Previous progress towards instituting carbon emission caps in the US have been derailed by fears (voiced most prominently by the current administration) that such regulations would stifle the American economy. There has been progress, however, as exemplified by the bipartisan support for the Lieberman– Warner Climate Stewardship Act, which, while not reaching a full vote by the Senate this year...

A report on a project conducted jointly under a cooperative agreement between: Cover photo: Coolside and LIMB are sorbent injection technologies. In Coolside, the sorbent is injected into the flue gas duct, while in LIMB, sorbent is injected into the upper portion of the boiler. Both clean coal technologies rely on humidification— mist sprayed into the flue gas (as shown in the photo)— which he...

Despite its fundamental importance, physical mechanisms that govern friction are poorly understood. While a state of ultra-low friction, termed structural lubricity, is expected for any clean, atomically flat interface consisting of two different materials with incommensurate structures, some associated predictions could only be quantitatively confirmed under ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions ...

A novel Chemical Looping Reforming (CLR) process is proposed in which a highly recyclable iron oxide composite particle is reduced with coal and then oxidized back with steam to generate hydrogen. The reduction of iron oxide with coal results in a mixture of CO2 and H2O in the exhaust stream which after water condensation provides a ready to sequester relatively pure CO2 stream. This eliminates...

Several studies on Phase I of the Title IV SO2 Trading Program have found that actual compliance costs realized by the electric power industry have far exceeded the least-cost outcome in spite of allowance prices being much lower than expected. Prior work has either conjectured or shown that some of these excess costs could be a result of inefficiencies related to state regulatory constraints, ...

Carbon Dioxide Sequestration Part 1— Field Studies The Gas Technology Institute with support from Illinois Clean Coal Institute and cooperation of the Illinois State Geological Survey designed and implemented a comprehensive research project aimed at determining the viability of seismic techniques for site selection and monitoring of carbon dioxide sequestration in Illinois coals. Editor’s note...

development and optimisation of fast, efficient, quantitative, economic and environmentally friendly analytical extraction techniques for the extraction clean up, and pre-concentration in the quantification of 16 usepa priority polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (pahs) in contaminated soils have been carried out. three different extraction methods (soxhlet, ultra sonication and mechanical shaking...

Untreated coal char is explored as an ultra-low cost supercapacitor material in various electrolytes.

This project based on a novel fuel cell concept collectively aims to address three aspects of energy production and storage using coal, namely advanced coal conversion in a specialized fuel cell, electrochemical hydrogen production from coal for energy storage, and CO2 mitigation and capture without separation, all achieved in a single process chamber and without the need for external power fro...