Tag Archive for: Coal

Reducing Carbon Emissions With Coal


It might seem like a paradox, but coal might hold the answer to solving carbon emission problems. The key isn’t burning it, but creating it using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  While this has always been possible in theory, high temperatures make it difficult in practice. However, a recent paper in Nature Communications shows how a special liquid metal electrocatalyst can convert the gas into a solid form of carbon suitable for, among other things, making high-quality capacitor electrodes. The process — you can see more about it in the video below — works at room temperatures.

It isn’t that hard to extract carbon dioxide from the air, the problem is what to do with it. Storing it as a gas or a liquid is inefficient and expensive, while converting it to a solid makes it much easier to store or even reuse for practical applications.

The liquid metal catalyst is gallium-based and contains, among other things, metallic cerium nanoparticles. The liquid metal resists coking — the coating of the catalyst with the carbon material produced.

The process doesn’t produce coal lumps suitable for bad children’s stockings. Rather, it creates flakes about 3 nm thick. We’ve seen proposals for growing carbon nanofibers out of the air, but that takes high temperatures. Maybe the technology could make diamond batteries and kill two problems with one stone.

 

Source…

Potential buyers for largest coal plant in the Western US back out

Article intro image

Enlarge / Navajo Generating Station and Navajo Mountain. (Photo by: Education Images/UIG via Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images)

Two investment companies that had been negotiating a purchase of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) outside of Page, Arizona, have decided to end talks without purchasing the coal plant. The 2.25 gigawatt (GW) plant is the biggest coal plant in the Western US, and it has been slated for a 2019 shutdown. That decision came in early 2017, when utility owners of the plant voted to shut it down, saying they could find cheaper, cleaner energy elsewhere.

The 47-year-old plant employs hundreds of people from the Navajo and Hopi tribes in the area. It is also served by Arizona’s only coal mine, the Kayenta mine, which is owned by the world’s largest private coal firm, Peabody Energy. After the news of NGS’ proposed shutdown, Peabody began a search for a potential buyer for the coal plant so as not to lose its only customer.

The Salt River Project, the majority-owner of NGS, published a press release on Thursday saying Peabody Energy retained a consulting firm to identify potential buyers of the massive coal plant. That firm came up with 16 potential buyers who had expressed some interest. Salt River Project says that it hosted numerous tours for prospective buyers and set up meetings with various regulators as well as the Navajo Nation. Ultimately, a Chicago firm called Middle River Power and a New York City firm called Avenue Capital Group (which invests in “companies in financial distress”) had entered into negotiations to potentially take over the coal plant and keep it running.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Biz & IT – Ars Technica

Kim Jong-un’s hacker army may step up cybercrime to offset losses incurred from China’s coal ban – International Business Times UK


International Business Times UK

Kim Jong-un's hacker army may step up cybercrime to offset losses incurred from China's coal ban
International Business Times UK
North Korea's state-sponsored hacking may escalate in the near future in order to compensate for any potential losses as a result of China's recent coal import ban, experts say. China stopped import of North Korean coal on 18 February following the …

and more »

China hackers – read more

The World Can Expect More Cybercrime From North Korea Now That China Has Banned Its Coal – Yahoo News


Yahoo News

The World Can Expect More Cybercrime From North Korea Now That China Has Banned Its Coal
Yahoo News
Generally, North Korean hackers operate from cities in northeastern China — most often Shenyang and Dandong — where they are sent by their government to work for Chinese IT firms. (Their below-market wages are collected directly by the North Korean …

and more »

China hackers – read more