Don't discount coal for a long while yet...

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Here's some of the advances that are taking place...the trickle down materials technology will also help with solar thermal as well.

India and China are producing coal fired power stations at a prodigious rate, and making them higher thermal efficiency than anything in the states/Aus...here's a paper on where they are going...in India.

http://www.babcock.com/library/Documents/BR-1884.pdf

Heading for 700C (1292F), 4,000psi, and thermal efficiency in the mid to high 40s...was at a few industry presos with Alstom in the early part of the century where they were showing the R and D.

Not so pie in the sky, when G.E. have the runs on the board already at Rheinhafen-Dampfkraftwerk in Germany...47.5% Nett thermal efficiency, while at 600C

http://www.gereports.com/supercritical-t...st-performance/

http://cornerstonemag.net/setting-the-benchmark-the-worlds-most-efficient-coal-fired-power-plants/

Germany putting in USC coal to replace their nukes...

John W Turk Jr, in the US in 2012 got to 42%, Nordjylland Power Station in Denmark held the record at 47 until G.E. took the title, but combined with district heating throws a few more tens (not tenths) of percent on top of that for fuel utilisation.
 
Out the other end, the fly-ash is proving to be a valuable resource globally (well except for a couple of places)...used extensively in cement products, and offsetting the mining and emissions from making traditional cementitious materials (actually, that's laughable, as Roman Concrete was ash based...volcanic, but I've made roman concrete out of ash).

http://www.circainfo.ca/documents/Circa_FactSheet10_FINALUtilizationfromLandfill-03.pdf

As to the mineral extraction

http://latrobemagnesium.com/overview/

Used around the globe in agriculture, especially in Israel (yes, it's an Aussie paper, but the author is incredibly clever, and has been presenting over there also).

http://www.flyash.info/2015/080-aiken-2015.pdf

There's absolutely no requirement to build dams, and pump the stuff in (and then fail to maintain them)...there's no reason in the world that it can't be 100% utilised, offsetting mining virgin minerals.

Chances are that you've had a mouthful of coal ash at some stage...cenospheres are the white floating particles on the surface of ash dams...there's a reason that they look just like toothpaste froth...
 
Quick search on the net found this about natural gas for power generation: "The latest Gas Turbines with technological advances in materials and aerodynamics has efficiencies upto 38 %. In the combined cycle mode, the new "H class" Gas turbines with a triple pressure HRSG and steam turbine can run at 60 % efficiency at ISO conditions. This is by far the highest efficiency in the thermal power field.

(source: http://www.brighthubengineering.com/powe...t-power-plants/ )
 
Interesting reads, thank you Shannow
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What is our best option on this planet for producing electricity with the least environmental impact both in obtaining the fuel for the process and the environmental impact of the process itself and any by-products, balanced of course with economic feasibility (affordable energy for industry and consumers), in your opinion Shannow?
 
Those international developments will be too late to save many U.S. coal companies. Bankruptcies are in process for Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and Penn Virginia. I have lost significant escarole in the corporate bonds of these companies, and I have little faith in them rebounding after reorganization.
 
I think the hype over Nuke is silly. We're even talking about shutting Diablo Canyon before it's nominal end of life. Yeah scare tactics and emotionalism ...

The Pacific Abyssal Plain is one huge undersea desert with a geologic transport interval in the millions of years time frame. There is no reason that Nuke Waste could not be cemented in place inside old shipping containers and dropped to the seabed.

Create a dispersed nuke zone out there and let countries have a registered piece of it. We are talking about 1,000's of square miles of fine mud a 10,000 feet down that will swallow anything dropped onto it.

Let's really upgrade our Nukes and cruise on. Zero CO2, no fly ash, few mining accidents, etc.
 
I live in the Tennesse Valley and TVA is in the process of shutting down most of their coal fired plants and converting over to nat gas. Fly ash has been a huge problem for them. Their Kingston facility had a huge coffer dam blowout several years ago. It took out a whole neighborhood and polluted (temporarily) the Emory River. They had a pilot program years ago to turn fly ash into concrete products using ash from their Bull Run plant near Oak Ridge. I was by there last week and the storage area looked like a good place for a soccer complex. I guess that wasn't economically feasible in this market.
 
Call me a conspiracy nut. I feel coal is a valuable resource and I think they cook alot of information to a very gullible public that they have on the global warming band wagon, the same nut balls that think turtles should have rights, that another story. After they ruin the coal industry and the coal fired power plants they come in and buy them up for pennies on the dollar and then again feed the public stories of grandeur clean coal( which we already have) and how these scrubbers clean the air and the coal fired plants are once again our best friend under new owners. I am a firm believer that the only technology they let out to us such as solar and windmills is worthless technology that was never a threat to the power industry.
 
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Some countries importing LNG are burning coal for power generation, putting them at an economic advantage.
The tables are going to be turned on all of this nonsense, an entire generation of uninformed green voting liberals will pay the price.
 
