Clean Combustion Energy Technologies Expected to get Boost from Proposed EPA Carbon Regulations

According to ThermoEnergy Corporation, new EPA air emissions standards announced last week will likely result in the closure of coal plants and the elimination of about 70 gigawatts of conventional coal-fired power capacity over the next 2-8 years. However, new clean coal technologies like theirs could allow for the transformation of those power plants into clean, efficient electricity generators, and continue to take advantage of domestic coal supplies.

In a press release from the company, ThermoEnergy Corporation, CEO Cary Bullock said that they expect, “the Obama Administration’s EPA-proposed first carbon pollution standard for future power plants will spur the adoption of technologies like ThermoEnergy’s to eliminate air pollution from coal-fired plants.”

Bullock’s reaction to last weeks recently proposed carbon emission standards continued, “While the EPA Clean Air Act proposal is aimed at new power plants, ThermoEnergy’s clean combustion technology can also be used to retrofit existing power plants to meet the new EPA regulations for both air and carbon emissions…We welcome the challenge to clean up the emissions coming from power plants here in the U.S. and around the globe.”

ThermoEnergy owns patented technology for clean coal combustion that enables a coal-fired plant to eliminate its smoke stacks, Bullock noted. ThermoEnergy’s clean combustion technology would allow power plants to burn coal with near-zero carbon and air polluting emissions.

Using a process relying heavily “pressurized oxy-combustion,” ThermoEnergy is able to capture carbon dioxide and contain it before it is released into the atmosphere. The result is to potential elimination of smoke stacks from coal burning plants and a near-zero carbon emission

The captured carbon can be stored for a more beneficial use according to the company. In the process, “pressurized oxy-combustion replaces air at normal atmospheric pressure in coal-fired plants with highly purified oxygen at high pressures, creating significant improvements in both environmental and economic performance over competing technologies.”

The higher pressure in the process has two net effects. Firstly, the burning of the coal is more clean and efficient in a high pressure oxygen environment over normal air. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the high pressure condenses the gases, including carbon dioxide into a liquid form. This makes it possible for the company to capture and remove virtually all of the pollutants before they can be released into the air.