A Review of Emerging Technologies for Sustainable use of Coal for Power Generation

Abstract

Concerns about climate change and environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric CO 2 will require the power generation industry to reduce CO 2 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 CO 2. There are, however, technical, economical and practical choices that will allow the industry to meet the requirements of protocol and ultimately stop the increase in atmospheric CO 2 without eliminating coal from the fuel mix. In this paper, we present a review of current and emerging technologies for CO 2 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 CO 2 levels in the atmosphere.