Back to the point of the thread: the only way Trump could have taken the pressure off of coal is to jack up the cost of natural gas. We’re very fortunate to have huge amounts of cheap natural gas available. Making power from that is much much easier than mining coal and burning it in boilers.
Trump can’t erase the fact that burning lumpy solids is just more difficult, inefficient and costly than running gas through a combustion turbine. The coal will still be there when the gas becomes depleted.
I don’t know politics in coal regions, but if these people can see down the road they’ll realize that liberals want to crush them and their coal. Trump won’t actively try to eliminate them, and that’s about all that they can expect. They can’t reverse the market forces tilted against coal, and they’ve still got a huge fraction of the power plants that use coal in the eastern US. Liberals will crush those, too, if given half a chance.
Perhaps I’ve confused you with someone else here. Even so being regarded as a reasonable person is not a bad thing is it?
Yep, I stand by this.
Is that why you’re a conservative? To foster hate in someone else?
I’m neither exclusively conservative or liberal, this leaves me open to reasoning, vulnerable to being wrong and able/willing to learn. My life is better than I probably deserve and I attribute it to being rigid on very few matters such as the telling of lies.
It’s possible you have. I corrected you stating I’d claimed something I didn’t.
Being a reasonable person lies in the eyes of the beholder. Therefore, I cannot assume anyone thinks I am reasonable just as I cannot assume the perception tied to that of being good or bad.
I am a conservative because that is who I am regardless of what others think. However, expressing those beliefs fosters hate from liberals.
It’s not a concern for me. We have many conservatives in our circle of friends. TRUE conservatives not the angry/aggrieved/fear/hate/liberal baiting types.
We never bring up politics these days as all of them either despise or are embarrassed by the current occupant. I see no good from poking them in the eye over his sorry ass.
Chunks of coal are run through a mill that grinds it into a powder like consistency. It’s then mixed with a bit of water and injected into the furnace at pressure to feed the floating fireball that heats the water into steam for the turbine. There are no lumps of coal burning.
Natural gas burns cleaner than coal and extraction has less environmental impact. Natural gas turbines can be spun up rapidly whereas coal fired generation takes quite a bit longer.
Yes, I know, I’ve gawked at pulverizers and the other material handling equipment used. The level of wear and tear on that stuff is enormous. They’ve been doing it forever, and have it worked out so that it goes relatively smoothly, but it’s still more clumsy in extraction, transportation and prep for burning than gas or oil. If the fuel cost is anywhere comparable, choosing natural gas is a no-brainer. Unfortunately for coal, natural gas is a huge bargain nowadays in the US.
If burned properly, Anthracite is thee cleanest burning coal. But Anthracite deposits ( although significant ) are small compared to the softer coals. Anthracite Filter Coal is critical in water treatment & purification. It’s used worldwide.
In my area, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back, the object of coal mining was to blast & harvest large lumps of coal; so low voltage blasting was used to prevent shattering the coal into small pieces. At that time, fine coal had little use, except for road fill. Then coal stokers were designed that burned the fine coal ( rice coal & buckwheat ). Efficient, since there was a better air - fuel mix, and more heat extracted. But before stokers, there were 100s of 1,000s of tons used as road fill.
This processing facility was near me; I knew every single inch of it. It was just demolished; but should have been a national historic site. The largest in the entire world, and did over 10,000 tons a day. It was a sight to see. I walked the entire back conveyor ( creepy ). And the little catwalk at the top, I had to step out & stand on it ( about 4 seconds ). The GE electric motor that powered the conveyor, was so large, it had it’s own control room. During WW2, the facility was on Hitler’s Hit List. https://youtu.be/QAhUITzI3c0?t=4
