Energy Leaders Tour Ohio State Clean Coal Research Facilities
State and national energy leaders visited Ohio State to learn about an engineering professor’s research on clean coal technology.
L.S. Fan, a Distinguished University Professor and the John C. Easton Professor of Engineering in the William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and his students hosted a tour of his research facilities April 30 to Carl Bauer, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, and Mark Shanahan, energy advisor to Gov. Ted Strickland.
The Ohio Coal Development Office, which supports Fan’s research, arranged the tour so Bauer could see Fan's 25 kW Chemical Looping System, a sub-pilot scale plant that efficiently converts syngas, a product from coal gasifiers, into hydrogen while capturing carbon dioxide. The technology can be applied to existing pulverized coal combustion power plants without the need for major modifications.
Fan, an internationally recognized expert in energy and environmental reaction engineering, is working with the U.S. Department of Energy and the Ohio Coal Development Office on a plan to demonstrate the system next year at a Department of Energy facility in Alabama.
Fan also showed Bauer and Shanahan his patented calcination-carbonation reaction process, which uses calcium-based sorbent to remove carbon dioxide from the coal combustion flue gas stream.
Read more about Fan's work online.
