There are a lot of valuable minerals in the residue of burning coal. Some of them are toxic to human health so the unregulated burning of coal on a large scale is not a good thing.
CAVEAT: I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA during the heyday of the steel mills and am really healthy - my Dad had to bring an extra shirt to work every day because his collar would be stained by lunchtime from the coal smoke in the air. He lived to be 94 years old. I am 66 and feel like a very strong 40.
That being said, there are two things to consider with coal.
First, we have a lot of it. More than most people can imagine. Several thousand years worth for just the known fields.
Second, we have the technology to use it without the impact it used to have. Mountains no longer need to be removed. Built into the mining contracts are the provisos that the mining company restore the land to what it used to be like. Sure, the countours will be different but the vegetation will be all native and in 20 years, it would take a trained geologist to tell that anything had ever happened to the site. Toxic runoff is a thing of the past. Using the stuff is now possible with stack scrubbers removing more than 99.9% of the contaminants.
Now it seems, some people in Russia are looking at the removed contaminants as another revenue stream after energy production. From Russia Today:
Modern alchemy: Russian scientists discover how to extract gold from coal
Researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Far East branch say they are building a facility to make gold out of coal.
Although the science is no fairy tale, to the dismay of business owners, the process is not as productive as they might hope – burning a ton of coal yields one gram of gold, tops.
At present, the scientists are setting the bar even lower, expecting a yield of 0.5 grams, or 1,500 rubles, per ton.
“We burn a ton – we gain 1,500 rubles,” Oleg Ageev, CEO of Complex Innovative Technologies of the Amur Scientific Center, said in a press statement.
At current exchange rates, that is roughly $23 US dollars.
Not much but a good start - remember, this is the revenue after the cost of purification and extraction so it is not too shabby.
There are a lot of other valuable minerals in coal particulates - mercury, lead, uranium, monazite (Thorium ore) some precious metals (depending on the origin) - this is not a waste stream, this is a resource and revenue opportunity.
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