Charles Bullinger with his slightly long gray hair and blue eyes bears a bit of resemblance to an Einstein in blue jeans, minus the mustache.

Bullinger says it's his design team, not his appearance, that makes him look like a genius and it's the energy of it all that makes him want to stay through the end.

Bullinger is the lead engineer on a prototype project at Great River Energy's Coal Creek power plant that may someday show up on coal-fired plants as far away as provincial China, and as close to home as South Heart.

He and his team are leading the way in removing water from coal. Lignite can be described as "black water" for the fact that it's about 40 percent liquid. The prototype coal dryer, with four patents pending, is a mechanical monolith tucked away in the northeast corner of the 21-story boiler house.

It will have cost $11 million, plus change, and eventually be worth its weight in silver, if not gold, for the financial benefit it creates.

The coal dryer went into 24/7 operation three weeks ago, after running part days since January.

Plant manager John Weeda said he's pleased as punch that the prototype dryer worked nearly flawlessly from day one.

"We started it and it ran, with only some adjustments. There were no significant flaws," he said.

It's drying about 75 tons of coal a day, though eventually it'll dry 115 tons, about one-fourth of the coal needed to fuel Unit II of the power plant.

The lignite water vaporizes out of a stack and the dried coal is pulverized into dust before it's blasted into the boiler and burned to make steam that drives the turbines.

So far, so good.

Or, as Bullinger puts it, "It's a big shoe and a tight fit."

The coal dyer, which works a little bit like an air popper for popcorn, removes about 25 percent of the water from the coal.

The benefits are several.

First, the dried coal burns hotter. It delivers more bang for the buck, by way of Btus.

The second benefit follows from the first. Less coal is needed to get the same amount of power.

The third benefit follows the second, because less coal in the boiler and less reaction from the water means the potential for 25 percent less sulfur dioxide and 7 percent less nitrogen oxide and mercury up and out the stack.

There's a fourth benefit, too. The dried coal pulverizes more easily, so there will ultimately be less wear and tear on the machine that grinds the dried popcorn-sized chunks into powdery dust.

Bullinger said it looks like the project will save operations and maintenance money over the long haul. At the same time, the environment gets a kinder and gentler exhaust from the emissions' stack.

All of this is especially important in view of impending air quality regulations. By 2012 - sounds like the distant future, but it's near at hand - Great River and other operators will have to remove nearly all of the sulfur and nitrogen oxide that leaves the plants now. The Environmental Protection Agency will eventually lower the boom on mercury emissions, too.

The coal-drying project is a foot in the door for those future regulations. Bullinger said Great River may build three more dryers over the next several years and dry all the coal that goes into Unit II, so the plant will have four feet in the door of reduced emissions.

The first dryer is considered a prototype and it's loaded with instruments that let Bullinger and his team study what's happening to the coal.

They're finding something completely serendipitous.

It turns out that as the coal is dried, it segregates by weight, heaviest on the bottom, of course.

The heaviest coal has the highest concentration of mercury, a heavy metal, along with nitrogen oxygen and other nasty things that no one wants.

Bullinger calls it a "concentration of bad actors," that could be made to exit the stage before the energy production even begins.

"The coal dryer could end up being a phase-one mercury machine. Emission-wise, that blows it out of the water for us," he said.

Bullinger and the coal dryer team will continue to tabulate data and take everything they learn to Great River's board of directors this summer.

"We'll let them know if we've got a horse to ride," he said.

The data will help the board determine whether to put three more dryers on line and start talk about doing the same thing to Unit I.

Great River's project, along with the patents, could be a horse that rides around the world.

Nearly half of the world's coal reserves are made up of low-ranked coals, which, like lignite, are loaded with water and sulfur dioxide.

It may be that Great River has found the way to get 5 percent more efficiency out of most of the coal on the planet. To resort to slang vernacular, just do the math on that, Bullinger said.

Weeda said because the prototype has been partially supported by the Department of Energy's Clean Coal grant program, the company is obligated to market its technology.

"This could be good news around the country and around the world, as well," Weeda said.

The project started several years back as something that excited Great River's engineers, who regularly talk about ideas that make most people's eyes glaze over.

Turns out, it actually is exciting for its international and environmental potential.

"It's fun to be part of the solution," Bullinger said.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 1-888-303-5511, or lauren@westriv.com.)