Recycle carbon dioxide using algae, another clean coal farse?

Even though coal power is a primary source of electricity for many people right now, renewable incumbents like wind and solar power are slowly marginalizing its customer base. Owners of coal power plants are happy with their existing cash cows though, and certainly won’t give up their cash cows easily.

That’s partially why clean coal has received so much attention, and scientists are likely to receive a strong financial backing if they’re able to claim new efficiencies in coal processing. Some of those claims are more realistic than others, but Algenol Biofuels says it’s identified a way to convert carbon dioxide into ethanol.

Right now, when a power plant burns coal it works mainly with inputs and outputs of nitrogen. Algenol Biofuels wants to inject oxygen into that process which would change the power plant’s output to carbon dioxide. That would then be injected into algae tanks hungry for CO2. The algae would in turn produce ethanol, which could be used as fuel to power compatible vehicles.

Look at how much better coal-fired efficiency could be if you introduced pure oxygen into it. It dramatically raises the burn temperature and the cleanliness of the coal. Says Paul Woods, Chief Executive of Algenol Biofuels, according to The New York Times.

Primarily though, this is a gain in efficiency, not a completely renewable source of energy. We’d still be mining for coal which contains carbon, and that carbon would still ending up in the atmosphere. It would just used twice before ending up there, rather than running through a traditional coal burning process once before billowing upward.

Algae offers a lot of potential as a chemical processor because it’s good at converting one compound into another or combining elements together. Making existing processes more efficient is a good thing, but is that enough to stop the global warming trend?