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Turning Dirty Coal into Clean Energy


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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5356683

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I've been reading about using Coal for oil and it seems like one of the best idea's. It would be costly to build to plants to convert it but once they're up and running cheap to run and the price of the barrel would be around 30 dollars. One of the articles I read said, in America we had enough coal to power all our vehicles for 250 years.

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a better path..

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Coal isn't the answer - it's a mess to get, ruins beautiful mountains, water gets polluted, the jobs won't last, and the idea of cooling, compressing, and pumping CO2 into old gas wells is just putting off the inevitable (besides taking a ton of energy)..

The answer is high efficiency and renewable energy sources. I agree, the current battery technologies are bad for several reasons. The materials they use are risky, rare, heavy, and have very limited lifespans before needing to be recycled. Better to use common Earth elements, in the form of carbon-nanotube supercapacitors, light-element cells, engineered synthetic zeolite hydrogen storage cells, and super-efficient engines/motors. Aerodynamics can double auto and truck efficiency as well. Getting the drive in a fine auto you want, and using a quarter or a fifth of the energy to do so is a good starting point.

Then, with demand lowered, looking at sources that are green becomes much more viable. Rooftop solar and wind, geothermal and limited biomass makes sense. After all, besides mineral collection specimens, we really don't want or need coal or oil, and the mining they entail. We want the service the energy offers.. (Hot Pizza and Cold Beer).;)

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Coal isn't the answer - it's a mess to get, ruins beautiful mountains, water gets polluted, the jobs won't last, and the idea of cooling, compressing, and pumping CO2 into old gas wells is just putting off the inevitable (besides taking a ton of energy)..

The answer is high efficiency and renewable energy sources. I agree, the current battery technologies are bad for several reasons. The materials they use are risky, rare, heavy, and have very limited lifespans before needing to be recycled. Better to use common Earth elements, in the form of carbon-nanotube supercapacitors, light-element cells, engineered synthetic zeolite hydrogen storage cells, and super-efficient engines/motors. Aerodynamics can double auto and truck efficiency as well. Getting the drive in a fine auto you want, and using a quarter or a fifth of the energy to do so is a good starting point.

Then, with demand lowered, looking at sources that are green becomes much more viable. Rooftop solar and wind, geothermal and limited biomass makes sense. After all, besides mineral collection specimens, we really don't want or need coal or oil, and the mining they entail. We want the service the energy offers.. (Hot Pizza and Cold Beer).;)

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There is no good answer, coal is the best we have. The benefits outweigh the cost. No easy clean solution to energy. I haven't seen any other cheap fuel for cars.

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At the very least it's the answer until we find something better.

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As far as fuel for things besides cars, nuclear, wind and solar are the answers. Wind energy is a lot cheaper now and from what i'm reading more effective but it'll take a few different energy source's to fuel our nation.

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There is no good answer, coal is the best we have. The benefits outweigh the cost. No easy clean solution to energy. I haven't seen any other cheap fuel for cars.

There is a good answer. Renewable energy, plus energy efficiency! Coal is the best source for certain fossils, but it's no answer for energy. Yes, there are easy clean energy solutions - newer, cleaner processes to make solar cells, and they return the energy invested to make them fairly fast. But efficiency is the 90%; reliable clean energy is the 10%. Cheap is short-sighted. How cheap is it to deal with the mercury contamination in the fresh water supply from coal burning? A global climate on run-away heating? an economy based on consumption with no respect for the quality of life outside that conundrum? Externalities must be included, if we value honesty. The answers are renewable, reasonably clean fuels such as electricity from solar stored in newer batteries; or hydrogen from solar or biomass, stored in zeolites. But efficiency today can cut consumption down to a fifth or less to start with, and with no major negative effects.. If we all do that, we would need so little to begin with, that solar/wind/geotheral/biomass would fit the bill quite easily.

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At the very least it's the answer until we find something better. It's the addiction, and the problem.

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As far as fuel for things besides cars, nuclear(?), wind and solar are the answers. Wind energy is a lot cheaper now and from what i'm reading more effective but it'll take a few different energy source's to fuel our nation.

Get hip; open your eyes. Cars will be, and some today already are, fueled with hydrogen, clean battery technologies, supercapacitors, and biodiesel, just to name a few. (seen Iceland, anyone?) But the elephant in the room is efficiency. Current technology can easily improve mileage (be that miles per gallon, or miles per kilowatt) by 4 or 5X, without sacrificing the quality of the ride, comfort, acceleration, etc.

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Get hip; open your eyes. Cars will be, and some today already are, fueled with hydrogen, clean battery technologies, supercapacitors, and biodiesel, just to name a few. (seen Iceland, anyone?) But the elephant in the room is efficiency. Current technology can easily improve mileage (be that miles per gallon, or miles per kilowatt) by 4 or 5X, without sacrificing the quality of the ride, comfort, acceleration, etc.

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From what ive been reading, biodiesel isn't very effective and cheap.

Clean Battery? I haven't heard of any yet, so far the cars powered by batteries or hybrids aren't that good.

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I just remembered someone telling me about fueling cars with water, using sea water or something. .

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Oh, wait, yeah.