Originally Posted By: BrocLuno
I think the hype over Nuke is silly. We're even talking about shutting Diablo Canyon before it's nominal end of life. Yeah scare tactics and emotionalism ...

The Pacific Abyssal Plain is one huge undersea desert with a geologic transport interval in the millions of years time frame. There is no reason that Nuke Waste could not be cemented in place inside old shipping containers and dropped to the seabed.

Create a dispersed nuke zone out there and let countries have a registered piece of it. We are talking about 1,000's of square miles of fine mud a 10,000 feet down that will swallow anything dropped onto it.

Let's really upgrade our Nukes and cruise on. Zero CO2, no fly ash, few mining accidents, etc.


As I posted in the other thread, there is a lot that can be done to repurpose and reprocess traditional nuclear waste into fuel for other reactor types, and subsequently continue to extract energy from it. We (Canada) have developed and manufactured reactors that do just that and there are some currently operational in China. France has a process where spent fuel is reprocessed and reused.
 
Originally Posted By: userfriendly
I should rephrase my last post;
The children and grandchildren of an entire generation of uninformed liberal green voters will pay the price.
Toronto, Ontario being the world capital of...

http://urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Libtard


We are already paying that price here in Kathleen Wynne's Ontario unfortunately
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And of course it will only get worse.
 
Originally Posted By: LoneRanger
What is our best option on this planet for producing electricity with the least environmental impact both in obtaining the fuel for the process and the environmental impact of the process itself and any by-products, balanced of course with economic feasibility (affordable energy for industry and consumers), in your opinion Shannow?


A lot of the rhetoric against coal is created by people who have the stated aim of eliminating it...Greenpeace have a paper on their strategies to demonise the industry in Australia...the topics that they will use in different districts,the amount hta tthey will spend on legal challenges.

http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/3783340/I'm_not_against_mining...I'm_a

Yet THEY aren't called to even understand the grid, let alone suggest actual VIABLE alternatives.

In the recent Tasmanian crisis with the damage intercnnector they even turned on Hydro, stating that it was neither green nor renewable, and the state that (usually) lives 24/7 on hydro was wrong.

As China is building these new machines, they are decommissioning dozens of older tech stations...fleet effciency of coal in the states is around 33%, chain grate boilers are still being run in places...you COULD double the efficiency of some of the sites, get twice as much electricity out of your coal/CO2. Yet Western Govts are picking winners in "renewables", but throwing the baby out with the bathwater when repurposing existing sites with existing infrastructure could reduce existing emissions (CO2) by 30-60%...primarily because of lobby groups, and media misinformation.

Palo Verde nuclear plant in 2015 produced as much energy as ALL of Ca's renewables...

BUT to replace a 1000MW baseload generator would need 3,000MW nameplate ratings of wind or solar, and tens of GWh of (extraordinarily) expensive storage for when the sun/wind isn't there...that's NEVER factored in to those that are seeking "100% renewable". Only way for wind/solar to be cheap is while it's pushing the baseloaders around...if it had to do ALL of the heavy lifting, it would get expensive fast.

Thing is, there IS a load profile on the grid, and it changes by the minute...the grid NEEDS schedulable generation to fill in the gaps, and back off when the wind is blowing...

IMO, Intractible enefgy sources like coal, nukes, (and I guess hydro) can't be delivered to your house for heating, or fill a tank to run your car...they, like wind make sense being used where they are sourced, turned into electricity and distributed. You would never use a high utility fuel like oil (again) for stationary power generation, and I feel that except for fast response peakers, baseload gas is wasteful of the utility of the fuel.

So what's MY answer ?

A mix, a sensible mix. A mix that the two "greenest" states in Australia (Tasmania and South Australia) haven't got right, as they have the most interuptions to consumers and business, and highest power prices in the country.
 
Coal makes tremendous sense for power generation.
It's cheap, widely available, easily extracted and easy to ship safely.
Mining accidents?
Probably fewer deaths than those that are attributable to the exploration, extraction, transportation and refining of any petroleum fuel. Houses never blow up due to coal leaks either.
It's good to know that technical developments actually make coal an environmentally sound and efficient choice for power stations.
It seems wasteful to use liquid and gaseous fuels so well suited to use in other applications to generate power.
 
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Coal makes tremendous sense for power generation.
It's cheap, widely available, easily extracted and easy to ship safely.
Mining accidents?
Probably fewer deaths than those that are attributable to the exploration, extraction, transportation and refining of any petroleum fuel. Houses never blow up due to coal leaks either.
It's good to know that technical developments actually make coal an environmentally sound and efficient choice for power stations.
It seems wasteful to use liquid and gaseous fuels so well suited to use in other applications to generate power.
I don't know how anyone can say coal is environmentally sound. It totally destroys the environment it is mined from. The ash if not properly disposed of (as most is not) totally can destroy the environment.

My electric coop gets 60% of it's power from the most advanced and latest opened coal generator in the USA. It cannot compete against cheap natural gas anymore than the nuclear plants can.

http://www.prairiestateenergycampus.com/
 
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