The Future Challanges of Clean Coal Technologies: Joining Efficiency Increase and Pollutant Emission Control

Coal offers an abundant widely spread fossil energy resource. It is available at a quite stable price from many international suppliers and it will continue to play a significant role in new generating capacity, if security and diversity of supply remain fundamental. In this paper we point out the state of the art in the field of “Clean Coal Technologies” evidencing the perspectives of improvement and the critical elements. Both the emission control of NOx, SOx and Particle Matter and the advanced coal conversion pathways like USC, PFBC and IGCC are reviewed and analysed. At the end some elements concerning the perspectives of CO2 emission control strategies are outlined