Can We Get Rid of Coal?

"I am sure there will be a day when we stop burning coal"

I encourage everyone to go to you tube and search the word "lecture". There is a fantastic lecture at a community college (I Think) that talks about the logrythmic nature of steady growth. We all know that the population is growing, that our system is dependant on growth, and as this lecture points out, it must end. Its not an opinion, its simple math. If you divide the precentage growth rate in to 72, this will be the time period in which the usage will double. If you reach a point where you have yet to dig up an amount of coal equal to ALL the coal you have ever burned, it means you are one iteration from running out. Because it is finite, it really is a question of when, and this guy does a great job of showing how untrustworthy experts and the media are in doing these simple calculations. Just like oil, there will be a day when we stop using it, not becuase it was exahuasted, but becuase its not economically feasible. Economics of supply and demand will make it too expensive to use. An inexhaustible source, like the Sun, will utilamtley be the cheaper route.

Electricity today is WAY too cheap. An olympic cycilst on a bicycle driven generator can make about seven cents of electicty peddling at full tilt for 5 hours. Its so cheap, cities leave huge lights on all night on the chance that someone MIGHT walk down that street. When its gone, the future will certianly ask why we didnt try to be more reasonable in our usage. But the good news is, the sooner we use it up, the sooner we move on to a sustainable method that will probably cost more that it does today, becuase we externalize a great deal of the cost in to the air and water, etc..

The environazis the want us to stop using coal and oil...and gas.....are all hypocrits. Because very, very few of them practice what they preach. And I don't respect people like Al Gore who tells me what I can do while flying everywhere in his private jet....his fleet of SUV's adn his multiple HUGE mansions that each use more power than many small town use.

We SHOULD use coal...we should use oil and we should use gas. Because we have enough of it here under our own land to tell OPEC to shove it. If the so called Greenies want to move into a cave.....I say let them....but they have no business telling the rest of us what we should or should not do.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" but first "follow the money". I venture to say that Greenpeace and most of the "dirty old coal" folks have never taken Economics 101. You don't have to agree with how the world works economicaly, but it does work and attempts to subvert it by socialistic or other elitest notions have always proved disastrous.

All energy comes with some form of taint attached, just pick your poison; air pollution, being supplied by people who want us dead, or coming from sources that are too expensive and unreliable to be realistic.

To add to the confusion, the Al Gores of the world line their pockets by creating uncertainty.

Yes they have and the smart ones are getting rich off this "greenie" BS. Follow the money indeed. Follow the money from the Sierra Club and Green Peace to ELF and other eco-terrorist organizations.

I believe that if an example was set by the "Greenpeace to college students to environmentalists" we might get the beginning of a situation where a minor impact on the use of coal and other carbon or hydrocarbon fuels could be made. To start they would give up their driving licenses and not use anything but natural elements (sunlight, rain, wind) to heat and light their homes. No cheating by using solar panels which require manmade sources for manufacture, or the use of electricity from wind turbines that also have a large amount of energy required for manufacture. The same applies to bicycles. To set a proper example they should live in a cold climate where sub-zero temperatures exist for at least three months of the year. They would not fly in planes (even to important eco conferences) and would not use paper as it is not an energy efficient medium, both in manufacture or delivery to final user. They should arrange for their workplace to be at least 10 miles from their home. They should only buy food from freindly local stores who only supply local produce from organic farms that do not require any fuel input to grow the crops (I assume they would not eat meat, but eggs, dairy products and locally caught fish are OK so long as they are produced by eco-freindly means. When I see them all following these principles I will work even harder at reducing emissions.

We will stop using coal when there is no coal.

All of the rhetoric generated by the entire community of what I will simply call 'greenies' represents a huge amount of wasted human energy that could be put to much better use. They will never get beyond their 'ivory tower' views nor beyond their microcosm ideas about generated power. There are so many variables involved with the distribution grid, with 'peaking' demands, etc., that the latest Cray computer could not effectively model and predict all of the effects and likely disasters that would cripple the global economy if their ideas were permitted to be implemented.

I like to think of them as analogous to the whining brat I often encounter on grocery store shopping missions who wants some toy or candy that his/her parent(s) is/are not willing or able to provide. I simply tune out the disturbance as a minor annoyance and go on about my business.

