www.dailymail.com/story/Business/+/...ye-clean-coal-conversion
Companies eye clean coal conversion
by George Hohmann
Daily Mail business editor
With Congressional action to limit greenhouse gas emissions looking more likely with every passing day, there's no shortage of entrepreneurs who want to turn coal into a clean fuel.
One company, Silverado Green Fuel, plans to break ground April 9 on a $26 million demonstration plant in Mississippi that Silverado claims will convert coal into a liquid fuel that can be produced for about $15 per barrel of oil equivalent. You can read about it at www.silveradogreenfuel.com.
Another company, Adams Atomic Engines Inc. of Annapolis, Md., wants to build small nuclear power plants that others, like Liquid Coal Inc., would use to generate the energy needed to transform coal into a liquid fuel.
Some ideas sound plausible while others seem far-fetched.
Meanwhile, for a primer on coal-burning technology and carbon dioxide storage, check out "The Future of Coal," the study released last week by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Click the link for a pdf of the 192-page full report or the 21-page summary report.
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In a story earlier this month I described the Chase office tower at 707 Virginia St. E., which opened in 1969, as "the city's first modern, glass-curtain high-rise."
That sparked an e-mail from Herschel "Ned" Rose who wrote, "I think there is an argument that the Columbia Gas building was the first modern, glass curtain office building in Charleston."
Columbia Gas Transmission's office tower, at 1700 MacCorkle Ave. S.E., was erected in 1956. Last July the company celebrated the building's 50th anniversary.
"A long time ago, Carl Frischkorn and Tag Galyean gave a presentation to the Cosmos Club entitled ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,' a critique of Charleston architecture," Rose said. "My recollection is that Carl asserted that the Columbia Gas building was the third glass-curtain building constructed in the United States and predates the Seagram's Building in New York, which is considered to be the prototypical glass curtain building.
"Interestingly, they identified the Boulevard Tower (at the corner of Kanawha Boulevard and Leon Sullivan Way) as having the best architecture in the city," Rose said. "I don't think the Capitol was part of the group considered."
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As previously reported, AT&T's logo was removed from atop the company's tower at 816 Lee St. last month. Sometime in recent weeks, new signs went up.
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If you followed the First National Bank of Keystone's meltdown in 1999, you may want to click the link to read a pdf of Judge David Faber's findings of fact and conclusions of law in the Keystone-Grant Thornton case.
Contact Business Editor George Hohmann at 348-4836.