Letters. Cleaning the water

Abstract

Burning coal, alternativesDear Sir: The article "How to Make Coal Burn Cleaner" (ES&T, January 1976, p 16), is particularly timely; we in EPA are most concerned with many environmental and energy related decisions facing the power Industry today. Our engineers have reviewed the several alternatives being offered to convert coal into electricity and other forms of energy. While coal gasification and liquefaction probably will have applicability to the generation of highquality fuels, we doubt that these technologies will be economically competitive with coal burning at power plants in the near future.As Mr. Train pointed out, EPA believes scrubbing to be a more practicable approach to the control of sulfur oxides at power plants. This conclusion is supported by a contract study conducted by the M. W. Kellogg Company entitled, "Comparison of Flue Gas Desulfurization, Coal Liquefaction, and Coal Gasification for Use at Coal-Fired Power Plants", (EPA-450/3-75-047), April 1975. The report shows that flue gas desulfurization technology is more fully developed than