Clean Coal what is it?

Before completely passing judgment, here is a summary definition:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Clean coal is an umbrella term used in the promotion of the use of coal as an energy source by emphasizing methods being developed to reduce its environmental impact. These efforts include chemically washing minerals and impurities from the coal, gasification (see also IGCC), treating the flue gases with steam to remove sulfur dioxide, and carbon capture and storage technologies to capture the carbon dioxide from the flue gas. These methods and the technology used are described as clean coal technology. Major politicians and the coal industry use the term "clean coal" to describe technologies designed to enhance both the efficiency and the environmental acceptability of coal extraction, preparation and use,[1] with no specific quantitative limits on any emissions, particularly carbon dioxide.

It has been estimated that commercial-scale clean-coal power stations (coal-burning power stations with carbon capture and sequestration) cannot be commercially viable and widely adopted before 2020 or 2025.[2][dead link] This time frame is of concern to environmentalists because, according to the Stern report, there is an urgent need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

The concept of clean coal is said to be a solution to climate change and global warming by coal industry groups, while environmental groups maintain that it is greenwash, a public relations tactic that presents coal as having the potential to be an environmentally acceptable option. Greenpeace[3] is a major opponent of the concept because emissions and wastes are not avoided, but are transferred from one waste stream to another."

I wouldn't necessarily consider coal as an "evil" thing, just another source of energy with positives and negatives that need to be balanced. In its current state, it has more negatives than positives.

As with any fossil fuels (including oil, & natural gas) or even biological fuels (like wood), there are impurities (like sulfur, or even heavy metals) present that will cause (non CO2) pollution when burned. I'd have to check, but I don't think coal has relatively greater impurities (per BTU) than the other fuels. If you think about how coal is supposed to have been formed (from ancient plants) you can see that it is kind of like a whole bunch of wood compressed into a concentrated fuel - so you get more heating value per pound, but also more impurities/pollutants per pound. I think if you burned the same BTU value of wood, you would likely get about the same pollution generated.

The problem with coal is that it is a solid, and it is much more difficult to remove impurities than for fluid fuels, like natural gas or oil. Natural gas and oil are currently processed to remove sulfur compounds. Because they are fluid, they can be easily mixed with other chemicals that remove the sulfur. It is more difficult with coal, since impurities can't move out of a solid as easily as with gases or liquids.

Coal is still a problem to be solved, but one potential payoff is that the U.S. has great quantities of it, and that might need to be factored into the whole discussion of relying on foreign sources of energy.

The concern about global warming brings up the newer concern about emissions of simple carbon dioxide emissions. That is a problem that all fossil fuels have, since they were all "hidden" underground previously, and burning them now returns that CO2 into the atmosphere to contribute to "greenhouse gas" emissions.

The idea of "carbon sequestration" to recapture the CO2 is kind of interesting but would seem quite a daunting task since that is the core constituent of all of these fuels.

Anyways, that's your answer. All fossil fuels have the pollution issue, and use similar strategies to remove the impurities. I think the term "clean coal" is kind of a marketing tool to give coal a better image than it currently has.

Hope this helps.

Coal with a percentage of the carbon removed. It's supposed to be technically possible but incredibly expensive using existing technologies. In other words, it's not going to happen just yet :). IMO, it's never going to happen.

See the Wiki link below which goes into the details.

Clean coal is a delusion. The residue of coal is mercury emissions. Mercury is highly toxic and has an incredible half-life.

Even if it burns "clean," the mercury is essentially forever polluting the water and air where it settles.

there is no such thing as clean coal since it is litreally impossible digging for coal makes a place hazardous and so does burning it basically used to promote coal it apparently was used in WW2 for cooking since it didnt relese a lot of gas

A myth. The deal is that there is supposed to be a way of cleaning up the burning of coal to meet environmental standards.I don't trust it.

i guess it is a kind of Coal that don't produce a lot smoke when buring it