
Ohio State develops clean coal technology - petercooper
http://www.osu.edu/features/2013/ohio-state-develops-clean-coal-technology.html
======
JPKab
As a person whose roots in Appalachia (West Virginia/southwest Virginia
border) go back a long ways, I'd love to see someone talk about the other
dirty aspect of coal: the way its mined. I get the feeling that a very large
percentage of the population has no idea that they are literally blowing the
tops off of mountains throughout Appalachia to get this stuff. Anyone who
thinks this is acceptable has proably never been to a site where it has been
done(it looks like the surface of the moon), or lived near a creek which gets
filled in with the massive amounts of runoff from it.

I wish they would go after coal the old fashioned way, but it is more
expensive and more dangerous that way.

~~~
skore
Ditto for nuclear.

Had my fair share of discussion with neckbeards on the Internet touting how
incredibly clean nuclear energy is. You know, as long as you leave out the
mining (radon emissions being one of the commonly known issues, the chemicals
involved in mining not as well known; furthermore, many mines don't get any
cleanup after decommission) and the storage of the nuclear waste (which is
simply an _unsolved_ problem). But hey, less CO2, right?

~~~
krschultz
Storing nuclear waste is a very technically solvable problem. Politically, it
is difficult to solve because most people are terrified of it and have "not in
my backyard" syndrome.

The dangerous radiation is simply not going to be around for 25,000 years. We
need to be really really sure that the harmful stuff is safe for 100-200
years. That doesn't seem hard to me considering a couple million people a day
are driving over bridges into NYC that are 100+ years old. Steel and concrete
last a pretty long time. Water absorbs radiation pretty well. Combine it all
with a hole deep into a dry dessert, and you are fine.

~~~
rosser
_Water absorbs radiation pretty well._

Water absorbs radiation _incredibly_ well. You can _swim_ in a spent-fuel
pool, so long as you don't go too deep.

~~~
eikenberry
<http://what-if.xkcd.com/29/>

------
bradleyjg
Whenever you seed the phrase 'clean coal' check for you wallet. There are many
irreducible problems with coal.

First, you've got to get it out of the ground. The most common ways of doing
that are strip mining and mountain top removal mining. Both not only destroy
the area actually minded but produce enormous amounts of liquid and solid
waste (coal slurry and fly ash are the worst) that destroy whatever
environment they are deposited into.

Second, however you cut it, the fundamental chemical reaction is going to be
CxHxOx + O2 => CO2. There is no way to avoid producing carbon dioxide if you
want and exothermic reaction. So you get carbon dioxide capture schemes. The
problem is once you capture the carbon dioxide no one has any idea what to do
with. There are vague notions that we can pump it underground, but pilot
projects in this area have been dismal failures both because of a lack of
confidence that the CO2 will remain buried and because of the high energy
costs in burying the CO2.

Third, aside from CO2, coal has a variety of other nasty constituents:
mercury, uranium, thorium, arsenic among others.

~~~
rdtsc
> Third, aside from CO2, coal has a variety of other nasty constituents:
> mercury, uranium, thorium, arsenic among others.

How high is the radiological pollution from coal I wonder? All that stuff gets
turned to ash and spread around by wind and now it will be some kind of slurry
I guess. Still have to do something with it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
"Coal power stations, for example, expose the public to nuclear radiation,
because coal ash typically contains uranium. Indeed, according to a paper
published in the journal Science, people in America living near coal-fired
power stations are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near
nuclear power plants."

"–People in America living near coal-fired power stations are exposed to
higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants. Source:
McBride et al. (1978). Uranium and thorium have concentrations of roughly 1
ppm and 2 ppm respectively in coal. Further reading:
gabe.web.psi.ch/research/ra/ra res.html, www.physics.ohio-
state.edu/~wilkins/energy/Companion/E20.12.pdf.xpdf."

[http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c24/page_16...](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c24/page_168.shtml)

[http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c24/page_17...](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c24/page_175.shtml)

~~~
johngalt
When I hear a comparison made in that manner my fraud antenna goes up. 'Higher
radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants!' Is the sort of
breathless thing you can say without considering that people living near
nuclear power plants might not have much of a radiation dose to begin with?

