What the Heck is Clean Coal?

A Paper to Clarify What the Presidential Candidates Are Doing

To Help with Climate Change

By: Wyatt Dilley

           

            The presidential debates have been a very hot topic this election year. They’re so much different to what everyone is used to and some of what is said can be a little confusing. A total of eighty-eight seconds was spent on climate change this debate season so far which is rather unfortunate. Both candidates have very different views on whether or not climate change is real. Trump has said that “climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese” while Clinton’s response was “I think it’s real. And I think it’s important that we grip this and deal with it, both at home and abroad”. So it’s pretty obvious that they’re on the opposite ends of the spectrum of whether or not climate change is real and if we as a country need to be involved in this issue. It’s very unfortunate that not more is said about it and that the debates kind of turn into banter between immature adults. Do we actually want either of them to be the next President of the United States? Anyhow, I am writing this paper to try and clarify what was briefly said about climate change and expound on each candidate’s thoughts.

           

This article will delve deeper into the subject of climate change, each Hillary’s and Trumps responses to it, and if it even exists.

Donald Trump and his idea of creating a better climate and more jobs with Clean Coal.

            First of all, I think it’s important to kind of go over what the heck clean coal even is. I’d never heard of the term until Donald Trump talked about it for about two seconds in the first debate. Clean coal is basically the same thing as coal and burning coal for all of the same uses as right now, but making it so that the coal doesn’t release nearly as many carbon atoms into the atmosphere as it normally would. There are currently seven different ways this can be accomplished. Carbon Capture and storage, Flue-gas Desulfurization, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, Electrostatic Precipitators, Selective Catalytic Reduction, Low Nitrogen Oxide Burners, and Fluidized-bed Combustion.

            Carbon Capture and Storage is a broad term for exactly what it suggests, capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions, typically underground, before they can reach the atmosphere and negatively affect it. This can be achieved a number of ways but the most common are Post Combustion, Oxyfuel, and Pre-Combustion. Guardian Article on Carbon Emissions, Article better explaining the three main types of capture

                        Post Combustion:

·         Separated using liquids and chemicals

·         Once the chemicals have absorbed the CO2 superheated steam is passed through the chemicals

·         The CO2 is then released and separated and can be transported elsewhere

Oxyfuel:

·         Used as an alternative to Post Combustion techniques

·         When used the only leftover gases are CO2 and water vapor

·         The CO2 can be transported elsewhere while the water vapor can be condensed

·         The Oxyfuel process alone can use 15% of the power plants outputted power

Pre-combustion:

·         Coal is gasified to make synthetic gas

·         Synthetic gas is made up of carbon monoxide and hydrogen

·         Carbon monoxide is mixed with water to create CO2 while hydrogen is used to create more power and electricity

Carbon capture and storage is time consuming, costly, and just overall hard to do. It requires more power from the power plant using the process which in turn makes the power plant make less money because they’re outputting less power than they could by just burning coal regularly. The power plants have to drill extremely deep into the Earth’s surface to store the CO2 in a safe environment. To get the CO2 to those storage areas the power plants also have to compress it to move it. Even more info on CCS. Carbon capture and storage won’t be used unless they see an actual reason to use it because of its costs. Hopefully in the near future advancements in the technology will be implemented and used more often such as Integrated Gasifier combined cycles and oxyfuel plants. Peer Reviewed Primary Source on Carbon Capture and Storage

            All of these methods of capturing carbon have been in use before but only in small scale operations. For these things to make a change in the atmosphere they’d need to be implemented in the masses. Without mass Carbon Capture and Storage, nothing will change. The atmosphere’s health will continue to decrease and we as a species, will die.  More info on Carbon Capture and Storage

 In Conclusion

         

          Donald Trump’s idea to use Clean Coal is a good idea but I don’t think that he’s put enough thought into it to understand how it affects us and how it will affect the cost of electricity and basically everything else because of the rise in electrical prices. More people will be able to work in power plants and mines and everything that has to deal with coal. So yes, I am (unfortunately) slightly agreeing with Trump and his idea to implement Clean Coal but I do not agree with how he wants to do it. Please do your research before you vote.