Word: sulfur
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American Electric Power, a big utility holding company that also owns coal mines, has built tremendous smokestacks that tower 1,000 ft. over some of its power plants. When noxious sulfur dioxides are discharged at that altitude, the gases become so mixed with clean air that after they finally descend to the level at which people breathe, the sulfur is too diluted to be harmful. Sulfur can also be removed from coal smoke by special chemical catalysts called "scrubbers" before the smoke goes up the stack. Trouble is, the scrubbers are expensive-the Tennessee Valley Authority is spending $50 million...
...more promising technique captures the sulfur as the coal is burning in a special furnace. Developed by Michael Pope, a New York consulting engineer, this "fluidized bed combustion" system will soon be tested by the federal Energy Research and Development Administration at a power plant in Rivesville, W. Va. Early experiments show that the new furnace not only causes coal to burn more efficiently, but also actually converts the sulfur into a useful soil enrichener...
...immense coal reserves between Arizona and Montana. But few operators chose to mine the deposits, mainly because the coal was too far from the biggest markets. Yet after 1970, the Western coal began to exert a powerful new appeal for the simple reason that it has a low sulfur content...
...produce highly marketable (because scarce) natural gas. The largest demonstration plant to be built is a $237 million facility in New Athens, Ill. Jointly owned by Union Carbide and Chemical Construction Corp. and partially financed by ERDA, it has been designed to turn 2,700 tons of high-sulfur Illinois coal into 22 million cu. ft. of "syngas" and 3,000 bbl. of "synoil" each...
...million cu. ft. when it starts operating in 1979, it will succeed in at least matching the economics of existing-and readily marketable-synthetic gases such as those made from naphtha. Becoming a feedstock for "syngas" would open a major new potential for coal, especially the now stymied high-sulfur varieties. The Federal Government would benefit, too, since the plant's success would be an early vindication of its insistence that the nation can achieve relative energy independence...