Boffins unveil self-decoking steampunk fuel cell
22nd June 2011
“This could ultimately be the cleanest, most efficient and cost-effective way of converting coal into electricity,” says Professor Meilin Liu, engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “And by providing an exhaust stream of pure carbon dioxide, this technique could also facilitate carbon sequestration without the separation and purification steps now required for conventional coal-burning power plants.”
The idea is to make use of solid-oxide fuel cells, capable of running on hydrocarbons directly without needing to reform them into hydrogen. These would be run on fuel gas produced from coal, the way that millions of gaslights did back in the 19th century.
We have the technology.
On its own, according to the researchers, the self-cleaning SOFC tech would be a lot more efficient than a coal station, delivering around 50 per cent of the energy in the coal as opposed to 33. If hybridised with coal-gas burning turbines this could climb to 80 per cent. Either way you would burn less coal to get a given amount of electricity.
And once again carbon-based fossil fuels demonstrate that black is better than green.