On: Ohio State develops clean coal technology

[nitrogen]

Second, however you cut it, the fundamental chemical reaction is going to be CxHxOx + O2 => CO2.

I thought most fuels were hydrocarbons (CxHx - e.g. propane is C3H8, methane is CH4, benzene is C6H6), not carbohydrates (CxHxOx).

There is no way to avoid producing carbon dioxide if you want [an] exothermic reaction.

I'm not a chemist, so forgive this question if it is naive: is there no catalyst or chemical process that can completely strip the carbon from the hydrogen, oxidize the hydrogen, and leave only carbon and water?

[bradleyjg → nitrogen]

The shorter carbon chain molecules tend to be hydrocarbons, but as they get longer and longer other elements tend to be incorporated.

Take a look at an example chemical structure for coal from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Struktura_chemiczna_w%C4%9...

Anyway you are going to need something to bind to the carbon. Pure carbon allotropes (graphite, diamond, buckyballs, etc.) are extremely energetically disfavored as compared to CO2 at normal pressures. You could use fluorine instead of oxygen, but tetrafluoromethane (CF4) has a greenhouse gas potential 6000 times that of CO2, and is fairly poisonous to boot.