You're right... Pristine-SA is Biomass-Coal Technology.
The website has a brief description:
"Pristine-SA, is a development stage technology designed to eliminate 100% of the volatile material in feed coal. To achieve stable combustion, Pristine-SA would be co-fired with treated biomass or natural gas. The process would result in a clean fuel, eliminating the need for emissions scrubbers and the corollary production of toxic FGD sludge. Pristine-SA is a versatile product that can be used to produce numerous non-fuel products. "
I dug up some more info:
Pristine-SA is "Synthetic Anthracite" and "consists essentially of carbon and hydrogen, and burns as clean as natural gas."
"The concept of combining the treated coal of the invention (i.e., coal with near-zero volatiles) with a supplementary fuel such as natural gas in a coal-fired boiler is new. The present invention is ideally suited for use in combined cycle boilers, or multi-fuel boilers that are capable of burning more than one fuel separately or at the same time. While a large population of combined cycle or multi-fuel boilers is in existence, in common use, these boilers are designed to merely switch between one fuel and the other."
Besides co-firing with gas, this patent pending technology also covers the compacting of Pristine-SA fines with torrefied biomass to create briquettes that can be fed into existing coal burners. One would assume those Pristine-SA biomass-coal briquettes would be considered a "renewable" and qualify for additional tax credits, not to mention an excuse to keep those obsolete coal-fired power plants operational.
It has been Patent-Pending for 3 years, so we shouldn't have to wait too much longer under the new coal-friendly administration...
Then we can all say, Cha-Ching!
