Rick Santorum's dirty coal words

[kgrandia]

November 7, 2006 was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for a lot of Republicans.

It's the day the Democrats won the majority in the US Senate and House. Über-conservative Republican Senator Rick Santorum was one of the Republicans who lost his seat that day; it was the "largest margin of defeat for an incumbent Senator since... 1980." Ouch.

Determined not to be relegated to the "where are they now?" column, Santorum has been keeping his conservative fan club happy with his semi-regular opinion pieces in the Philadelphia Inquirer. He pontificates on his favorite subjects, like "family values " and "evildoers ".

However, today Santorum digresses, and puts on his "clean coal" salesman hat.

Santorum's column is a train wreck, full of inept comparisons and non sequiturs. Writing and composition instructors, as well as logic and rhetoric teachers, beware. Rick Santorum will make your blood pressure go up.

Santorum calls his piece (of): 'Coal' is not a dirty word if we are realistic about saving the Earth.

Check out the rest of the post here - the foramatting is way to intense to recreate here.

[JohnWxy]

1. Discover magazine article on IGCC

this article is about an IGCC plant operated by the Tampa Electric Company

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/dec/clean-coal-technology



~~
On a steamy, torpid summer morning in Florida, the Polk power plant is performing a small feat of modern alchemy. Every hour it converts 100 tons of the dirtiest fuel on the planet—coal—into 250 million watts of power for about 56,000 homes and businesses around Tampa. The alchemy part? Vernon Shorter, a tall, bluff consultant for the (TECO), points to a looming smokestack. "Look at the top of that stack," he shouts over the cacophony of generators and coal-grinding machines. "That is the main emissions source. You can't see anything. You don't even see a heat plume."

He's right. No smoke mars the lazy blue Florida sky. The Polk plant captures all its fly ash, 98 percent of its sulfur—which causes acid rain—and nearly all its nitrogen oxides, the main component of the brown haze that hangs over many cities. Built to demonstrate the feasibility of a new way to wring economical power from coal without belching assorted toxins into the air, the $600 million plant has been running steadily since 1996. "It makes the lowest-cost electricity on TECO's grid," Shorter says. "It also has very, very low emissions. Particulate matter is almost undetectable."

What is both distressing and remarkable about the Polk plant is that it could do much more. "There's no requirement for mercury capture, but 95 percent of it could be captured very easily," Shorter adds. More important, the plant could also capture nearly all of coal's most elusive and potentially disastrous emissions: carbon dioxide, the main gas that drives global warming.


~~
The Polk plant, on the other hand, has been a very good investment. Tampa Electric actually makes money from the pollutants that the IGCC process removes from the coal. The utility sells sulfur captured from the syngas to the fertilizer industry. Slag left from the coal is sold to the cement industry. All the slurry water is recycled to the gasifier; there is no waste water and very little solid waste. "Almost nothing goes to a landfill," Shorter says.

[kgrandia]

2. But when??

"More important, the plant could also capture nearly all of coal's most elusive and potentially disastrous emissions: carbon dioxide, the main gas that drives global warming."

So why isn't it?? http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4267140.html?series=15

"Scientists admit it will be tough to capture a key greenhouse gas and bury the CO2 in the ground, in rock or underwater. What’s even tougher for carbon sequestration: figuring out where to store it."

By the time they figure out CCS, it will be too damn late.

I'm going to read the Discovery article on the train tonight - thanks for the link.

[hatrack]

3. "Could". "Might". "Potential". "Future". "Developing". "Experimental". "Pilot".

I think I got them all!

[kristopher]

4. There is nothing wrong with the concept.

But development and testing should be on the coal industry's back, not the taxpayer's. If they have a marketable technology that performs and is cost effective, bring in on; until then, ban the shit.