The carbon combines with the hydrogen in water to make carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas--the old "town gas"--but then the catalyst prompts a rejiggering of the atoms into methane (one carbon atom attached to four hydrogen atoms).
The process, which converts a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide to liquid fuels, and was discovered by German scientists.
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The highly reactive oxygen combines with hydrogen and carbon monoxide on the fuel side to make water and CO 2.
This gas contains approximately 80% of the original energy content of the coal, and is a combination of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane.
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The combustion is slow and rich, using just enough oxygen to bust apart the diesel molecules into hydrogen and carbon monoxide without burning off the diesel entirely.
That hydrogen and carbon monoxide mixture is then pumped into one of two NOx traps, where it strips the oxygen from the NOx, forming nitrogen, carbon dioxide and water.
Some of the hydrogen and carbon monoxide created in the process are fed back into the reactor to keep it going, while GreatPoint recovers most of the catalyst from the char and applies it to more coal.
Shell's gasification technique consists of partially combusting pulverized coal to yield carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas, which combine to form synthetic natural gas.
There's nothing new about turning coal into gas--19th-century street lamps burned "town gas, " a dangerous mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, produced by blasting coal with steam.
Meanwhile, other completely different approaches involve burning coal in pure oxygen (oxyfuel), or turning it into a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which is then burned.
It acts like a giant spark plug, busting apart a tiny portion of the diesel fuel with an electric charge so that the molecules rearrange themselves into carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
"As there is no carbon in the fuel, hydrogen-powered vehicles produce no carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide or particulate emissions, " said Wrightbus business development director Jonathan Poynton.
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