[RedDevil]

Researchers at MIT claim that electricity can be generated from coal with twice the efficiency of current plants, using a combination of coal gasification and fuel cells:

http://news.mit.edu/2016/hybrid-system-could-cut-coal-plant-emissions-half-0404

This illustration depicts a possible configuration for the combined system proposed by MIT researchers. At the bottom, steam (pink arrows) passes through pulverized coal, releasing gaseous fuel (red arrows) made up of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. This fuel goes into a solid oxide fuel cell (disks near top), where it reacts with oxygen from the air (blue arrows) to produce electricity (loop at right).

Illustration: Jeffrey Hanna

First, the coal is pulverized to a powder ... The heat leads to chemical reactions that release gases from the coal particles — mainly carbon monoxide and hydrogen, both of which can produce electricity in a solid oxide fuel cell.
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In the fuel cell, a membrane separates the carbon monoxide and hydrogen from the oxygen, promoting an electrochemical reaction that generates electricity without burning the fuel.
Because there is no burning involved, the system produces less ash and other air pollutants than would be generated by combustion. It does produce carbon dioxide, but this is in a pure, uncontaminated stream and not mixed with air as in a conventional coal-burning plant. That would make it much easier to ... eliminate or drastically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions.
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Conventional coal-burning power plants typically have very low efficiency; only 30 percent of the energy contained in the fuel is actually converted to electricity. In comparison, the proposed combined gasification and fuel cell system could achieve efficiencies as high as 55 to 60 percent, Ong says, according to the simulations.

The next step would be to build a small, pilot-scale plant to measure the performance of the hybrid system in real-world conditions, Ong says. Because the individual component technologies are all well developed, a full-scale operational system could plausibly be built within a few years, she says.
“This system requires no new technologies” that need more time to develop, she says. “It’s just a matter of coupling these existing technologies together well.”

Generating electricity in a clean and efficient manner while the CO2 can easily be captured.
Coal could supply our electricity for centuries to come without the negative side effects of traditionally burned fossil fuels.
If this works out it would be a game changer.