Clean energy begins with honest conversations about the cost/benefit of each
type of energy.

~~~
bradleyjg
The extra dosage for living near a coal power plant is really low - about 2%
of a chest x-ray per year. The extra dosage for living near a nuclear power
plant is nearly non-existent at a third of that.

The chemical effects of the pollutants in fly ash are a far bigger concern
than the radiological effects.

Edit: Neat chart (<http://xkcd.com/radiation/>)

------
SwellJoe
It's sad, to me, that so much research continues to go into fossil fuels. We
are _so close_ to cost parity from renewable sources of energy; and, in some
cases, it's already cheaper to use solar or wind energy, if you amortize over
a long enough period (solar panels can last up to 50 years, with very little
maintenance). Why do we have to dig up and burn every ounce of coal and oil
and natural gas? Why not divert all of that effort, money, and time, into
something that will last until the death of our sun? In a few years time,
we'll all have cheaper power, and far fewer concerns about the destructive
means by which the fuel is obtained.

Even with zero emission (though not zero waste) coal power generation, there's
still tremendous environmental and human life impact from its mining. There
are 30 coal mining deaths per year in the US alone (which has more stringent
safety standards and more modern equipment than almost anywhere else in the
world that mines coal).

I mean, this is cool and all. But, it doesn't solve the problem of coal being
a limited resource that is dangerous and ecologically destructive to obtain.

------
networked
This sounds downright revolutionary. Could someone with domain knowledge
comment if this is really such a new thing?

The press release says,

>In chemical looping, the coal isn't burned with fire, but instead chemically
combusted in a sealed chamber so that it doesn't pollute the air. A second
combustion unit in the lab does the same thing with coal-derived syngas, and
both produce 25 thermal kilowatts of energy.

How much coal does it take to produce those 25 kW? You'd think efficiency is
what most readers would want to hear about at this point because everything
else sounds pretty great.

A page linked [1] from the press release states that

>New technologies that use fossil fuels should not raise the cost of
electricity more than 35 percent, while still capturing more than 90 percent
of the resulting carbon dioxide.

but it is unclear if this is mostly due to the price of extra coal or the
equipment itself.

[1] <http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/looping203.htm>

~~~
ams6110
_coal isn't burned with fire, but instead chemically combusted_

I'd like some clarification on the difference between "fire" and "chemical
combustion"

~~~
uvdiv
One definition of "fire" demands "oxygen from the air":

[https://www.google.com/search?q=define+fire&oq=define+fi...](https://www.google.com/search?q=define+fire&oq=define+fire&ie=UTF-8&hl=en)

The fuel here doesn't react with air, but with a solid oxidiser (Fe2O3). It's
a solid-solid reaction, whose products are gases (CO2 and H2O). Just like a
solid-fuel rocket.

~~~
fghh45sdfhr3
And how is CO2 form Fe2O3 different than CO2 from the air? Is it just that it
is easy to capture? Then what?

~~~
ajross
It's not different, but it's a pure gas and not mixed with a ton of nitrogen
that air combustion exhaust would be. That makes it trivial to capture
(literally just pump it through a compressor into a tank).

One important point, though, is that the sequestration problem is not actually
addressed here. This just gets you conveniently-produced tanks of CO2 (or
crates of dry ice, whatever). What you do with that to keep it out of the
atmosphere is still an open problem.

~~~
Gravityloss
Thank you, now it makes some sense. These press releases are next to useless.

