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| Diesel fuel from solid coal |
| 2006-05-22 |
| Mad about high gas prices? How about driving your car with coal? Two scientists at Columbia University say liquid fuels derived from coal may free the world from its addiction to expensive oil. Most experts agree that the age of oil, amid dwindling resources and spiraling prices, will be over soon. There are different ways out of that dependence, one being the process of turning solid coal into liquid fuels. The United States, thanks to huge domestic coal resources, could satisfy its energy needs for the entire 21st century with liquid fuels derived from coal, at less than $30 a barrel, Klaus Lackner and Jeffrey Sachs, energy experts at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, in New York, have said in their new paper. "(With widespread use of coal liquefication) the long term price of liquid hydrocarbon fuels may be lower than it is today, even allowing for pessimistic forecasts for oil and gas reserves," the authors write. "Even with the most conservative assumptions about learning curves," they write, it is safe to assume that synthetic fuel derived from coal will cost "below $30 per barrel." The most common way to convert coal into liquid fuels is the Fischer-Tropsch process, named after two German scientists who developed the technique in 1925. To create the fuel, coal is mixed with oxygen and steam at high temperature and pressure to produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The second step, called Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, uses a catalyst to transform the gas into liquid synthetic crude, which is further refined. Along the way, mercury, sulfur, ammonia and other compounds are extracted and can be sold on the commodities market, according to Scientific American. The only company in the world to use the coal liquefication process is Sasol in South Africa at a price between $35 and $50 a barrel. It produces a variety of synthetic petroleum products, including most of the country's diesel fuel. While other techniques, such as coal gasification and gas-to-liquids are still cheaper, Lackner and Sachs believe the process could be employed on a large scale by the world's coal powers, mainly the United States and China, who together own 40 percent of global coal reserves, according to an estimate by British Petroleum. The scientists argue that one key advantage of the Fischer-Tropsch process is that it also allows for lignites and other low-grade coals, which exist in much greater supply than high-level coals, to be turned into synthetic fuels. In Germany, where high-grade coal is in short supply but low-grade brown coal is available in vast quantities (about 230 years at current rates of production), the technique could have a real impact, they write. What gives Lackner and Sachs headaches, however, are the increased emissions of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels into the atmosphere. They believe that human-induced climate change such as global warming can be avoided through a global effort to capture and sequester carbon dioxide below ground. Such a program of geological carbon sequestration, they estimate, would cost less than 1 percent of gross world product by 2050, albeit research and development as well as investments started soon. Thus, Lackner and Sachs say "the single most urgent step" is for the United States and Europe to work together with China and India (whose energy demands will surge over the next years) to perfect clean coal technologies and reduce emissions to a minimum; they also push for more stringent efficiency standards with automobiles, including introducing hybrid cars. That is "far beyond what any nation is ready to embrace in the near future," William Pizer, energy expert at Resources for the Future, a Washington-based research organization, writes in his critique of the paper, after praising its more general findings. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #12 Trees eat carbon dioxide for lunch, producing nice clean oxygen and a very lush garden. Teach the poor Islamic widows of the world nursery and gardening skills, send them seedlings, supplying them with sustenance for their families and even control erosion and absorb the rainfall. Replenishing the destroyed rainforests that caused much of the enviros bellyaches in the first place is just another benefit of new approaches to the energy crisis. |
| Posted by: Danielle 2006-05-22 12:10 |
| #11 Good luck with that tariff thing. Look at the Donk-generated MSM-fanned faux-outrage over oil company profits. Don't want it, folks? Don't buy it. You've been on notice since '73, so your guzzler is your problem. |
| Posted by: random styling 2006-05-22 11:00 |
