Coal, Environment and Mercury

Nations agree on global, legally binding treaty on mercury emissions: Minamata Convention on Mercury

Green Car Congress

JANUARY 19, 2013

At the conclusion of the International Negotiating Committee on Mercury ( INC5 ) meeting in Geneva ( earlier post ), nations agreed on a global, legally-binding treaty to prevent mercury emissions and releases. The scope of the new treaty which puts in controls and also reduction measures in respect to mercury is as follows: Products.

Mercury

Mercury Legal Emissions Global

Final session on international mercury convention this week expected to culminate in agreement; UNEP Global Mercury Assessment 2013 finds industrial source Hg emissions may be rising

Green Car Congress

JANUARY 13, 2013

Unintentional emission sectors: Coal burning, ferrous- and non-ferrous (Au, Cu, Hg, Pb, Zn) metal production, cement production. The fifth and final session of negotiations on the establishment of an international mercury convention—International Negotiating Committee on Mercury (INC5)—is taking place this coming week in Geneva.

Mercury

Mercury Emissions 2013 Global

Chalmers team develops method to reduce levels of mercury in sulfuric acid

Green Car Congress

JULY 10, 2023

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a method that can reduce the levels of mercury in sulfuric acid by more than 90%, even from low levels. It is therefore a worldwide challenge that sulfuric acid often contains one of the most toxic substances: mercury.

Mercury

Mercury Water Environment 2015

Process for Hydrogen Production from Sodium Sulfite Solutions Resulting from Capture of SO2 from Coal Flue Gas

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JUNE 3, 2010

under illumination from a low pressure mercury lamp. A paper on their work was published 1 June in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. A number of technologies have been employed for the capture and disposal of SO 2 from a flue gas stream. Huang et al. Cunping Huang, Clovis A. Article ASAP doi: 10.1021/es903766w.

Sodium

Sodium Coal Hydrogen Gas

ORNL study identifies more biopathways for formation of toxic methylmercury

Green Car Congress

AUGUST 8, 2013

More forms of mercury can be converted to methylmercury—a form of mercury that can be taken into the food chain and eventually can result in mercury-contaminated fish—than previously thought, according to a study led by a team of researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) published in Nature Geoscience.

Mercury

Mercury Water Convert Coal

WHO attributes more than 1 in 4 deaths annually of children under 5 years to unhealthy environment

Green Car Congress

MARCH 6, 2017

Most of these diseases and conditions are at least partially caused by the environment, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports. The impact of the environment on children’s health , provides a comprehensive overview of the environment’s impact on children’s health, illustrating the scale of the challenge.

Environment

Environment Pollution Water Waste

EPA’s 2011 Toxics Release Inventory shows air pollutants continue to decline, releases of toxic chemicals up

Green Car Congress

JANUARY 16, 2013

Among the HAPs showing decline were hydrochloric acid and mercury. Likely reasons for the decreases seen over the past several years include installation of control technologies at coal fired power plants and a shift to other fuel sources. billion pounds of toxic chemicals were disposed of or released into the environment (i.e.,

Pollution

Pollution 2011 EPA Waste

Berkeley study finds renewable portfolio standards insufficient to meet 2030 GHG emission targets; new policy required

Green Car Congress

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

The least expensive way for the Western US to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to help prevent the worst consequences of global warming is to replace coal with renewable and other sources of energy that may include nuclear power, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, researchers. Click to enlarge.

Renewable

Renewable Emissions Standards Coal

Shouldn’t We ALL Be Going to PowerShift 2009?

Creative Greenius

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

“I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.” - Al Gore. Maybe you didn’t know there was a coal-fired power plant spewing greenhouse gases, mercury and a very bad vibe just blocks from Capitol Hill.

