For both the United States and the World coal is the most abundant fossil fuel but it is also the most polluting. Coal's pollution problems include the emissions of NOx, SO2, mercury, submicron particles containing toxic heavy metals, carcinogenic polynuclear aromatic compounds, and massive emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2. While technologies to limit some of these problems are available, they are individually expensive and that expense is additive. Gasification of coal with oxygen, CO2, and H20 has been suggested as a technology which would solve all of coal's pollution problems, but this approach suffers from the high cost of oxygen and from the fact that gasification is a slow and hence expensive process. EER has discovered a radically new method of combustion which, like oxygen gasification, solves all of coal's pollution problems, but without the expense of producing oxygen and with greatly reduced cost for the gasification step.
