Clean Burning Coal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulverised_fuel_firing

Pollutants and by products from Coal burning are, Carbon Dioxide (Potential Global Warming Hazard), Sulfur Dioxide (Acid Rain) and Carbon Monoxide (Dangerous and Toxic Gas---Inhalation and Breathing Hazard)

....and none of these can be eliminated by reducing the coal particle size.

Wow your ability to state the obvious is quite amazing

If the word "pollutant" were to label a substance that is in the wrong place, where do the products of combustion ideally need to be?

I think this a good place to discuss pollutants here as all pollutants are also materials--------AND----Some by products and evolves gases can also be considered pollutants.

So--I am fine with the discussion and I do not have any problem.

Plasma combustion has been recommended for trash-to-steam plants, it seems to burn up everything. How would that be for coal?

I've heard that coal is ground up very fine for burning in power plants, sprayed into the combustion area like oil for a good burn.

Pulverized coal is probably the normal means in power generation as opposed to moving or fluidized bed operation. In any case the need for scrubbers or precipitators will still be there to handle the fly ash and combustion by-products that are always associated with coal firing. Coal is not a pure substance and heavy metals are always found in the mix which need to be removed from the combustion/stack gases.

I vaguely remember some efforts, quite possibly 30 years ago, to remove sulfur from coal by doing something like grinding up the coal fairly fine and then using a solvent to remove the sulfur.

Maybe this is even being done today in some situations?

coal contains also sulfur and when burning creates Nitric Oxides so pollutants as well as SOx. But you could produce coke that burns cleaner. Production of coke produces good gas tat you can burn clean too.

• Coke oven emissions are a mixture of coal tar, coal tar pitch, volatiles, creosote, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and metals. PAHs are semi-volatile compounds; over 20 different PAHs are found in coke oven emissions, including benzo(a)pyrene, benzanthracene, chrysene, and phenanthrene. Approximately 80% of coal tar is unspecified carbon chains (C18-22); coal tar volatiles include benzene, toluene, and xylenes. (1)
• Condensed coke oven emissions are a brownish, thick liquid or semisolid with a naphthalene-like odor, while uncondensed coke oven emissions are vapors that escape when the ovens are changed and emptied. (2)
• The odor threshold for coke oven emissions is not available. The actual chemical content of the emissions depends on the process variables.

I pasted the above from the EPA website. I don't think that they agree with you. From my experience coke ovens were nasty places and so were their emissions.

What is the part of coal burning that creates the most pollutant Easy All Of It !!

can it be eliminated by processing the coal into smaller molecules so it burns hotter?

NO !! even in plants where it is powdered and blown in its still coal and by products are the same

what about forcing the burnt gases into a used coal mine and let the gases condense on the walls of the mine ? it may help

This link might be of some interest if you're still interested.

http://www.coalpowermag.com/ops_and_maintenance/Pulverizers-101-Part-III_361.html?hq_e=el&hq_m=2369447&hq_l=22&hq