Coal pollution mitigation
Burning coal releases harmful substances that contribute to air pollution, acid rain, and greenhouse gas emissions.
During World War II, German industry removed ash from coal by treatments with hydrofluoric acid and related reagents.
The gaseous products can be filtered and scrubbed to miminize the release of SOx, NOx, mercury: Electrostatic precipitators remove particulates.
The solid residue, coal ash, requires separate set of technologies but usually involves landfilling or some immobilization approaches.
Several different technological methods are available for carbon capture: Satellite monitoring is now used to crosscheck national data, for example Sentinel-5 Precursor has shown that Chinese control of SO2 has only been partially successful.
[11] However, after many delays and a cost runup to $7.5 billion (triple the initial budget),[12] the coal gasification project was abandoned and as of late 2017, Kemper is under construction as a cheaper natural gas power plant.
[14] An early example of a coal-based plant using (oxy-fuel) carbon-capture technology is Swedish company Vattenfall’s Schwarze Pumpe power station located in Spremberg, Germany, built by German firm Siemens, which went on-line in September 2008.
"[22] Conversion of a conventional coal-fired power plant is done by injecting the CO2 into ammonium carbonate after which it is then transported and deposited underground (preferably in soil beneath the sea).
Besides the cost of the equipment and the ammonium carbonate, the coal-fired power plant also needs to use 30% of its generated heat to do the injection (parasitic load).
Local pollution standards include GB13223-2011 (China), India,[24] the Industrial Emissions Directive (EU) and the Clean Air Act (United States).
[30] As of 2019[update] costs of retrofitting CCS are unclear and the economics depends partly on how the Chinese national carbon trading scheme progresses.
[32] In 2014 SaskPower a provincial-owned electric utility finished renovations on Boundary Dam's boiler number 3 making it the world's first post-combustion carbon capture storage facility.
Bush's position was that carbon capture and storage technologies should be encouraged as one means to reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil.
During the US Presidential campaign for 2008, both candidates John McCain and Barack Obama expressed interest in the development of CCS technologies as part of an overall comprehensive energy plan.
The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act allocated $3.4 billion for advanced carbon capture and storage technologies, including demonstration projects.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that "we should strive to have new electricity generation come from other sources, such as clean coal and renewables", and former Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu has said that "It is absolutely worthwhile to invest in carbon capture and storage", noting that even if the U.S. and Europe turned their backs on coal, developing nations like India and China would likely not.
