fan agreed that the nine-day experiment was a success. “In the two years we’ve been running the sub-pilot plants, our CDCL and SCL units have achieved a combined 830 operating hours, which clearly demonstrates the reliability and operability of our design,” he said.

At any one time, the units each produce about 25 thermal kilowatts—that is, thermal energy, which in a full-scale power plant would be used to heat water and turn the steam-powered turbines that create electricity....The researchers are about to take their technology to the next level: a larger-scale pilot plant is under construction at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Carbon Capture Center in Wilsonville, AL. Set to begin operations in late 2013, that plant will produce 250 thermal kilowatts using syngas.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/looping203.htm