A review of emerging technologies for sustainable use of coal for power generation

Concerns about climate change and environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric CO₂ will require the power generation industry to reduce CO₂ emissions from current levels. Unfortunately, for reductions to have the desired effect they will have to be large. While the schedule of the Kyoto Protocol may appear daunting, in the long term mere compliance with the protocol will hardly change the rate of increase of atmospheric CO₂. There are, however, technical, economical and practical choices that will allow the industry to meet the requirements of protocol and ultimately stop the increase in atmospheric CO₂ without eliminating coal from the fuel mix. In this paper, we present a review of current and emerging technologies for CO₂ sequestration. We provide a summary of the underlying scientific principles and discuss the practical and economic aspects of sequestration technologies, which will allow continuing use of global coal resources with minimum or no impact on CO₂ levels in the atmosphere.