The prices you are going to pay for hard coal (which is the longest burning and hotter than the softer), you might as well buy a corn burning stove which is burning a renewable resource. You just add a scoop of recycled wood pellets to get it going, then a scoop corn, and it will last you approx. 24 hours. . . Hope this help you, cause you will be saving tons of money, plus helping the environment

Edit: The exhaust from the corn does not build up any creosote or tar, so you wont have to worry about a flue fire also

Coal Gasification and the Gasification of Biomass

Coal gasification has the potential to answer most of the problems of coal power stations and to see us through until improved renewable energy technologies can be developed to replace the use of coal as a main base-load power gernation fuel in many of the world\'s nations.

It offers the most versatile and cleanest way to convert coal into electricity, hydrogen, and other energy forms. Furthermore, the first coal gasification electric power plants are now operating commercially in the United States and in other countries.

New gasification power stations are, for example, planned for the United Kingdom and many experts predict that coal gasification will be the core technology of the future generations of clean coal technology plants for several decades to come.

US experts have recently confirmed that far from the idea of carbon capture and storage being unproven, there are many examples in nature of carbon storage, and that carbon from the atmosphere is already effectively stored in huge quantities underground across the globe, completely naturally.

Carbon capture and storage (known as CSS) will therefore work for man as it already has done in nature, and the gasification process is the one to use when power stations also need to capture carbon. The reason for this assertion is it lends itself to the reactions needed to remove the carbon dioxide from the combustion gases before they are emitted via the chimney or flue.

Now lets take a step back to consider how gasification has been used in the past. Coal based "gas works" in huge numbers around the world produced manufactured “town” gas from the early nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. In fact it preceded the natural gas which has since the 1960s replaced town gas in our gas grid distribution systems. Coal gasification was used in the 1700\'s in England, France and Germany for street lanterns. During World War I small gasifiers were even developed to operate vehicles, boats, trains and electric generators.

So, the commercial utilization of manufactured coal gas pre-dated that of natural gas due to the comparative ease of producing coal gas.

Coal gasification still has economic potential with high oil prices in mind, however, there are some drawbacks. There are a number of technical challenges to the power engineers in making the process work reliably, and in particular slagging must be dealt with to prevent the bed of coal from fusing.

These problems are now being overcome the US and international conglomerate GE has been saying for some years that it has the technology tamed, and in Europe the public funding of some flagship IGCC plants has enabled the technology to advance to maturity. The result is that most believe that coal will most likely be the principal source of syngas in the short-term future.

However, before, you say, what about the possible polluting and greenhouse gas producing effects of this? Let me stress that the sulfur, metals and other impurities in coal which have been causing pollution, and the solid residues from the gasification process which were often toxic, are now removed from the gases before they are discharged. Former gasworks sites are often contaminated with hazardous wastes, but this will certainly not be the case for the new plants.

Coal gasification involves the combustion of some of the carbon in the coal to produce the heat that makes the process work. By-products of this carbon combustion which will now be collected greenly are carbon dioxide, ash, and sulfur, all of which in their uncontaminated modern forms will have a market value and may be separated for sale. Meanwhile the provision of CSS (which I would rather not call “carbon sequestration" although many call it that) will avoid these coal burning systems contributing to global warming.

Once the technology of gasification becomes mature it will then be possible to take the whole thing one stage further to use gasification to produce energy from renewable carbon fuels which are continuously regrown, known a biomass

Biomass gasification extends the idea very well demonstrated in gasifying wood stoves. Indeed, there are a number of products now on the market using a huge range of available fuels, not just wood. In its current state the use of biomass, is open-source and grassroots, but it is fat becoming a mainstream power generating source.

Look out for biomass energy plants over the next few years. These are the renewable energy future for society, rather than coal which will eventually be used up in any event, even if there were no problems of climate change.
About the Author

Steve has built a great web site where there are a lot more facts about gasification. This is a hot subject indeed for this technology which has become an essential read for all those who appreciate renewable energy issues and are interested in taking action to reduce the impact of climate change.

Because at the time they [Thatcher and Ian McGregor of the Coal Board] denied they were going to close mines? Because such a disdain was shown to these people's lives? Because some of the negative effects of the "economic revolution" of the Eighties are only just starting to show up?

Secrets of a Search Engine Coal Miner

My company is involved in the business of search engine marketing - high tech stuff involving computers, mathematics, and lots of analysis. But in many ways, I'm a lot like a coal miner. I am often put in the position of having to promote my client's web site against much larger companies with much larger budgets. So I can't just go out and bid for top positioning for the top keywords, or to spend my time optimizing the site for the same keywords a million other sites are already optimized for. No sir, I have to dig - dig for nuggets.

On the paid search side, there are often keywords that, for some strange reason, are much cheaper than nearly identical keywords. In these situations, we load up on the cheap keywords. Eventually, our competitors catch on and start bidding the keywords up. But until that happens, we ride it like a gravy train. The way to find these keywords is to have a large keyword inventory which you watch closely. One caveat: a lower cost keyword may not convert as well as other keywords. However, the reduced cost may more than offset the reduced rate of conversion.

In the world of natural search, the temptation for a web site owner is to always promote his site for the top, most heavily trafficked search terms related to his business. This may be a big mistake. It can take many months, hundreds of hours of work, and many thousands of dollars to get your site ranked for the very most popular keywords in a particular industry.

A more prudent route is to do your keyword research and find keywords that have a reasonably high amount of expected daily traffic with less competition than the most popular keywords. Optimizing for these keywords will result in achieving high search engine rankings much quicker. The quicker you can get your site highly ranked for a particular keyword, the quicker you will begin driving targeted natural traffic. Again, you're looking for nuggets, not boulders.

You can be successful doing the things the big companies are not doing, and promoting your web site in places where the big companies are not. Look for under-utilized keywords and under-utilized web sites. And focus your budget. If you take a scattershot approach, trying to run your paid search ads anywhere and everywhere, you will quickly run out of money.

At first, it is difficult to know how to allocate your paid search budget. You need data to determine your best keywords, best ads, and best landing page copy; and that data can only be generated by actually running your account. So there is a cost in terms of both money and time to get started. At first, your paid search account may not be profitable, but it will be once you figure out where the profitable nuggets are.

When fighting for search engine visibility against larger and better-financed competitors, remember to think like a coal miner. Mine for nuggets - for keywords that can profitably be targeted. Decide on a niche for your business and a focus for your online marketing and you will be successful.

About the Author

Jerry Work is president of PPC management and SEO firm Work Media, based in Nashville.