Who ever you are, thanks. The people in the world are not interested in how to stop using Coal. Let me tell you about this; If you firing up one (1) cubikmeter coal you will have gas, ok!. The weight for one cubikmeter coal is arround 2.200 kilo, ok. If you are using 100-Triljon ton coal the globe is loosing 100 Triljon ton of weight, ok. The result, including all oil in the world is that our globe is loosing arround 100-million ton of its weight, the BALLAST, EVERY DAY. People arround the globe they do not know this, and they do not care about it eigther. No one is interested at all. Thank you very much for your thoughts about coal. You could have my examinations, Leopold Makender, 12 years back if you send me mail in;

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Matter can be neither created or destroyed.

Some of the more rabid environmentalists are doing the coal people a big favor by giving them a clear and unsympathetic target. It's a cheap shot that some folks are shameless enough to use. That's pretty easy to understand.

What is harder to understand is the belief that government has no role to play in the funding research into energy alternatives. We are having this conversation using personal computers. Much of the basic technology involved was developed by NASA for use in on-board computers for space craft. The messages are being sent over the internet, a system based on the DARPA net developed by the DOD. Everybody's favorite eco-nazi Al Gore pushed hard to expand it for public use. These technologies were developed by a good-old-American joint effort by government and private enterprise. Probably these technologies would have been developed in due time without government impetus. Maybe we'd be logging on now through our dial-up modems.

Did NASA and DOD squander money, cut sweetheart deals, and pursue dubious ideas? You bet! Was it worth it? How many trillions of dollars did we get in return for these government interventions? Why would we want to trash a public/private model that has worked so well for us in the past? Have we lost the courage and reason of our forefathers?

A mission-driven model like NASA for coal with a mission best described as ...

I am willing to accept that government has a role to play. I do not agree with the current role.

NASA's purpose was not to develop a way for the general public to all have personal computers. The computers are more of the fallout of technology developed for space exploration. The DoD development of networking had a function that in someway met what the US government is required to do (protect its citizens). The fact that such technologies find there way into the private sector is fantastic. But such financing should not be done by the government solely for those purposes. It's easy to look back from where we are now and say, "but surely it would be worthwhile for the government to fund development of technology so everyone can afford their own computers". But to make such a prediction in advance is another matter.

Here's a carefully deliberated and succinctly expressed role for the Executive Office of the President and DOE in a subordinate and scrutinized role for, without delay, concrete steps in a plan for accomplishment of the mission. Which is building America's capacity for energy innovation, starting with invention, said the PCAST in their Report

They are not the enemy, we are.

Seems like the comic strip Pogo said something like this many years ago!

There was an operating model in New Zealand when Cook arrived of 'social adaptation to depleted resources" - outlined in "The Future Eaters" by Tim Flannery.

Karmarat is right.

Man cannot destroy the world - Man can just destroy his habitat.

And oddly there is an ancient 'instruction book' on how best to do this.

Now don't look at that as "religion" - Look at it as a design brief of how to royally F*&@ things up.

Then ask yourselves how many are just exactly what the 1^st World has taken a proactive path to attaining/maximizing?

But; it is all academic now - the climate reaction it brought - is upon you.

The question now, is how various Nations will "adapt socially" to "depleted resources".

<rant off>

Do not laugh, we have the solutions as well. In every Rivers, or seaside, arround the world, (6 450 million kilometer running water) we could build Floating Energibarges, there will be no need for any coal or OIL any more in the world, ok. Up above this FEB will be Windarrangement as well as Suntechnique, Chickenfarms, and on top of this we could build Greenhouse. Below, in the water we could feed the fish. We could produce Electricity, Hydrogas and oxegynice the water as well as cleaning it. Be our gest, the solutions we have for the whole wide world is here.

I agree with your basic train of thought, however energy use is an evolutionary technology that has been held stagnate since the sixties by the idiot greenies and environmentalist. Nuclear energy is not the do all-end all but is is the next step along the path which we are not moving on. If they had not stalled the progress of energy technology we would most likely be beyond fission and on to something else better, maybe fusion, maybe something else entirely. The greenies want everyone else to give up and stop using energy except them.

There just isn't enough land area to generate power in the quantities we need. Besides, people are already complaining about wind power killing birds! They complain about hydroelectric power too, because of the dams and the large lakes needed for water reservoirs. This is probably the same people who complain about using coal--methinks they have a conflict of interest!

