Episode 58 | Better Bituminous | Clean Coal Technologies, Inc.
I am a huge coal supporter. It's critical to our energy needs and I think it's one of the reasons this podcast stands apart.
When I was Executive Director of the Clean Coal Technology Foundation of Texas ten years ago, most of our members were concerned with post-combustion, taking care of pollutants after coal had been burned.
However, we had one member that had an interesting coal-refining technology. It's stuck with me ever since, and I wanted to see if there were any companies out there still trying to make a difference on the other side of the boiler.
Clean Coal Technologies, Inc. is a New York-based company with a suite of refining technologies. Their "Pristine" line of technologies consists of the following:
- Pristine—A coal-drying technology
- Pristine M—Uses a "Vapor Phase Deposition" process to re-introduce volatiles back into the coal to keep the moisture out and the coal intact (not friable or porous)
- Pristine SA ("Synthetic Anthracite")—A next-generation technology the company is exploring to completely remove volatiles from the coal and essentially reduce it to pure carbon
Robin Eves, President and CEO of CCTI, came to the company ten years ago after a stint in the oil sector. "My first thought was, look, you don’t burn raw crude oil, so why are we burning raw coal?”
While the Pristine SA product could theoretically remove all pollutants and eliminate the need for scrubbers, Robin says international clients in particular are focused on economics and availability at the moment.
The existing process actually re-introduces the original volatiles or "bad stuff" found in coal, but Robin says "you’ve got a better and more efficient product and putting less bad stuff into the atmosphere.”
Despite what America does with its coal fleet, Robin says the future is overseas for America's coal supplies. He cites 300M Indians and 500M sub-Saharan Africans without coal, in addition to 800M East Asians who use about 1/7 the energy Europeans use.
Back when I was working for the coal groups, I once addressed the Austin City Council about the need to keep using coal in an effort to proliferate cleaner coal usage abroad.
From my 2010 address:
"Developing countries are building new coal facilities faster than we could ever mothball our own fleets. And the less we invest in new, innovative scrubber technologies for this vast, abundant resource, the dirtier those plants in developing countries will be.”
I'm glad to see companies like CCTI are making the world cleaner by using this important resource more responsibly.
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