Energy “Recycling”

A Bridge to the Clean Energy Future

Robert U. Ayres & Edward H. Ayres

On the south shore of Lake Michigan, in the northwest corner of Indiana, the Mittal Steel Company has a coking facility called Cokenergy. Coke (the industrial substance, not the soft drink) is nearly pure carbon, made by heating coal in the absence of air to remove the methane, sulfur, ammonia, tar, and other impurities to make it suitable for use in a steel-making blast furnace. Some of the gas removed in this process is used to heat the ovens. In a conventional facility, the combustible coke-oven gas is captured, but the hot combustion products from heating the ovens themselves are normally blown into the air.

But Cokenergy is not conventional. In addition ...

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