Al Gore

Al Gore 2009 Gore Coal

Study finds heavy-petroleum fuels raising vanadium emissions; human emissions outpacing natural sources by factor of 1.7

Green Car Congress

DECEMBER 16, 2017

Breathing vanadium-rich aerosols has unknown but potentially adverse health impacts, according to the researchers, who note that the human impacts on the global vanadium cycle parallel impacts on the global cycles for lead and mercury. Vanadium is a trace metal found in many earth materials, including petroleum and coal.

Oil-Sands

Oil-Sands Emissions Mercury Fuel

PCAST suggests 6 key components for climate change strategy to President Obama; adaptation and mitigation

Green Car Congress

MARCH 23, 2013

Continuing substitution of gas for coal (and in some instances for oil) will remain an effective short- and middle-term decarbonization measure and an economic boon only insofar as methane leakage from production and transport is held to low levels and drinking water is not adversely impacted, PVCAST noted.

Climate Change

Climate Change Climate Obama Clean

Ceder group at MIT analyzes the limits and opportunities of phosphates as Li-ion cathode materials using a Materials Genome approach

Green Car Congress

JULY 18, 2011

Ceder leads the CEDER (Computational and Experimental Design of Emerging materials Research group) at MIT, and has been pushing for the realization of the “Materials Genome” project to bring advanced automated computing environments coupled to databases to materials design. Earlier post.)

Li-ion

Li-ion MIT Ni-Li Obama

Stanford launches major new natural gas research initiative

Green Car Congress

JUNE 13, 2015

The new program will expand Stanford’s research on energy and the environment by focusing additional resources on the growing importance of natural gas. Compared with burning coal, natural gas emits about half the carbon dioxide and substantially less soot, mercury and sulfur.

Gas

Gas Asia Chevron Mercury

Study from Thuringia shows 50% of harmful soot comes from local sources, 50% from long-distance transport

Green Car Congress

JUNE 12, 2021

The chemical composition of atmospheric particles at a given location depends not only on the local environment and sources, but is also influenced by the history of the particles reaching the sampling location. The main sources were combustion emissions, probably from wood and coal-fired heating systems.

Transportation

Transportation Germany Climate Change Climate

How Carmakers Are Responding to the Plug-In Hybrid Opportunity

Tony Karrer Delicious EVdriven

APRIL 21, 2009

Cischke, Ford senior vice president for sustainability, environment and safety engineering. "By San Jose Mercury News ). But I dont think that would contribute to the global environment, to reduce [global warming gas] emissions." ( Wall Street Journal ). Does it make good business sense, and how does it affect the environment?"

Plug-in

Plug-in Plug Hybrid Lithium Ion

EV Driven

Nations agree on global, legally binding treaty on mercury emissions: Minamata Convention on Mercury

Final session on international mercury convention this week expected to culminate in agreement; UNEP Global Mercury Assessment 2013 finds industrial source Hg emissions may be rising

Chalmers team develops method to reduce levels of mercury in sulfuric acid

Process for Hydrogen Production from Sodium Sulfite Solutions Resulting from Capture of SO2 from Coal Flue Gas

ORNL study identifies more biopathways for formation of toxic methylmercury

WHO attributes more than 1 in 4 deaths annually of children under 5 years to unhealthy environment

EPA’s 2011 Toxics Release Inventory shows air pollutants continue to decline, releases of toxic chemicals up

Berkeley study finds renewable portfolio standards insufficient to meet 2030 GHG emission targets; new policy required

Shouldn’t We ALL Be Going to PowerShift 2009?

Study finds heavy-petroleum fuels raising vanadium emissions; human emissions outpacing natural sources by factor of 1.7

PCAST suggests 6 key components for climate change strategy to President Obama; adaptation and mitigation

Ceder group at MIT analyzes the limits and opportunities of phosphates as Li-ion cathode materials using a Materials Genome approach

Stanford launches major new natural gas research initiative

Study from Thuringia shows 50% of harmful soot comes from local sources, 50% from long-distance transport

How Carmakers Are Responding to the Plug-In Hybrid Opportunity

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