Coal pollution mitigation Since air is mostly nitrogen, combustion of coal often leads to production of nitrogen oxides. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are primary causes of acid rain. For many years--before greenhouse gasses were widely understood to be a threat-- it was thought that these by-products were the only drawback to using coal. These by-products are still a problem, but they have been greatly diminished in most advanced countries due to clean air regulations. It is possible to remove most of the sulfur dioxide (SO), nitrogen oxides (NO), and particulate matter (PM) emissions from the coal-burning process. For example, various techniques are
Lower sulfur oxides Jupiter's moons, and Venus contain significant amounts of sulfur oxides. Some compounds reported by early workers such as the blue "sesquioxide", SO, formed by dissolving sulfur in liquid SO appears to be a mixture of polysulfate salts of the S and S ions. These species are all very unstable and are observed as fleeting intermediates in the gas phase. At a few millibars pressure, the relative stabilities are SO > SO > SO. Sulfur monoxide (SO) and its dimer (SO) have been trapped at low temperature. Disulfur dioxide (SO) is a dimer of sulfur monoxide. It has C structure (planar).