Sure, lots of folks working on clean coal technologies (gasification, chemical looping, oxycombustion, etc.) with methods for reducing emissions too numerous to mention.  How does your technology differ from existing technology?

Hi Darrell - Thanks for the reply. Our approach is with mixing coal powder with water or other alcohol fuels just prior to input to the combustion chamber. Do you work in the area of coal power generation? The best way to discuss this is via email. Thanks for the reply. [email protected]

Interested to know more about this technology, please share more deatils. Is it post combustion carbon capture technology ?

Dear Jeff,

This technology is for reducing NOx, SOx or under CCS Carbon Capturing and Storage.

We are working with oxy-coal combustion (CCS).

Best Regards!

Most of the ideas expressed above are too hazy to be commented upon. Bharat Heavy Electricls Ltd ((www.bhel.com): It is currently working on a protoype 850 MW Combined Cycle Power Plant through the coal gasification route. Those interested may look at the website of BHEL and its R&Dl

K Vijayachandran

Formerly of BHEL

Marisamy - Can you email me? [email protected]. Thank you

There's a lot going on in this area, mostly outside the U. S. and Europe, due to ever more restrictive environmental regulations. These technologies are far more difficult to implement and keep working over the long haul than you might think. McHale Performance is involved with testing and trouble-shooting problems with these plants all over the world. Strange as it might seem, even more conventional newer coal-fired construction projects are struggling these days, because the knowledge base is disappearing (i.e., the old men are dying off). This is a lot bigger problem than you might think. An interesting recent example from another field is when NASA wanted to build a rocket for a mission to Mars, no one still living knew how to build the Saturn V engines. So they gathered parts from museums and reconstructed one so that they could reverse engineer it. You would think that all the drawings and documents and training of the current staff would have been sufficient to replicate what some old men with slide rules, skinny black ties, and pocket protectors had done 50 years ago, but it wasn't. You can read all about it on the web. There are several articles. Here's a link to one http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/01/saturn-v-moon-rocket-engine-firing-again-after-40-years-sort-of/ Getting some new technology to work consistently can be a great and exciting challenge!

Coal-water slurry combustion and coal-methanol slurry combustion were studied in detail by J. Ekmann, D. Wildman, and others in the 1980's at the now NETL in Pittsburgh. Viscosities, stabilities, and combustion characteristics were studied.  Search on 'coal-water slurry fuels' and 'coal-methanol slurry fuels.'

Thank you for your comments Richard. Our approach is different.  We have several technologies related to clean energy. I would like to keep you posted on our work. Could you share your email with me at [email protected]? Thank you.

Mr. Benton - Thank you for your reply. What are some of the difficulties that people are having with coal powder slurries? Regards, Jeff. [email protected]

I don't know of any plant specifically dealing with problems related to coal powder slurries, but one in particular is having lots of problems right now with excessive slagging, requiring repeated blasting, welds cracking, elbows eroding through, and subsequent fires that are spectacular--if it weren't for the damage. Another is having endless troubles with refractory falling off, coal dust building up in cracks, then igniting violently and blowing chunks of refractory through the side of the boiler. One such episode took out a car, but thankfully didn't kill anyone. I thought we had such problems under control fifty years ago, but they're coming back.

I would also like to add that, although right now coal is frowned upon by many in the West as the cause of pollution and global warming, we have plenty of it and no one is fighting a war around the mines. Natural gas is plentiful and cheap right now, but history tells us that nothing that is so convenient and cheap stays that way for long. The price will go up and the associated problems will increase. It's just a product of human nature. You could always convert a coal plant over to burning gas or oil, but gas turbines don't burn coal very well and gasification produces all sorts of nasty by products, including carcinogens. I recently sent some water samples from the cooling tower at a synfuel plant to a lab and it was so nasty they said they didn't even want to run it through their HPLC. They finally agreed to after diluting it 100:1. It looks like tobacco spit and smells even worse. They asked, "are you sure it's water?"

Thanks Dudley. Do you know any user of coal water slurries right now? Our technology can provide a better homogeneous mix of the liquid and coal powder and we can input the slurry to the combustion chamber with increased velocity and a highly effective vortex stream. We can also add compressed air to the mix. All of these factors will improve combustion. Thanks. 

I don't know of any with coal water slurries or at least none of our current customers have them. We're working with several new conventional coal-fired plants in the U.S. and more in South America as well as a dozen different biomass plants around the World. There are some real challenges right now with getting these biomass plants to operate as expected. There are quite a few old conventional coal-fired that need a lot of work if they're going to keep operating, but I don't know how they can make any long-range plans in this constantly changing political climate.

Thanks - if you run across anyone using slurries I would be very interested. I am located in the US. If you know of any plants in the US that are open to looking at new technologies, I would appreciate it. Thank you for your comments. Jeff ([email protected])

You could try Prof. Jianzhong LIU ([email protected]). Coal slurrying and combustion is one of his major topics. Coal slurry is an important topic at our Institute. The address is:

State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization, Zhejiang University

Hangzhou, 310027, Zhejiang Province, P.R.China

Best wishes,

A. Buekens

[email protected]

Visiting Yongqian Prof. at the Institute for Thermal Power Engineering (ITPE)