Clean Coal, the Dummies' Explanation

a bit of coal

We were flabbergasted  by a recent realization that at least some content at the website of a century-old magazine is now written by the same clueless, money-grubbing freelancers as what's posted at content farms like HubPages.com and eHow.com. But that's exactly what we learned: while researching our most recent post (Submarine Volcanoes for Dummies), we found that some of the DotD nominee's work was based on a slapdash post by one David Grossman. We went back to see what else he'd penned for the website PopularMechanics.com, and came across "Everything You Need to Know About Clean Coal."

Since the subtitle of Grossman's post is "Is this green tech a pipe dream or panacea?" we expected a rational discussion of the technology, pros and cons, or both. That's why we were a little taken aback by Dave's opening sentence:

" For decades now, 'clean coal' has been a political pipe dream."

Kinda looks like the boy already made up his mind, no? Either that, or he doesn't actually know the meaning of "pipe dream." And given the scientific accuracy of his next sentence,

"It's the idea that coal—our oldest, dirtiest energy source—could be reshaped in a way that lets us keep using it without doing so much harm to the environment";

it appears that Grossman already departed his comfort zone: "reshaped"? WTF does that even mean? As for his understanding of the technology of coal-fired power plants, we'll let Grossman's own words speak for themselves:

"...the coal is ground up, burned, and the steam from that burning drives turbines."

Uh, dude? The heat of burning heats water, and the steam from the boiling water drives turbines. He left out the whole "water" part of the process! He next attempts to explain IGCC, but neglects to mention that gasification concentrates CO₂ in the gasified stream, which improves carbon capture – the entire point of calling the process "clean"! As for the gasification process itself, Grossman's failure to understand his resources reduces that entire process to,

" Gasifiers are essentially tanks that produce synthetic gas mixtures known as syngas."

Yeah, thanks: and refineries are pipes phat produce gasoline. In either case, it's more... complex than that. And Grossman's concept of carbon sequestration (a word he never used)? It goes like this:

"'Transport and storage,' when applied to CCS technology, basically means sending the CO2 in a pipeline several kilometers below the earth and into rock... "

Uh, yeah, right: "pipelines "into the earth." Gotta love that idea. No, Dave, if pipelines are involved, they transport captured carbon dioxide from the source to what is known as a "sink," in the case you describe either a deep aquifer or an abandoned oil field, where it is pumped down a well or wells to be stored. Grossman nibbled around the edges of that process, saying,

"Ideal spots for this include old oil and gas fields, which have already dug [sic] into the earth, but any deep saline formation, filled with [sic] porous rock and salty water, will do. Ships could also send the CO2 to refineries in the ocean."

What this peabrain is talking about with his "refineries in the ocean" bit is anybody's guess. 

At that point, we gave up, noting only that Grossman definitely needed an editor for some of his grammatical errors, and a careful reading of the text for accuracy. Unfortunately, our Dumbass of the Day seems to have had neither.

SI - ENVIRONMENT