Coal May Be Our Most Important Future Energy Source

It’s interesting to watch the pop-environmental industry flail about regarding the issue of energy derived from coal.  Coal, according to the pop-enviros, is the big, bad devil monster hiding under the bed, waiting to leap out and devour us all with greenhouse gasses, sooty pollution and other noxious emissions likely to lead to the end of society as we know it.

Once America's Transportation Network Was Coal Powered.  Perhaps In The Future Coal Will Power The World's Industry

It’s equally interesting to watch the more or less ineffectual responses the coal industry mounts to the foamy mouthed invective hurled at it by the pop-enviro community.  If corporations were as powerful and skillful as they are reputed to be by the 99 percent crowd, one would think an industry like that centered on coal would do a better job of messaging.

In fact, regardless of the vociferous braying of the one side and the meek, “I’d better pull my head back in the shell” responses of the coal industry, coal may have the potential to bring about massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions along with many other social benefits.

Here’s some of what the U.S. Department of Energy has to say about its investigations into the coal issue:  “Hydrogen from coal research supports goals of increasing energy security, reducing environmental impact of energy use, promoting economic development, and encouraging scientific discovery and innovation by researching and developing novel technologies that convert the nation’s abundant coal resources into hydrogen. The use of coal — America’s largest domestic fossil energy resource — offers the potential to economically produce hydrogen and capture carbon dioxide emissions for the generation of low-carbon electricity.”

As has been pointed out in an earlier blog on this site, using hydrogen to power America’s vehicle fleet has been a dream for decades.  The primary emission from burning in an engine is good old water.  If the claim that much of the man made pollution leading to global warming… er… I mean climate change, and other damaging impacts is due to excess emissions from automobiles then, much of that pollution could be removed if we switch over to hydrogen as a primary power source.

Until now that’s been difficult because it takes too much energy to produce hydrogen but, again, from the Department of energy, “Hydrogen can be produced from coal by gasification (i.e., partial oxidation).  Coal gasification works by first reacting coal with oxygen and steam under high pressures and temperatures to form synthesis gas, a mixture consisting primarily of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.  The synthesis gas is cleaned of impurities and the carbon monoxide in the gas mixture is reacted with steam via the water-gas shift reaction to produce additional hydrogen and carbon dioxide.  Hydrogen is removed by a separation system and the highly concentrated CO2 stream can subsequently be captured and sequestered.  The hydrogen can be used in a combustion turbine or solid oxide fuel cell to produce power, or utilized as a fuel or chemical feedstock.”

Further, “Gasification of coal is a promising technology for the co-production of electric power and hydrogen from integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) technology.  However, there currently are no commercial demonstrations of these joint power and hydrogen plants.  Conceptual plants have been simulated using computer models to estimate technical and economic performance of co-production facilities.”

Clean coal technologies based on producing hydrogen and other valuable materials from raw coal and then using the char, or remaining byproduct in materials like aggregates for making bricks or other useful materials may well be the wave of the future. 

Because coal may have the potential to so dramatically reduce climate change gasses and other emissions to the atmosphere one can only wonder at the knee jerk responses to the shipping and use of coal so evident today.  Surely something with so much potential for cleaning up the earth's evironment deserves serious consideration?