I think we will have to consider nuclear power, but a different technology than the present slow-neutron reactors and the large amount of waste they produce. I have heard that the technology exists for a fast-neutron reactor that can even use the waste from the present slow-neutron reactors as fuel. They can also use thorium and uranium-238, which will greatly increase the available fuel supply. Liquid fuel will make reprocessing much easier, and there will be a lot less waste; as an additional benefit, this waste will be much less radioactive and have a much smaller half-life. A good deal in my opinion if people would not be so afraid of anything with "nuclear" in the name! (Even the beneficial medical test nuclear magnetic imagining now known as MRI--magnetic resonance imaging.)

Now the big question--has anyone else heard of this new fast-neutron reactor technology? Or have I gotten into another crowd of activists?

Economic prosperity will depend on coal for the foreseeable future because no utility-scale alternatives exist. "Renewables" are just not capable of meeting the world's power demand. Given that inconvenient truth, we need to find a way to capture the CO2, NOx, SOx, mercury, and fly ash in flue gas and then find a way to dispose of it. The conventional prescription of chemical capture (amine scrubbing) and underground dumping ("sequestration") can't possibly work. It's like trying to fly by flapping mechanical wings. The sequestration idea is "profoundly non-feasible" at utility scale, and it also would lead to groundwater salinity. Post-combustion chemical capture has the same energy penalty as oxyfuel combustion (30%) and would double water consumption at power plants. I would like to post a plausible solution, but I would get slammed here for spamming.

I would like to post a plausible solution, but I would get slammed here for spamming.

Oh come on! What kind of tease is that?

Post a link......we're all big boys and girls here. If it makes sense you'll be just fine, if not.......well, cover your face, because the sh*t might hit the fan. Be brave.

Most of us that post regularly have been the object of scorn at one point or another.............I've gotten used to it.

All that's left is mechanical capture, for example: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2009/0013867.html

Again the claims are for the process - no mention of HP to run it - which by the Laws will be more than the energy released by burning. Perhaps less than the liquefaction via Linde, but neither is sequestration over at gas capture. Not by a long shot.

It's the intrinsic momentum differences in the flue gas fractions that drives the thermal separation, as in the vortex tube. By imposing the axisymmetric von Karman geometry on the expanding flow of flue gas between counter-rotating radial turbines you get radial counterflow with respect to the impeller axis. In the shear layer between the momentum diffusing regions, or boundary layers, there exists a fractal, or self-similar, radial tree network of vortex cores where the low momentum fractions such as N2 and steam (the nitrogen ballast is 80% of the volume of flue gas) get stripped out and through an axial exhaust port. The CO2 at 44 g/mol has per molecule a much higher momentum in thermal equilibrium with molecules of N2 at only 28, and steam at 18.

Other high density pollutants such as NOx, SOx, mercury, and fly ash get captured in a shrouding tank along with the CO2 and can be separated by conventional means which may involve compression to liquefaction, but of a much smaller gas stream since the nitrogen ballast has been stripped out in radial counterflow. The sink flow toward the impeller axis is pushed by backpressure from the shrouding tank. Expanding the gas between the turbines pushes them in counter-rotation.

Sure there would have to be some HP involved in starting it up, but by making the disks really wide and using peripheral drive wheels to counter-rotate them, the accumulated angular momentum from intermittent sources such as wind might be harnessed to useful effect and provide an incentive for an interconnection agreement.

I've heard something similar. Maybe it was from DaS Energy or Henrik14

You may note this is a separator and you still have the 'usual steps' to gather the CO₂

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2009/0013867.html

Yet another crackpot adaptation of a Testla turbine. A million dollars worth of machinery to scrub the output of a home heating furnace at who knows what actual efficiency.

Note that it is a patent application. If this patent is actually granted I'd be very surprised and somewhat disappointed at the performance of our US Patent office.

On the other hand this thing might produce a comfy meal ticket for a few years for the " inventor" if he is a good enough salesman.

Ed Weldon

Welcome to the world of Wilmont, there is no problem his "device" won't solve

it reminds me of http://www.zombo.com/

"Yet another crackpot adaptation of a Testla turbine." First, the spelling is Tesla. Second, it is not a Tesla turbine. Third, it is not for scrubbing the output of a home heating furnace but for stack emissions, natural gas, and industrial-scale applications. Fourth, notice of allowance has been granted, but I don't know the patent issue date yet.

