Coal-Burning Cars?

Thanks to +Congressman Morgan +Griffith for sharing the link to this +Fox News report:

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/02/27/could-clean-coal-power-cars/

Could coal be processed in ways that produce reusable metal instead of pollution? Sounds like the stuff of great science fiction, and even greater news if the technology turns out to be viable in the real world.

Makes me wonder whether existing coal could even be used to manufacture more coal. We know that coal is made, not "born." Some of us synthesized coal in our fifth grade science classes...well, peaty, low-grade "lignite" coal anyway. (What comes out of my +Sun-Mar toilet is one grade below peat on the way to becoming completely carbonized, or becoming coal.) The reason why we still have coal mines rather than coal factories is that, so far, the process of synthesizing coal is not energy-efficient. But I've never completely lost hope that this could change.

(What's with the little + signs in this post? Well, theoretically, Google has "improved" Blogspot such that typing in + signs before the names of people or businesses automatically gives them a Google+ boost. We highly recommend Sun-Mar toilets, respect Congressman Griffith, and figure that somebody out there has to have set up a Google+ account for Fox News, so why not test the system on these names? If you're seeing four little + signs instead of links to Google+ pages, this is an indication that the system isn't working. If you're seeing some + signs and some links, this is an indication that the system is working but not all four names are in the system.)