New Coal Technology Harnesses Energy Without Burning, Nears Pilot-Scale Development This is way off topic, but also way cool. As way cool as new about coal can be. However, clean coal technology has long been one of those ideas that would be thought awesome if it ever could be made to work - but no one could make it work.
However, researchers at Ohio State University have come up with a way. By combining coal with iron oxide and then heating the compound in a contained environment, they can capture the heat of the reaction for energy, capture the carbon dioxide from entering the environment and use it for something else, then recapture the spent iron to recycle into other products. Clean, environmentally friendly coal. Pretty cool, huh?


“In the simplest sense, combustion is a chemical reaction that consumes oxygen and produces heat,” Fan said. “Unfortunately, it also produces carbon dioxide, which is difficult to capture and bad for the environment. So we found a way to release the heat without burning. We carefully control the chemical reaction so that the coal never burns—it is consumed chemically, and the carbon dioxide is entirely contained inside the reactor.”


 New Coal Technology Harnesses Energy Without Burning, Nears Pilot-Scale Development