Posted on 02/06/2013 6:25:52 PM PST by neverdem
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.
Liang-Shih Fan, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and director of Ohio State’s Clean Coal Research Laboratory, pioneered the technology called Coal-Direct Chemical Looping (CDCL), which chemically harnesses coal’s energy and efficiently contains the carbon dioxide produced before it can be released into the atmosphere.
“In the simplest sense, combustion is a chemical reaction that consumes oxygen and produces heat,” Fan said. “Unfortunately, it also produces carbon dioxide, which is difficult to capture and bad for the environment. So we found a way to release the heat without burning. We carefully control the chemical reaction so that the coal never burns—it is consumed chemically, and the carbon dioxide is entirely contained inside the reactor.”
Dawei Wang, a research associate and one of the group's team leaders, described the technology’s potential benefits. "The commercial-scale CDCL plant could really promote our energy independence. Not only can we use America's natural resources such as Ohio coal, but we can keep our air clean and spur the economy with jobs," he said.
Though other laboratories around the world are trying to develop similar technology to directly convert coal to electricity, Fan’s lab is unique in the way it processes fossil fuels. The Ohio State group typically studies coal in the two forms that are already commonly available to the power industry: crushed coal “feedstock,” and coal-derived syngas.
The latter fuel has been successfully studied in a second sub-pilot research-scale unit, through a...
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Reducing pollution is fine, but carbon dioxide isn't pollution. It's plant food. Expensive carbon capture and sequestration technology is needed only if you believe the anthropogenic global warming, AGW, hypothesis. There's no proof of AGW. We're supposed to accept this ideology on the basis of the precautionary principle! Where else does the left apply the precautionary principle?
it’s a “faith based” initiative.
LOL!
The left doesn’t observe the precautionary principle with respect to quaranteening AIDS patients, in foreign policy and national security affairs, or in fiscal and monetary policy. But we’re supposed to observe the precautionary principle for minor increases in a trace gas, carbon dioxide!
While the near infinite energy potential of thorium is largely ignored, we fret about the amount of CO2 that burning of coal releases. I am far more concerned about the health effects of fly ash and the trace radioactivity that we are spreading along with it than I am about CO2, and that is for one simple question:
What is the optimum temperature? Taken over the last several glacial cycles, on average most of Northern Europe and North America would be under hundreds if not thousands of feet of ice. For short periods it has thawed enough to grow food crops.
We also now find, thanks to a very recent project to research Antarctic ice cores that it was warmer 800,000 years ago. Yet, nobody seems very interested in why it was warmer then than now.
Are we warmer than the optimum or cooler? Who gets to decide? I am not interested in much of the frantic climate news until those simple questions are addressed.
Cut down on CO2, and you cut down on the planet's oxygen production.
These lying sphincters should be whipped within an inch of their lives, and then hung. Publicly.
Such a craven breach of the public trust is criminal on its face. But to do so in order to perpetrate a FRAUD, thus creating a cradle-to-grave control mechanism over virtually every facet of the lives of every living human being is abhorrent and vile. It is evil beyond words.
Spend 50 years "dumbing them down" with a State controlled crap education system, and then prey upon their enforced ignorance by feeding them bullsnot and soaking them for every dime you can't otherwise steal. I say they've way more than outlived their usefulness. Time to take out the garbage.
;-\
“The coal and iron oxide are heated to high temperatures...”
The article doesn’t state how the coal is heated in the first place.
Out of curiosity—how is carbon dioxide recycled? Fed to plants?
Must of been telepathy the minute I read your synopsis I was thinking the same thing. What a waste of money on a pseudo scientific premise. The only reason it may get pushed (patent patent patent) will be because we have a fascist goverment and there’s money in it for them. Let’s see what happens if this makes a mention during the inaugural. Outside of that what other application does this have ?
Won’t be good enough for the enviro-wackos including Obastard.
Not a bad idea- vent it into greenhouses.
It's engineering based on an ideology.
From the article: “In the simplest sense, combustion is a chemical reaction that consumes oxygen and produces heat,” Fan said. “Unfortunately, it also produces carbon dioxide, which is difficult to capture and bad for the environment. So we found a way to release the heat without burning."
Their twist on the “Broken Window” fallacy.
You would think that a scientist would be smarter than that but then I am sure that he is being funded by a government grant to produce this technology.
How is making electricity more expensive by making the generation of the electricity less efficient going to spur the economy with jobs?
Yes you may produce a few construction jobs while you are building your white elephant of a coal plant but you are going to destroy jobs by making energy more expensive.
The best way to grow the economy is to make energy less expensive. You do that by reducing regulatory burdens that are counter productive. You do that by making it easier to build new modern generation plants and oil refineries. You do that by making it easier to license new coal mines nuclear power plants and oil fields.
This nonsense about carbon dioxide and anthropomorphic global warming is junk science and needs to be put in the dustbin of history.
Clear link between solar activity and winter weather revealed
Scientists have demonstrated a clear link between the 11-year sun cycle and winter weather over the northern hemisphere for the first time.
They found that low solar activity can contribute to cold winters in the UK, northern Europe and parts of America. But high activity from the sun has the opposite effect.
The study helps explain why the UK has been gripped by such cold winters over the last few years: the sun is just emerging from a so-called solar minimum, when solar activity is at its lowest.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-link-solar-winter-weather-revealed.html
But the Global Warming Hoax prognosticators are now saying that Sun activity has nothing to do with our weather here and cutting CO2 needs to continue.
I read the press release and what I linked in comment# 1. I wrote in comment# 1: "Expensive carbon capture and sequestration technology is needed only if you believe the anthropogenic global warming, AGW, hypothesis."
Coal-Direct Chemical Looping (CDCL), might be good for reducing real pollution. I don't see a need for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) unless manmade climate change is proven. I'm still waiting for some evidence.
Dolphins, spotted owls, baby seals, and the Dali Lama still exhale this pollutant with every breath they take. Until we find a way to exterminate these polluters, we’ll never be free of the carbon dioxide scourge.
Thanks neverdem.
Ideology or engineering it doesn’t make a difference once you look at the bottom line.
Our economy can not afford a 35% increase in the price of electricity and still compete on the world market.
The Chinese are working very hard to reduce the cost of the energy in their economy. They have built the largest Hydro-electric dam in the world, they building a fleet of modern nuclear power plants and buy up oil leases world wide. They are aggressively expanding their access to cheap energy. We simply can not afford this kind of navel gazing idealistic non-sense that does nothing useful and raises the cost of everything.
It’s a good thing plants don’t think or liberal plants might be trying to eliminate O2!
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