james-e-miller-46509 Date Posted:
June 29, 2009 Burning biomass along with coal is just a bit of greenwashing. Biomass has a very low specific heat per gram/ton as compared to coal. Why buy into a public relations scheme just to benefit the wealthy coal mine owners?

There is no such thing as "clean coal", only "King coal". Coal needs to be cut out of the energy platform or at least be priced to include bioremediation of the open pit mines. When coal goes from $1.70 per million BTU's to $5.00 per million BTU's, then the electric generating plants will switch from fossil coal to "BioCoal", which is charcoal from pyrolysis infused with BioOil, a contemporaneous co-product of the first stage of making syngas.

The Federal government should require open pit coal mines to post huge bonds to ensure that when the coal in the pit is exhausted, that the mountain top be replaced, replanted and maintained for 10 years. More effort and money needs to be added to the mix of coal extraction and burning so as to enable remedation/prevention of toxic wastes entering our biosystems.

As things stand now, our air, streams, rivers and lands are dumping grounds for the coal waste by which operators damage our environmental resources at no cost to them. We need to shut down or reduce open pit coal mining first then work on shaft mining (dangerous) and move to torrified wood and municipal waste, infused with BioOil = "BioCoal". I would guess that all open pit mines would be designated as "Superfund" sites, but for the politics (read bribes to members of Congress by the coal and utility industries). The issues before us are not technical, they are political. We need to ensure that coal pays for all of its costs to prevent harm to our environment. Meanwhile, we need to move toward BioOil infused Biochar which is much cleaner burning. We can use the syngas to make biodiesel and other bio products.

Jim Miller
jimmiller5417@yahoo.com