1. Oh, bad me!!! I hurriedly mispelled the name of a sacred saint. No doubt a freudian sllp on my part. Tesla's great achievement was AC electric power. Like other great contemporary inventors of his stature many if not most of his ideas were duds.

2. Another word slip ............... Oh the horrors of it! I should have used the word "device" instead of "turbine". But that would have been confusing to those of us who don't understand the fundamental fluid mechanics of the Tesla turbine. In the period when he was most active mechanical and civil engineers were daily producing unbelievable "miracles". So there appeared to be no reason why his turbine idea could not be made to work by the unsung geniuses of his era. We know better today.

3. It would be a considerable feat of mechanical engineering and precision machining to make something like this that could handle a 100,000 BTU/hour gas furnace. One the size large enough to handle a coal fired power plant could well cost more than the US Space Program even if it could be built.

4. The patent grant is what counts. That hasn't happened as far as one can tell from the cited web page.

Ed Weldon

This will issue March 8, 2011 as U.S. Pat. 7,901,485.

That & 2 bucks will get you a cup of coffee

What laws and where? The globe has no laws at all. The only law there is it, is to SAVE the globe, nothing else. Solutions we have, Floating Energy Barges in the rivers of the globe will save the world totally. 6.5 million kilometers of rivers will take care of all what the globe need. And people use more power in their house as they need. Why are people heating up schools when they are not in there? 200 days per year the school is empty. Office buildings are empty 150 days per year, why warming them up or cooling them down. Why are people heating up there house when they are not home? It´s interesting how little people of today think. Many yeast talk, talk and talk, they do not like to say that they do not understand at all. NO ONE, doesn't matter who, do not know the whole thing about our earth, no one have the correct answer, ok. Confess and be happy...

Yes, we can and will easily get rid of "coal for energy" and almost eliminate oil for transport. It can be achieved without economic drama in less than 30 years and with some drama in less than 15 years. We can do it with existing technologies: energy efficiency, solar thermal with storage, solar PV, wind, electric trains and hybrid electric cars and trucks. All the energy sources need to be distributed to avoid the need for major transmission upgrades.

Splendid, it's a very good speech. You are the first here to understand that we must stand up for the earth and do whatever we can to save as much as we can, and as fast as we can. We will bow for your intelligent solutions, thank you very much.

"Do you have a plausible solution?"

This is the last question raised in the OP

The answer is yes. There are more than plausible solutions. There are proven technologies that can move virtually all nations to fractional coal use.

However; "If so, when" depends when those solutions are heard, understood and enabled.

This threads 100⁺ posts, is 'proof' in itself, of the mechanisms that will never allow a real solution to be heard.

Exampled by 9 OT's to 2 GA's, for delineating 'noise' and 'vested interest', as the main obstacle to progress on climate energy excess.

It's a 'standard political noise driven' result.

The answer to "Do you have a plausible solution?" therefore becomes No - there isn't one.

So did our troll finally see the light and learn something about real science or did he just shrivel up and die from mental malnutrition and blind ignorance?

Hi "superbrain, more importantly, the mass will be GAS when we burn coal and oil? And we just lose it, and where does it go? Out true university and it just disappear? If something else could be, we could not live here anymore, COMPRENDE! Nothing, NOTHING at all of all this GAS could be taken care of by our earth, ok. And IF, could you "intelligential" tell me where it could be? And, please, do not copy some books or something like that; you have to PROOF it, nothing else, ok. I and several real scientists could proof what we say, yes. Power to the earth…

Me thinks Kastrupsky is a Princeton freshman having a laugh by pulling on your chains! If that's the case, he's doing a very good job at it!

Since he started this adventure in 07, he must be a senior

the again judging by his grasp science, you're probably right, freshman :D

Coal is commonly used as the heat source for steam turbines a most energy inefficent means, as a heat need of 550* Celsius is required to obtian the 175 bar pressure needed by the 350 megawatt Toshiba turbine/generator. Where as Co2 at 100* Celius has 10,000 bar pressure. This equates to the sealed Co2 turbine producing 110,000 megawatts for the same coal burn of the steam turbine 350 megawatts.

The Technology is well past concept, however commercial in place are not happy that such should ever be in use, as such would severely impact on coal sales.