Socio-Economic Benefits

Refining coal, rather than simply burning it, has a host of benefits beyond the financial windfall including:

• Lowered emissions of CO₂ (BTX is converted primarily into paint and plastics thus trapping about 8% of the carbon).
• Producing low emission diesel - which has a Cetane number of 78, (almost twice that of conventional diesel) and increases miles per gallon and thus further reduces CO₂ emissions.

In addition to the obvious environmental benefits, Coal21^st ™ also enables reduced dependence on volatile foreign sources of oil because of the petrochemical products. This improves the balance of trade, energy independence and other issues of great importance for both industrialized and developing nations.

Example: If 500,000 tpd of coal is refined to produce 250,000 tpd of char (for about 25,000 Mega-watts of coal fired power), the Coal21^st ™ coal refineries would off-set 640,000 tpd of imported oil.