"Clean" Coal for Christmas

Coal is dirty.

Really, really dirty.

Like, filthy dirty.

Coal, when it's mined from the Earth, is chock full of fun - mostly in the form of toxic heavy metals like mercury, lead, arsenic, and (my nemesis) cadmium. So the first time I heard the phrase "clean coal" I was a bit puzzled. Did the energy folks discover a vein of naturally pure coal? Has combustion technology improved to the point that greenhouse gas emissions are no longer an issue?

No, of course not.

The "clean" in clean coal refers only to soot emission. When a representative from the National Federation of Coal or whatever shady private think-tank is defending it today refers to cleanliness, what they really mean is "a minimum of heavy metals are released into the atmosphere as a consequence of burning."

It's a classic trick of industry. Sell a product as clean by sweeping the waste under the rug, or move it somewhere that people don't care about.

It's a shell game! Guess who the losers are.

So where do all the heavy metals go? Conservation of matter can't be defeated by a clever PR campaign.

(Let's leave off the colossal environmental damage and human cost of mining, for now. It's Christmas, and I don't want my little story to be too depressing.)

First, the coal is washed. Literally. Crush the coal in a solvent like water with a pinch of detergent, and most of the metals are leached out. Next, the coal is burned in a plant that has an active scrubber system. Residual nasties are either precipitated as solids back into the furnace or trapped in a filter. If everything's going as planned, all you have belching forth at the end is perfectly clean, harmless greenhouse gases.

Oh, but you're left over with a heavy metal slurry from the washing, and a toxic, radioactive ash. Fortunately, that can be swept under the rug. Out of sight, out of mind.

At least until fate decides that your town is naughty, and decides to dump more than 23 million gallons of the stuff down your collective stockings. Right now, only 400 acres of land have been contaminated, but this is a larger spill than the Exxon Valdez disaster (about 11 million gallons).

So the next time you see an ad for "safe, reliable clean coal technology," remember what it looks like.

Miscellanea

Thanks to everyone who voted for me in the Instructables Hungry Scientist contest. My Rum Bubble Surprise won first place! Here's the sexy mixer I won.

The cake below is from a recipe I found on my favorite cooking blog, Smitten Kitchen. It's a chocolate stout (as in beer) cake with a simple coffee ganache icing and white chocolate clumsily piped on top to add a bit of flair. This is (well, was) a good cake. All I need now is to get some fun attachments for it.

There are already some more cool contests up at instructables. The big one, which I have no hope of winning, is sponsored by Craftsman tools - the challenge? Build something interesting using tools. The top prize? A $20,000 Sears gift card. Holy crap. So, if anyone reading this is handy with tools of any sort, it might be worth entering this contest.

So, the other day I was reading some news, and (as usual) there were more infuriating reports about America's Most Expensive Failure Ever. Then I realized something.

"Do you know what this means?!" I shouted at Harry, who had been reading over my shoulder. "We're stuck in the financial equivalent of a zombie movie!"

Harry, being a cat, was uninterested in my not-feeding-him-related activity.

Think about it, though - the hubris of a group of shadowy elites causes a problem which starts small but quickly grows out of control, rapidly and unstoppably spreading across the entire world. Powerless to do anything, the average citizen can only stand by in horror as the lurching undead monster that the financial industry has become moves in, threatening to drive them from their home and feast on their precious vital fluids. In a last desperate attempt, the government marshals its forces and loads seven hundred billion pellets into the Treasury Department Bailout Blunderbuss, only to have the mighty volley absorbed into the body of the beast without even slowing it down.

You need to aim for the head, Congress.

If that's not the perfect plot for a zombie flick, I don't know what is.

I decided to pass on my sentiments about all this to Wall Street, in a manner I thought they'd understand.