Climate Cure-All or Coal-Fired Crowing?

BRISTOL, Va. – Richard Wolfe will tell anyone in earshot that he’s got the cleanest coal product out there. He spent years in a university lab stripping mercury out of his creation, called Carbonite, and ensuring that when burned it spews less carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide into the air than regular coal.

Wolfe promises that his little chunk of rock – made by cooking different types of coal with a secret catalyst – can fuel utility companies, create a saleable by-product called methane, and produce gas to run cars, and oil, just like the black gold shipped from the Middle East.

“In the future, we should never be burning coal again,” Wolfe said, grinning like a school boy. “We’ll be burning Carbonite.”

The only obstacles left are to test whether Carbonite can be mass produced, and then find a financial backer willing to spend the millions of dollars needed to make the leap to commercialization.

Possibilities

Adrenaline pumps through Delegate Tony Shipley, R-Kingsport, Tenn., when he talks about Carbonite, his voice ratcheting up several decibels as he explains its potential.

“This is clearly the answer to what we’ve been looking for as the financial boom for Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia,” Shipley said in a telephone interview.
Shipley envisions Carbonite spurring all sorts of new jobs and business opportunities for the region.

It could be mass produced in the kilns of an abandoned Kingsport brick-manufacturing business, the delegate said. Already in place, he said, are the rail lines needed to ship in the coal used to make Carbonite.

And because Carbonite burns cleaner than coal, it could help a local paper mill profit from a chemical by-product called black liquor that normally is left behind in a holding container.

Black liquor, when burned with coal, is transformed into a type of by-product called coke that is bought and used by the steel industry. The only problem, Shipley said, is that expensive pollution scrubbers are needed to catch the carbon dioxide and mercury thrown into the air during that cooking process.

Carbonite would eliminate the need for those pricey scrubbers, Shipley said.

Depending on the type of coal used, proponents claim that Carbonite spews as much as 25 percent less carbon dioxide than coal, and as much as 50 percent less sulphur dioxide.

In addition, Shipley sees Kingsport as a national fuel hub simply because gas and oil can be squeezed from Carbonite. Though these fuels have been wrung from coal for decades, Shipley said, the process has never boasted such low pollution rates as with Carbonite.

“It provides us the ... technological bridge we’ve been waiting for,” Shipley said.

Creation

Slightly more than a year ago in a Lebanon, Va., barn, Wolfe demonstrated for the Bristol Herald Courier how to make Carbonite in a pottery kiln. The process, he explained then, breaks coal apart and puts it back together better than it was naturally.

Having grown up the son of a West Virginia coal miner, Wolfe has been around coal all of his life. He’s also spent his professional life studying ways to solve energy problems, earning a doctorate in nuclear engineering, working with the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1970s, and traveling the world to learn other energy theories.

Wolfe runs Wolfe Engineering and Consultants in Banner Elk, N.C., and often races to business contacts in West Virginia and Southwest Virginia, and sometimes shoots to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, where he conducts more coal research and consultation.

The demonstration for the Herald Courier was the first public display following two years of perfecting the temperatures and burn times – and finding the right catalyst – all behind the closed doors of a West Virginia University lab. All of Carbonite’s ingredients can be found in West Virginia and other parts of America.

The catalyst is kept a closely guarded secret because Wolfe is still awaiting patents for the process.

Wolfe said the eureka moment of perfecting Carbonite “was like finding a diamond.”

Since his initial public demonstration, Wolfe has trademarked the name Carbonite. He also has elicited the applause of industry insiders.

Mike Davis, of the South Carolina public utility Santee Cooper, said his company is closely watching Wolfe’s attempts to mass produce and commercialize Carbonite.

“We look at stuff all the time ... anything that we could think of to help with our carbon emissions,” Davis said. “[Carbonite] is honestly one that is closest to being a
practical application.”

Money and the law

Bruce Nilles, of the environmental group Sierra Club, is skeptical about Wolfe’s Carbonite, mainly because it hasn’t been commercialized yet. Until it is, all of the possible uses for it are merely theory.

“A lot of people call me every week to tell me they can make a diamond out of coal,” Nilles said. “At the end of the day the question is, can it be done at scale and can it address our coal problem?”

Environmental activists are not the only ones questioning whether Carbonite will ever reach commercialization. Coal industry insiders argue that it could prove too pricey to produce on a mass scale.

“He’s got a great product ... but it adds cost,” said David A Roling, vice president of the Knoxville-based coal mining and utility company National Coal Corp.

As with any addition to a coal-based operation, Carbonite would mean millions of dollars in extra spending.

Wolfe estimates a test facility would take $24 million and nearly two years to build.

But the real question is not whether a company out there will decide that Carbonite’s benefits outweigh its costs, Roling said. The real question is whether Carbonite can solve the coal industry’s pollution problem by meeting the stringent carbon dioxide emission limits set by Capitol Hill.

“It depends on how the politicians write the laws in Washington,” Roling said.

mowens@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2549