Say that three times quickly. From the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory:
With Electron Beams, NRL to Clean Up NOx Emissions from Coal Power Plant
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has partnered with a power company to apply its pulsed electron beam technology to reduce the nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide (NOx) emitted by coal power plants. "This is an opportunity for NRL to a get a technology that we developed here out in the real world," says Dr. John Sethian, the plasma physicist leading the project at NRL, "not only to show the technology works, but that NRL's contributing to cleaner energy."
The concept is to inject electron beams into the exhaust of a fossil fuel power plant and, firing them in pulses, break apart the NOx bonds. When the bonds between the nitrogen (N) and oxygen (O) atoms are ruptured, says Sethian, "They naturally want to combine into just pure nitrogen and pure oxygen, because those are the most stable substances. That's what you're breathing right now."
And a little bit of serendipity:
The NRL electron beam system, dubbed Electra, was originally developed as part of NRL's laser fusion program. If the electrons are fired into a KrF gas (instead of into a flue gas, as with the NOx application), they excite the molecules in the gas and produce KrF laser light. "KrF lasers have unique features," says Sethian, "such as a very smooth laser beam." This makes them ideal for driving a fusion reaction in a pea-sized pellet.
This would be wonderful if it scales up.
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