Clean coal projects funded By David Claughton from Sydney 2000
Tuesday, 08/06/2010
Ten projects worth $13 million have been funded by the NSW State Government as part of the rush to clean up carbon emissions from the coal industry.
They include projects to capture methane emissions from mines, totally new systems for generating power from coal using fuel cells and new ways of storing carbon in rocks so it is not released into the atmosphere.
Centennial Coal is working on an Ventilation Air Methane Regenerative After Burner at its Mandalong mine in the Hunter Valley in NSW at expects to have results of a trial in 2012.
Andrew Myors from Centennial Coal says it will stop almost all methane emissions from the mine.
"It's based on old coke oven technology, so it's using an old technology in quite a new and innovative way to destroy greenhouse gas before it's released into the atmosphere... there's about 650,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent being emitted a year and we'll substantially eliminate that."
GreenMag is a private company that has started up to commercialise carbon mineralisation technology developed by the University of Newcastle.
Marcus Dawe says the technology could have a significant impact on carbon emissions from coal fired power stations in Australia and abroad.
"In ten years time, in one plant alone in NSW, we think we can mitigate 20 million tonnes of CO2 a year, which is equivalent to a third of Australia's car emissions... while India and China have already indicated their interest in the technology, which is carbon capture and use, rather than just pure storage."
Professor Bogdan Dlugogoski, director of the Priority Research Centre for Energy at the University of Newcastle says carbon mineralisation will allow carbon to be stored permanently in rocks instead of being released into the atmosphere.
"This process happens naturally but its very slow and we're trying to accelerate it."
Professor Scott Donne is working on fuel cell technology that produces energy much more efficiently than today's coal fired power stations and produces a bi-product that more readily stored than current power station emissions.
Professor Stephen Webb from the University of Newcastle is working on social research on the public acceptance of low emission coal technologies.
More about those projects on The Country Hour tomorrow and online at abc.net.au/rural.
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