Clean Coal Technologies Inc (OTCMKTS:CCTC) Is Gathering Momentum

In the aftermath of Donald Trump taking the President elect vote in the US, a number of industries are picking up sentiment driven gains. Coal is one of the biggest winners, with the fossil fuel having served as a key anchor point in Trump's campaign, and expectations that policies designed to revitalize the industry will follow closely post-inauguration. There are some obvious large cap plays, but there are also some currently under the radar entities well worth looking at as more speculative, high reward exposures.One of these plays is Clean Coal Technologies Inc (OTCMKTS:CCTC).The company has developed, and is now attempting to commercialize, a technology that makes coal cleaner and more efficient. These sorts of technologies can take a considerable amount of time and money to pick up mainstream adoption, and it's this time and money factor that serves as the primary risk right now. However, if Clean Coal can ride it out, and a couple of recent strategic investment announcements suggest that there is enough support capital out there for the time being, the company could literally change the coal industry with its technology.How does it work?Coal is very inefficient when compared to something like nuclear energy production. Whereas something like uranium is reusable, coal very much isn’t. Not only that, but the coal currently being used to generate power has some fundamental drawbacks that diminish its first-burn efficiency.The first is moisture content. Low grade coal has a high moisture content, and this makes it very inefficient when burned for energy production. There are a number of technologies in place that serve to remove the moisture from low grade coal, but these technologies have some inherent side effects. They can result in spontaneous coal combustion, which makes transportation risky, and their effect isn’t particularly long lasting – the coal will generally reabsorb moisture when transported. They also necessitate a pulverization process, and the reforming of the pulverized material into briquettes. This is an expensive, and drawn out process. In a nutshell, the current efforts to improve efficiency are – in themselves – costly and risky.Clean Coal's alternative is a technology called Pristine-M, and it's designed to minimize moisture from the coal without pulverization, while also improving stability of the dried-out product. A secondary technology, the similarly named Pristine Process, removes a bunch of chemicals from the product, making the coal less pollutive when burned.This latter process has an added benefit – the chemicals that are removed can be re-purposed as fuel that fuels the process itself. As such, when a Pristine facility is up and running, it is essentially self sustaining.The key to growth, of course, is getting this technology into the mainstream, and so we're looking for any sign of steps towards this as upside catalysts.We got one earlier in the year, when the company announced a Letter of Intent signed with a strategic US development partner, which calls for the latter to invest $6 million in upfront cash to Clean Coal. The deal is reported to be set to fund the deployment of the company's technology worldwide. $6 million isn’t a lot of cash in this space, and the equity issue (70%) seems high, but if it kick-starts a commercialization strategy it may well prove a smart deal.Concurrent to this US deal, the company is in talks with an unnamed Australian major domestic coal producer, which has requested a strategic partnership with CCTI to deploy its technology across the Australian market.For us, these two potential roll out pathways represent a step forward for the company, a step towards getting this technology in wide scale use in its respective markets. They also highlight Clean Coal's strategy – scoring equity driven partnerships with leading providers to fund the implementation of Pristine and Pristine-M. These partnerships may prove dilutive near term for early holders, but for those that are willing to shoulder dilution in return for long term upside potential, this strategy might be a smart play.We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on CCTC, sign up below!Disclosure: We have no position in CCTC and have not been compensated for this article.