Clean Coal

Coal use today is responsible for large, and mostly avoidable, damages to human health and our water and land. Coal use in the future, along with other fossil fuels, threatens to wreak havoc in the earth's climate system. This book looks at "clean coal" technologies such as coal gasification and carbon capture. Coal gasification, when done in conjunction with carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one technology option that offers our nation an attractive approach to utilize our indigenous fossil energy resources in a more efficient and environmentally sound manner for producing clean, affordable power from coal with dramatically reduced carbon emissions. Coal gasification with CCS can also reduce the carbon impact of using coal to produce ultra-clean fuels for the transportation sector, substitute natural gas (SNG) to heat our homes and fuel our industrial sector, fertilizers to ensure an abundant food supply, and chemicals that play an integral part in our every day lives. Another coal gasification concept explored in this book that could further reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emission is co-feeding coal and biomass into gasifiers to produce electricity or conventional transportation fuels. In addition to these technologies, this book also describes ways at improving or optimizing the performance of coal-fired power plants, in addition to tools that can be used and are available to cut global warming emissions. This book consists of public domain documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.