Review of emerging technologies for sustainable use of coal for power generation

摘要

Concerns about climate change and environmental consequences of increased levelsof atmospheric C02 will require the power generation industry to reduce C02 emissions from current levels. Unfortunately, for reductions to have the desired effect they will have to be large. While the schedule of the Kyoto Protocol may appear daunting, in the long term mere compliance with the protocol will hardly change the rate of increase of atmospheric C02. There are, however, technical, economical and practical choices that will allow the industry to meet the requirements of the protocol and ultimately stop the increase in atmospheric C02 without eliminating coal from the fuel mix. In this paper, we present a review of current and emerging technologies for C02 sequestration. We provide a summary of the underlying scientific principles and discuss the practical and economic aspects of sequestration technologies, which will allow continuing use of global coal resources with minimum or no impact on C02 levels in the atmosphere.