Coal as an Energy Source

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Funkworks

Low Earth Orbit, obstructing Earth's view of Venus
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WION is an Indian news channel. Their report on a large Chinese coal plant:



But let's not limit this to China and Britain. I like travelling (virtually) the world.

 
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My mom grew up in post war Japan. All the street vehicles were powered by coal gas. Cough cough.
 
it’s all very interesting until it gets in the lungs and billions of tons are burning.



But still interesting. Rocks and chemistry are always fun.
 
I grew up in WV with coal for heat, coal for powering those awesome traction steam engines and blacksmithing. Nothing like that smell and smoke...good times! Coal forever!!! 😁
 
Dirty, bad for the very thin atmosphere we have around the Earth.
The case can be made by just about anyone about almost anything being bad for the earth. It's an argument that has been going on for quite some time. Save the whales! 😁
 
I have hauled coke to steel mills before.
I did my high school sophomore project on steel. My stepmother's father was a steel worker in Washington PA. I had the whole layout of metals and chemical that go into making steel. It is amazing that we can make it and in fact, it is a much of metals and not a single product. Calling it all "steel" is an over simplification.

Back to coal. It has a bad rap. There are ways to burn liquefied coal and capture carbon will chilled ammonia that reduce the carbon emissions and pollutants by over 90%. Environmental groups don't like to hear that but "clean coal" is not just an adverting gimmick.

The United States needs a diversified power system that allows us to reduce the use of fossil fuels and not just ban them with a date on the wall that may or may not even be possible.
 
Coal has almost all of the elements in the Periodic table in it.
 
Dates are based on projections, but if they aren't taken seriously, nothing happens. What I like to see is gradual transitions where people have time to adapt.

I think it's important to distinguish thermal coal (used to run power plants), and steelmaking coal. I'm pretty sure they're regulated differently.

FWIW, here's the wiki on steelmaking, including srategies to reduce carbon use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steelmaking
From what I've seen, the use of thermal coal for power plants gets more attention than steelmaking coal. Alternatives to thermal coal are solar, wind, nukes, etc. Alternatives to steelmaking coal are various chemical processes.
 
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Growing up on Lake Michigan we had a coke plant (carbon for making steel) in our harbor. Entire coal boats would haul the coke out of the harbor on their way to steel plants. The coke plant along with several other manufacturing plants have been leveled to the ground. I would assume that coal being used to make steel is direct conversion to thermal energy. Obviously, using coal to make electricity and then using that electricity to make steel is inefficient. China is the world's producer of steel by far, but not just recently. It has been that way for about 20 years or more. I hope the U.S. is at least making enough steel to meet our own needs. Reports are now saying that the Chinese navy has more ships than other country. They definitely have the steel to do this.
 
Alternatives to steelmaking coal are various chemical processes.
The only alternative to coke is a process that uses Natural Gas and not chemicals. Now that is just switching fossil fuels. We could use hydrogen at a much, much higher cost and China makes more steel and could care less.
 
Back to coal. It has a bad rap. There are ways to burn liquefied coal and capture carbon will chilled ammonia that reduce the carbon emissions and pollutants by over 90%. Environmental groups don't like to hear that but "clean coal" is not just an adverting gimmick.
Environmental Issues: Lots of energy and pollution in the process:
"
"Typically coal liquefaction processes are associated with significant CO2 emissions from the gasification process or as well as from generation of necessary process heat and electricity inputs to the liquefaction reactors,[10] thus releasing greenhouse gases that can contribute to anthropogenic global warming.

High water consumption in the water-gas shift reaction or steam methane reforming is another adverse environmental effect.[10]

CO2 emission control at Erdos CTL, an Inner Mongolian plant with a carbon capture and storage demonstration project, involves injecting CO2 into the saline aquifer of Erdos Basin, at a rate of 100,000 tonnes per year.[23][third-party source needed] As of late October 2013, an accumulated amount of 154,000 tonnes of CO2 had been injected since 2010, which reached or exceeded the design value.[24][third-party source needed]"

It costs lots of energy, results in pollution even before the Liquified ,coal is burned, creating more pollution, there's only a fraction of that in manufacturing and using solar panels. Cover the same area of Lake Erie in square miles of unused desert in Nevada with solar panels, and it will power up the ENTIRE USA. with no pollution. Everyone should remember that our atmosphere is the same relative thickness as the peel of an apple, and we want to burn fossil fuels to pollute it?
 
Coal is dirty and shorten's lives. But you can't defeat the West without it.
 
It costs lots of energy, results in pollution even before the Liquified ,coal is burned, creating more pollution, there's only a fraction of that in manufacturing and using solar panels. Cover the same area of Lake Erie in square miles of unused desert in Nevada with solar panels, and it will power up the ENTIRE USA. with no pollution. Everyone should remember that our atmosphere is the same relative thickness as the peel of an apple, and we want to burn fossil fuels to pollute it?

Real easy to say and much harder to implement. This statement is made by many environmentalists and is not the answer. Solar and wind will not power the whole country because it is not 24/7 power, and we cannot and will not be able to store enough energy to make it through the night. Imagine the nights in Alaska! There will not be enough batteries to store the energy anytime soon, and our power lines will not provide energy to the entire country. You can keep dreaming, but we are not there today.
 
Sure modern industry brings pollution, but a lot can be done to lessen and control pollution and has been done. Another way to look at things is to ask if our standard of living would be as high without the modern conveniences and industrialization? Would our life spans be as long? The standard of living and life spans were not this good 150 years ago by any means. And the number of people back then was a lot fewer.
 
Everyone can do their part so let's all band together and outlaw air-conditioning, heat, and modern transportation. Coal is a small piece of the puzzle, but one day in GA without AC and you sing a new tune.
 
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