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Originally Posted by kach22i
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I don't know enough about it, but our company has one in the plans. It's my understanding that the Nazi's were doing it in WWII because they didn't have enough oil reserves. Of course the technology is vastly improved but still very expensive and still in its infancy.
My concern is what do you do with all the stuff that's extracted. I think it's more cost effective to clean up the exhaust after the coal is burned, but I guess it's getting expensive and difficult to clean it up as much as is now required.
We put SCR's (selective catalytic reduction) on our 4 coal plants in Houston at a cost of a few billion dollars. It's nice driving by them now that you don't have a yellow haze over the area.
SCR's reduce the NOx and SO2 but don't do anything for CO2 and mercury which we soon will have to reduce.
My take on electrical power is that we'll have to rely on a mix of what we have now. As emission requirments get tighter and fuel costs get higher, the older, less efficient units will be decommisioned making way for cleaner, more efficient units.
One of the biggest problems with wind or any new units is transmission capacity. It's very difficult to get new right of way land to build new transmission corridors, so most new plants are located at old sites or next door to them. Unfortunately wind farms aren't near existing plants so they're limited by existing transmission lines and the cost of new lines can be more than the wind farms or plants.