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Clean Up the Coal Plants, Then Clean Out the Fridge
While the filthy coal industry touts its far-off "clean coal" technology to help keep federal subsidies flowing, perhaps there's a simpler solution to the emissions and toxins these plants belch. A Texas company called Skyonic has developed a process it claims can reduce smokestack carbon by up to 90 percent by transforming the C02 into solid NaHCO3, better known by the brand name Arm & Hammer. Hey, baking soda from coal waste! Great idea, especially if—as the company claims—the stuff comes out food-grade clean. (Even so, I think I'll just use mine to eliminate fridge odors.)
The process, which is now being tested on a pilot scale in Texas, is driven by heat from the waste gases. It involves an input of sodium hydroxide (lye), which is produced on-site, and produces as byproducts hydrogen and chlorine gases, which could be sold at a profit along with the baking soda, the company says.
Skyonic CEO Joe David Jones told ZDNET, where you can read more on this, that his company's "SkyMine" technology also eliminates 97 percent of the heavy metals and most of the acids and nitrogen compounds, which would eliminate the need for pricey smokestack scrubbers. The company is working on a full-scale system it hopes to install in 2009 that would, it says, absorb the waste output of a large (500MW) plant—which includes about 338,000 tons of carbon annually.
Sounds almost too good to be true; pie-in-the-SkyMine, you might say. Still, if it pans out, there'll be plenty of baking soda for that pie, and one less reason to hate the coal industry. 'Course, there is a little matter of blowing the tops off mountains. ...
This makes a lot of sense. Think about how many centuries it took before people learned that you shouldn't shit in your drinking water; once it hit us, we quickly learned how to separate the two. Now, the word is -- and it IS -- that we can't burn stuff any way and in any quantity we wish, and by golly we're going to figure out how to reduce the impact.
Did I mention -- we'd better get it figured out and implemented FAST??
My question is, what is the carbon foot print of mining the coal?
Not just strip mining, but underground mining as well.
I come from coal country, and I wonder how many people are aware of what a slag pile is, (it's one of the many wonderful by-products of coal mining),and the fact that they have a tendency to catch fire due to the immense pressure and burn for many years. Put that in your skymine and smoke it.
I've toured the US, ridden across North Merica's largest coal mine (WY), seen the zoolander black faces (KY), counted thousands of coal cars chugging by on tracks (Everywhere), and can tell you the impact I saw this industry have on peoples lives and health and happiness as well as the environments was real, large, and detremental. So, we get a little more baking soda, thanks, my uncle wants his wife back.
Not just mountaintop removal, mercury as well. I think coal is still a very bad idea all around. However, fitting existing fossil fuel plants of all types with this device can definitely be a help.
Will baking soda be our newest toxic waste? Clearly there will be more than we have uses for. Perhaps it will be safer to bury that than CO2 though.
Lastly, where are we getting all the Lye? Can we produce it from desalination plants powered by wind and solar?
JimBob,
When did people learn not to shit in their drinking water? Have you read about the proposed changes to the clean water act by our current administration? Have you done any traveling to third world countries?