------
smurph
It unclear where all of the carbon dioxide goes after they capture it. Does
the process actually use the carbon dioxide for a second reaction? Or do they
just put it in a tank somewhere? If it's the later, this would be difficult to
do at scale.

~~~
Xylakant
There's very little you can do with the captured CO2. It's a pretty inert gas
that can only be broken up and reused for a second reaction if you add energy
which is contrary to the goal of creating electricity. So the only option is
storage, which is a bit of a problem at scale. There are some test power
plants in germany that try this, but the basic idea is to collect the CO2 and
push it into old, used natural gas fields. However, obviously nobody really
feels safe sitting on a giant bubble of CO2...

~~~
michael_h
I generally store captured CO2 in homebrew. Clean. Cheap. Delicious.

~~~
maxerickson
Uh, temporary?

~~~
michael_h
Well, some of these tripels only seem to get better with age, so extrapolating
from that, we can assume that storing it forever will produce an infinitely
tasty beverage. Drinking it will, of course, truncate the 'forever' timeline,
thus making it less than 'infinitely tasty', so the only way to preserve the
extreme flavor is to never open it, thus: sequestered.

 _waves hands_

------
msisk6
Sounds like a variation on coal gasification:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gasification>

The article is a bit scant on details like by-products or the emissions from
the combustion of the syngas in the secondary combustion process.

And, whenever I hear "Clean Coal" I feel like someone is trying too hard to
sell me on something. This whole article reads like it was written by the coal
industry.

~~~
JPKab
You better believe this research was funded by the coal industry. And my god,
the way it is written, I would be embarrassed to be an OSU alumni. I realize
that all public research universities do this crap, including my alma mater
Virginia Tech, but I hate it when they do.

Seriously, the tone of the article reeks of political campaigning. With
Virginia and Ohio, two coal producing states that are now both swing states,
you can bet that coal will continue to get tons of attention from the Federal
government.

------
jstalin
Clean coal is a lie. The byproducts of coal usage are stored in gigantic ash
ponds. In 2008, one such pond ruptured and spread 5.4 million cubic yards of
waste containing mercury, arsenic, lead, and thallium (amongst other things)
all over eastern Tennessee.

<https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27sludge.html?_r=0>

------
beatpanda
So just to play devil's advocate: there's already a bunch of mined coal out
there, and you'd better believe it's going to get used by someone to create
energy. Extracting that energy can either release CO2 into the atmosphere and
contribute to total ecosystem collapse, or not. The only other alternative is
that, somehow, existing coal doesn't get used at all, and if you could concoct
a scenario where that's plausible, I'd be very impressed.

When it comes to climate change we're talking about irreparable harm to the
planet, mass extinction, and a serious existential threat to our species.
Without minimizing the social and environmental problems created by coal
mining, I think it's correct to say they are _lesser_ problems than those
posed by climate change.

I absolutely agree that in general, civilization can do better than digging
shit out of the ground and burning it, and I think the long term solution is
wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and so on. Unfortunately we don't have time to
wait for a perfect solution, and we have huge amounts of fossil fuel reserves
that, if they're all conventionally burned, will kill us all. So what can we
do?

~~~
bradleyjg
The stocks of mined but unused coal are pretty small. It's very bulky and so
expensive to store. Even oil doesn't have all that much storage, which is why
when the market went into high contango traders had to rent oil tankers to
store the oil they were buying on the spot market.

As for CO2, the method the article is talking about makes it convenient to
capture CO2 (at an energy cost) but transporting and storing it once captured
are far more difficult problems.

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ebbv
Gee I wonder who funded this research? Hrmm....

Mining coal is hugely destructive, even if we take a logical leap and just
believe that this really is "clean coal" for creating power.

It's a waste of time. Solar, Wind, Geothermal and intelligent Hydro are the
way forward. Everything else is just a bad compromise.

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protomyth
This will probably be a big help for China if it is cheap enough given their
use of coal. Coal is what we used to get to our current status and it will be
what everyone else uses unless we come up with something cheaper and just as
constant.

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rhokstar
...but it's still coal and coal is dirty.

