If pollution had a mascot, it would be the smokestack. Do a Google image search for “pollution.” What do you see? A bunch of smokestacks with ominous gray clouds billowing out the top.
When coal is introduced into a coal fired power plant’s boiler, it’s combined with air, ignited, and begins to burn. This burning process releases some useful heat energy to fuel our power grids, but the rest goes up in smoke through the stack, releasing the products of the combustion process, including nitrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and water vapor into the atmosphere.
One strategy is to capture the energy that remains embedded in smokestack gas. Even after combustion of fossil fuels, there’s a significant amount of energy bound up in the carbon dioxide itself. Pumping that energy into the atmosphere is a missed opportunity.
