> Wouldn't the best way to end up with a given amount of buried coal be to
> refrain from digging that amount up in the first place?
I've been wondering about that and I can think of reasons why you
might wish to dig up coal and simultaenously bury some carbon of
recent biogenic origin. High ash content with the wrong ash elements
causing boiler fouling would come to mind, especially if the ash
elements that are most difficult in combustion equipment are good for
fertilisers (eg potassium).
We are then talking high cost, low efficiency for the combustion of
charcoal, and additional benefits beyond carbon sequestration for
burying the charcoal.
If you then ask, given a certain quantity of charcoal, whether it's
better to burn it instead of coal or bury it, you might find that the
charcoal sells for more as a soil conditioner / fertiliser than as a
fuel, and that burying it also keeps more carbon out of the air than
burning it in inefficient dedicated plants that displace very
efficient coal fired generation.
Whether it actually makes sense of course depends on how valuable as a
soil conditioner/fertiliser charcoal really is, and how serious the
problems are when combusting it. Personally, I think the soil
conditioner benefits of charcoal are oversold by advocates of burial,
and the combustion issues are manageable. Note that I am biased in
this particular dogfight, because I am currently employed to do
research on biocoal, that is torrefaction of biomass, with the near
term market being co-firing with coal.
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