CO2 Provides Pollution Solution

Study: Methane Cleans Nitric Oxide From Power Plant Emissions

 

We've thoroughly documented that the Carbon Dioxide arising from our employment of coal can be efficiently collected from flue gas and then converted, through various processes, into valuable liquid fuels.

 

In one such process, CO2 can be first converted into methane gas, which itself can then be converted, with the addition of more CO2, into the valuable liquid fuel, Methanol.

 

However, there are other intriguing options for the use of  CO2-derived Methane.

 

A portion of the Methane so produced could be used, as in the enclosed study, to remove another, much-maligned, set of compounds from coal plant emissions, as in the following excerpt from the enclosed link: 

"STUDY: METHANE CLEANS NITRIC OXIDE FROM POWER PLANT EMISSIONS

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio State University engineers have found a way to use methane to remove toxic nitric oxide emissions from the stack gases of coal-burning power plants.

This new method of catalytically reducing nitric oxide with methane removes up to 100 percent of nitric oxide from stack gases in a safer and less expensive way than any currently available."

In other words, collecting CO2 from flue gas, with the intent of converting it into "natural gas", which can then be used to synthesize liquid fuels, could provide a means to remove almost all of the potentially hazardous nitric oxide from the same flue gas; and, do it more cheaply than we can now.

We've over-used the word "synergy" previously, when documenting efficiencies inherent, and available for us to profit by, in the conversion of our abundant coal into now-scarce liquid fuels and industrial chemicals that have so far been based solely on petroleum. It is difficult to resist the temptation to employ it yet again.

However, we will ask a question, or questions, we've asked, in general terms, before:

How much more complete does our understanding have to be? How much more valuable does the technology of coal-to-liquid conversion, and it's associated technologies of CO2 extraction and conversion, have to be? How technically, economically and environmentally good do they have to be before we drop the pretenses and dismiss the false objections, and begin converting our abundant domestic coal into materials that will replace those derived from increasingly scarce and increasingly, in several insidious ways, expensive foreign petroleum?