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78 comments on Clean fuel from dirty coal?

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bjj on February 27, 2006 - 3:36pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
..when natural gas shortages start appearing coal will be gasified whether you like it or not.

Sadly, that's what's showing in my crystal ball.  And I don't like it.  Not one bit.  

The cynic in me sees us burning through every possible energy source at the max sustained rate, consequences be damned.

But the hopeful dreamer part wants to help avoid that future.  Y'all keep up the excellent posting around coal, GW, production data, etc.  As I try to influence those around me, TOD is a significant source of hard, cold data.

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LevinK on February 27, 2006 - 3:49pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The good news is that coal mining seems to be already pretty much strained (I have that as a general impression from HO posts). Probably we are far from peak coal yet, but significantly ramping it up could be very difficult.

So.. look again in that crystal ball; I think you will see this:

not this:

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TJ on February 27, 2006 - 4:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Maybe.  But if the coal deposits exist then it becomes a question of what's cheaper and quicker to expand: coal strip mining with coal gasifiers, FT units, and steam power plants;  or reactor building and mass conversion of oil and natural gas usage to electricity.  Since your base investment for the second alternative is essentially zero right now my guess would be the first would be way cheaper and quicker.  This would especially be true if a crisis hits and pollution concerns go out the window.
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tom deplume on February 28, 2006 - 1:07pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Last month I was driving down west coast of Michigan on a bright sunny morning. It was a very rare cloudless day with one exception, the plume of vapor from the Palisades Nuclear Powerplant near South Haven. It stood out clearly for 50 miles as the only blemish on a extremely blue sky. It is truly amazing how much energy those cooling towers throw away while its neighbors are burning nat gas and propane on a cold January morning.
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Paula on February 28, 2006 - 1:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It's worth bearing in mind that water vapor is a much more potent greenhouse gas than C02.
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LevinK on February 28, 2006 - 4:39pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
AFAIK water vapor is in a thermodynamical balance in the atmosphere and there is not a lot that we humans can do to affect it.

Oceans are producing million times as much vapor as all human activities combined. It would be interesting though to see how GW plays on this - we can expect with rising temperatures the air humidity to grow producing a positive feedback. On the other hand the water cycle (evaporation -> precipitation) will intensify, taking away some of the energy absorbed by the oceans thus cooling them off. I have to check but probably the total efect would be neutral because it is absent in the climatographic models I've seen.

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SocraticGadfly on March 1, 2006 - 1:31am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Ahh, but a warmer atmosphere cdan hold more H2O vapor.
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LevinK on February 28, 2006 - 4:41pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Unfortunately our urban development pattern was not designed for the central heating that could utilise this energy.

Maybe Kunstler would turn out being right that it is mostly Suburbia to blame for our worries.

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