UC professor studies reducing greenhouse gases in coal mining

Coal is one of the biggest energy sources in the country. It's also one of the dirtiest. But what if we could refine the coal mining process to be less harmful to the environment?

University of Cincinnati Professor of Chemical Engineering Vadim Guliants, Ph.D., is researching a catalyst that does just that. The catalyst converts one greenhouse gas into a less harmful one.

Guliants recently received a two-year $160,000 grant from the Ohio Development Services Agency for his project, "Novel Catalysts for Total Combustion of Ventilation Air Methane Emitted in Underground Coal Mines."

When miners mine for coal, they expose ancient plant matter to oxygen for the first time in millions of years, triggering a release of greenhouse gases like methane. Guliants is attempting to collect this methane and convert it into carbon dioxide with a palladium-based catalyst.

"Even though emissions of methane are smaller globally than carbon dioxide, methane has a large environmental impact because it is 25 times more potent," says Guliants.

For coal-mining operations, using more energy means netting less profit. Palladium is a metal with very active catalytic properties that can be entirely sustained by the heat of methane combustion, thus eliminating energy costs.

Additionally, given the condition of underground coal mines, the palladium catalyst needs to work in a moist environment. Current palladium-based catalysts perform methane combustion effectively in a moisture-free environment; however, with water vapor in the air, as it would be in a methane ventilation process, palladium-based catalysts are far less effective.

Guliants is addressing this problem by adding a second metal, as well as special additives, that can make the catalyst more resistant to the effects of water vapor present in underground mines.

Guliants eventually hopes to find a palladium-based catalyst that can convert at least 95 percent of methane emitted during the coal mining process into carbon dioxide. He also hopes to power this process entirely by the heat of methane combustion.

Though this particular grant is limited to bench-scale research, if Guliants achieves a proof of concept for this catalyst, he can propose a large-scale effort with industry collaboration.

Converting methane into carbon dioxide is one step forward in the complicated world of cleaner coal technology, which can lead to more efficient and environmentally conscious practices.

Featured image at top: An aerial view of a surface coal mine. Photo/Dominik Vanyi/Unsplash.