There’s a coal-fired plant about five miles from my home. I can see the stacks off in the distance when I drive into town.
The EPA calls it a “fossil plant.” I guess that means they manufacture trilobites. It’s been updated to “High-efficiency low-emissions” technology in this century.
In the winter, you used to be able to tell how cold it was by how much steam the stacks were belching out. Now there’s never anything visible coming out. Never. They claim it emits 85% less nitrogen oxides, 95% less sulfur dioxides, and 99% less particulates than the old system. Which is a YUGE reduction, and it makes about 5 million mWh a year to boot.
Those kinds of reductions take ESP wet usually then a bag house.
The water vapor that you used to see is now captured in the acid gas unit then the rest of it in the electrostatic precipitator and any remaining is absorbed by the active carbon in the bag house. The stack emissions are bone dry by the time they get up the stack.
None of that tech approaches how clean natural gas is. Gas is zero PM2.5, near zero NOx and single digit ppm of SOx , and zero ppm of heavy metals. Coal has all of those at ppt a.d ppm levels. You cannot burn coal in an open atmospheric flame and not get vapor heavy metals the laws of physics dictate this. Only triple level analytical cleaning can remove them down to single digit ppm levels. Active carbon bag houses are legal for now but if you held coal to natural gas levels of emissions you could never hit it without going to gasification and analytical gas clean up BEFORE combustion.