Strategies for Reducing Pollutant Emissions

Environmental Consequences of Emission Control Devices Failure to use Emission Control Devices The production of coal energy largely consists of hydrogen and carbon. The combustion process is a chemical reaction with oxygen in the air. The carbon mixes with oxygen to create carbon dioxide (CO2) while the oxygen mixes with hydrogen to produce water vapor (H2O). The two chemical reactions release a considerable volume of energy as heat. Because the coal plants need heat to instigate these chemical reactions, it results in a chain reaction.

Ideally, the two chemical reactions cause heat, and the heat causes other reactions in the chamber and the environment. Once the process begins, it continues until all the coal has been burned. The reason for this is to obtain energy, in the form of heat (Hester & Harrison, 2004). The issue is that burning coal produces CO2 that increases the supply already in the environment. Lack of emission control technologies will lead to an increased greenhouse effect and consequently increase the Earth's temperature.

Coal plants are the leading sources of CO2 emissions, if emission control devices are not used, the coal plants can be linked to climate change. Atmospheric CO2 traps the heat radiating from the earth's surface and admits incoming sunlight. This leads to the greenhouse effect. The bi-product is higher temperatures that possibly affect the global rainfall distribution and consequently land use. Non-adoption of emission control technologies in coal energy production will ensure that CO2 emissions continue to double.

The coal industry renders a significant part of land devalued and existing ecosystem are replaced by unwanted wastes (Giere? & Stille, 2004). The extraction of coal energy drastically alters the physical and biological nature of the mining area. Lack of emission control devices could cause extensive soil damage, destroy microbial community and destroy vegetation. In the course of extracting the needed mineral material, soil is buried by waste and the original vegetation is destroyed inevitably.

This leads to a complete absence of soil in either a biological or pedagogical sense, leaving behind a skeleton of limiting variables. Recommendations for Reducing Pollutant Emissions The coal industry could become more environmentally sustainable by adopting and integrating strategies that minimize environmental effect of coal operations. Such strategies include reducing water consumption and conducting successful mine reclamation activities. Coal waste is composed of mine water, solid waste, and air particles that vary significantly concerning composition and potential for environmental pollution.

Besides preventing water, air and soil contamination, coal plants must devise waste management plans to choose and design appropriate storage facilities for the huge volumes of waste generated at the sites. It must be understood that preventing environmental contamination is a much effective and economical way of reducing environmental effects than cleaning it up after pollution. Some of the waste management plans include using waste and a raw material and reducing waste via process re-engineering (Miller & Miller, 2010). Carbon capture approach could also be used to reduce pollutant emissions.

Coal plants can integrate technologies to capture the CO2 present in the flue gas. The procedure is called post-combustion capture. Chilled ammonia and Amine scrubbing technologies could be considered for this purpose. Besides, firing the coal boiler with pure oxygen rather than air would generate the flue gas with high levels of CO2 concentration. This would make capturing the CO2 less costly (Giere? & Stille, 2004). With the desire to reduce degradation.