Mayflower Clean Energy Center
1 of 7 from Photos: Inside one company's quest to clean coal
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On a spit of land at the mouth of the Taunton River in southern Massachusetts you'll see this tower. It's the Mayflower Clean Energy Center built by GreatPoint Energy to turn coal--the dirtiest fossil fuel--into cleaner-burning natural gas.
The 200-foot tower contains a reactor--essentially a long metal tube under high heat and pressure--where coal is mixed with steam and a proprietary catalyst. Inside the hydromethanization reactor, that mixture turns into gases and the residue is collected through that white silo on the right. The company is separating methane--the primary component of natural gas--and carbon dioxide, which the company plans to store underground.
April 13, 2009 4:00 AM PDT
Photo by: Martin LaMonica/CNET
