Carbon-Based Fuel Cells: Clean Coal?

UserID 3.14 writes: "I got this story from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab web site. The idea for carbon anode electrochemical cells has been around for a long time, but waste ash was always a problem. The new system uses very fine particulate carbon for full conversion to CO2. The CO2 has non-polluting industrial uses, including refilling the used up oil wells (so they don't collapse). Of course, the greatest benefit of the whole scheme is how it almost doubles power extraction efficiency (up to around 80%)." The article has some good information about the differences between the types of carbon found in nature, too.

Wow

[mjoconnor81]

I work for a power company, just the amount that this would save us in fuel costs would be amazing, not to mention the enviromental aspects.

Re:What the hell is going on?

[__aasfhc1949]

Hello:

This article was posted to the "Science" section and not to the "Front Page", so that is why there are not a lot of comments posted.

Electric Cars

[Squiffy]

The stream of carbon dioxide, already only a fraction of current processes, can be sequestered or used for oil and gas recovery through existing pipelines.

This could be a good answer to the question, "What's the point of low-emission electric cars if they're just going to draw from a grid that is powered with high-emission techniques?" If power plants use this carbon fuel cell technology, little to no CO2 emissions will be released to the atmosphere.

The question now is, how nature-friendly is the generation of the fuel itself?