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Mountaintop removal is terrible to see. Trust me. It's completely disgusting. If they want to use this coal, it would be so nice if they'd develop better ways to get it. The mountains are so much a part of our culture, it'd be a shame to see so many of them gone. They already have uglied the landscape here a lot, I'd hate to see more of that mess. :bigcry:

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Yes, they have to replace the trees that they took down to destroy the mountain, but it's nothing like it was before.

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Here's the solution:

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Everyone gets a farm and seeds. Everyone makes their own food and supports themselves and all businesses close.

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Or just make all cars hybrid:P

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Or like the "converted" car in Back To The Future.;)

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From what ive been reading, biodiesel isn't very effective and cheap.

Biodiesel made from plant matter (cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, pectin, et.al.) using biochemical or chemical means is where we need to go. Funny, if termites, fungi, and zooplankton can do it, we ought to be able to use enzymes or wet chem processes to convert the plant matter into a type of vegetable oil, and then on into biodiesel with reasonable efficiency. Nature already has, we just need to investigate further. More money into research & development.

Just looking at the waste stream entering our landfills, much of it is wood building materials, wood furniture parts, cotton fabrics, waste pulp, and yard wastes (which can provide clean energy as well as compost). Even waste plastics, using the right chemical processes, should yield usable oils for fuel.

Clean Battery? I haven't heard of any yet, so far the cars powered by batteries or hybrids aren't that good.

Carbon Nanotube Supercapacitors, (see MIT's article - nanotube supercapacitor MIT: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/batteries-0208.html, but the link doesn't want to work from here ?? :/ anyhow, just do a search, if interested..) have the potential to store as much power as batteries, use common elements (carbon & a conductive substrate), and may have an almost unlimited shelf life. Also, there was a place in Finnland or Sweden developing Aluminum batteries; something ion it's called... wish I could recall it! Already available are sodium-sulfur cells, lithium ion cells (still rel. rare ore deposits, however), and high-tech flywheels for stationary applications. Somewhere I was reading about a battery that runs on sugar as well.. a biochem cell of sorts..

Fuel cells have some kinks to worked out; however, with the latest engine technologies, hydrogen can be efficiently combusted in an engine, and synthetic zeolites have been engineered to store hydrogen (eliminating the need for rare nickel as in Nickel-metal hydride cells) Zeolites are a class of aluminum silicates (some occur naturally) that have useful properties, such as highly adsorptive surfaces, and are composed of very common crustal elements. (akin to using clay as a raw material)

Making hydrogen - hydrolysis of water, the electricity being naturally from solar cells placed on roofs, over lots, etc./ wind turbines / geothermal plants. Hydrogen can also be separated form biomass that has been gasified and passed though a bed of hot coals. The resulting mixture of gases are separated, and any non-hydrogen fuel gas can be burned in an engine to generate electricity.

I just remembered someone telling me about fueling cars with water, using sea water or something. .

Yes! Hydrolysis of water (you can try this experiment - just hook a DC power supply (solar panels work well) to two metal plates suspended in a solution of slightly acidic water, and voila' - hydrogen at one end, oxygen at the other! The same thing happens when batteries are overcharged.. hence, the risk of explosion when a flame is put near a charging auto battery.

Obviously, the most efficient processes use electrodes of very thinly plated noble metals (rhodium, indium, platinum, gold, etc.), but I would think one could simply use a sintered carbon electrode, akin to the kind found in most flashlight batteries. Use a trap to collect the H2. Dry the hydrogen by passing the gas through a dessicant (dry Calcium Chloride pellets, for example), send the hydrogen stream through the zeolite or porous glass bead matrix, and there you go - hydrogen in a box! To get it out, apply mild heat, and simply tap it off!! Run into engine, and drive car.

Well, like anything, there are a few kinks along the way, but basically, it does work! Of course, which is the best? Carbon-nanotube "batteries", light element cells, hydrogen storage, biodiesel, alcohol, etc.. They're all viable options in my opinion, if each of them is made in the most efficient manner, and used in the most efficient manner.

Even alcohol, which has rightly taken a beating for lacking efficiency in production, has great potential as an energy carrier; we might discover better ways of converting biomass wastes into alcohol, and reducing the subsequent separation costs with water..

Anyhow, there's the very near future!

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Just imagine running a car off salt water. How cheap and easy that would be. But the only concern would be when getting it from the ocean, if it would be safe to marine life.

Alot of people do not realize our ocean's are in big trouble with pollution and marine life dying off. We'd have to make sure it was safe for the ocean first...

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David's referring to the either Lead-acid or Nickel Metal Hydride batteries they use. I have to agree, we've got to really ramp up research & especially development of new, clean battery technologies. It's feasible, if our world would just get it together..

Saltwater used for electrolysis: Well, it's an interesting thing to imagine what would happen if that much water were drawn up to be electrolytically converted into H2 and O2; there would be quite a bit of salty brine remaining, and quite a bit of water taken from some location.. The brine could be sent out to the deep ocean, where it would join with the heavy, salty return current from the conveyor belt in the Atlantic. And the withdrawn water could be taken from several places; in essence, it would all return as rain in due time, since burning Hydrogen yields water!:)

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