America (and the rest of the world) grew up on coal - it fired the furnaces of industry for well over a century, and today still remains one of our primary fuel sources. The problem is that it's dirty - sulfur and mercury join carbon dioxide on the list of hazardous substances released by burning coal, polluting the atmosphere. The long-term solution, of course, is to find new, clean fuels - but in the interim we've got all this coal, and the economic incentive to keep burning it.
See the problem?
Enter a new technology. Well, that is, a new use for a very old technology: wood.
Biogenic Reagents has come up with a way to use sustainably sourced wood to produced bio-carbon, which can be mixed into coal or injected into coal exhaust to reduce sulfur content and get rid of 90 percent of mercury emissions.