| #10 OS: Why have we not bothered? Back in the 70's during the oil shortage and price run-up a number of American corporations got into synfuels and made major investments to process oil shale. When the price came back down, they got absolutely hammered and had to terminate their operations, with significant losses. They learned their lesson and stayed well away during the following decades. I think US corporations would try again if we were to put a tariff on imported oil to keep the price above $50 / barrel, and made it difficult for Congress to cancel the tariff. In the long term a carbon-balanced energy cycle is needed. Nuclear fission and later fusion energy can be used to generate hydrogen to run vehicles, or to charge batteries. Cellulostic biofuels could also be economic if the technology could be developed. All these things are market driven. If the price of oil is stabilized at a relatively high level, attractive alternatives will appear. |
| Posted by: KBK 2006-05-22 10:53 |
| #9 We should also be building refinaries and nuclear plants. And open up that tiny spec of ANWR for drilling. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2006-05-22 10:43 |
| #8 This is soemthing we shoudl be doing nearly immediately. Diesel hybrids woudl probablywork very well - diesel engines work well under steady loads, and the diesel-electric hybrid woudl seem to be a natural one. After all, the Germans used their liquified coal-derived petroleum to run their diesel-eletric submarines and other war efforts (like Panzer engines) over 60 years ago in the middle of a war with half thier stuff being bombed to hell and gone. Why have we not bothered? Open up the coastal reas for gas exploration, and start building the petrochemical converion plants for coal right now. We do that, and push for tax breaks for diesel-electric hybrids, we could drop a huge amount of our need for imported petroleum (diesel has many sources, including biodiesel). |
| Posted by: Oldspook 2006-05-22 10:30 |
| #7 well you can use ethanol/methanol in cars right now without any expensive process being built. You just need to modify the engines due to the corrosive nature of the fuel. And producing it is a closed-carbon cycle. You make it from waste products from sugar production. CSR have built their first methanol plant in Queensland and generating power from it. Farm equipment used to run on it and several cars have been designed to run on it, i've posted their links on rantburg before. why muck about with this? Sure, burn coal in electricity generators but use ethanol/methanol in cars because it is simpler. Keep it simple |
| Posted by: anon1 2006-05-22 09:50 |
| #6 "SA and Iraq" Er, Iran, sorry. |
| Posted by: random styling 2006-05-22 03:06 |
| #5 The Eastern coalfields in NSW/QLD can satisfy Chinese demand and they already have the infrastructure. Here the coal is mostly in unpopulated areas that don't even have roads. If you look at a map of world coal reserves, you will find they are concentrated in developed or industrializing countries that's becuase people have looked for coal there. There are large areas of the world where no one has bothered to look because the world has abundant cheap to mine coal. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-22 03:03 |
| #4 "Most experts agree that the age of oil, amid dwindling resources and spiraling prices, will be over soon." The spiraling prices bit is true, for now. The rest is pure 100% rubbish. No actual "expert" would say this. There is a LOT of oil. There is NOT a lot of refining capacity. Even if the West reduced consumption, the slack would be taken up by others - at least for the forseeable future - though the spiralling bit would definitely soften up considerably. I certainly favor reducing dependency on unreliable sources of energy - life must go on. But it will not reduce funding to the Bad Boys. We'll have to take it away from them in SA and Iraq if we want that outcome. This energy crunch will, eventually, force us to do what we would not do otherwise. In the end, that's a very good thing. Personally, I consider petroleum to be far too valuable to be merely burned as fuel in commuter vehicles. |
| Posted by: random styling 2006-05-22 03:01 |
| #3 Here in Western Australia there are vast coalfields that have never produced a ton of coal, cos there's no demand. Providing the price is right, there will always be a demand. China just can't get enough at the right price. |
| Posted by: tipper 2006-05-22 02:51 |
| #2 There is a lot more coal out there than the published reserves show. Here in Western Australia there are vast coalfields that have never produced a ton of coal, cos there's no demand. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-22 02:31 |
| #1 SO: These guys _really do_ have something that'll work to replace oil, at a low price. It's just unacceptable to them because of CO2 emissions. SO, everyone goes back to petroleum, which also has the same CO2 emissions problems. They're looking at an alternative fuel technology that could work and adding additional criteria to it that the primary source it would be replacing doesn't meet either, and then declaring that it means it won't work. The biggest enemies alternative fuels have aren't the conspiratorial oil companies. It's the advocates of the fuels themselves. |
| Posted by: Phil 2006-05-22 02:00 |