Coal to Liquid Fuels

coalnewbie · Post by **coalnewbie** » Wed. Jun. 01, 2011 12:58 pm

I know the Germans did this is WWII but in this paper is contained a review of all these fancy new technologies and coal still comes out on top.....

http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Biofuels/W ... nders.html

...... coal to liquids with F.-T. generally appear favorable in comparison with standard petro-diesel production.

That surprises me - what a resource we are studiously ignoring!

Post by **Richard S.** » Wed. Jun. 01, 2011 2:05 pm

There's no private investment in this because of the volatile oil market, the magic number is somewhere in the $50 a barrel range. If the market bottoms out like it did in late 2007 you go bankrupt.

The US military was working towards producing all their jet fuel domestically using this process, certainly makes sense especially considering the national security ramifications. That program was dropped by the Obama administration, proabaly rightly so because of the huge drop in conventional crude.

Once it is absolutely clear oil will stay above the required threshold to make this profitable you will see this tech ramp up.

There is a good article on it here, lots of benefits including it's a cleaner fuel than regular diesel. Using a co gen type facility you could kill two bird with one stone. This process requires a lot of heat, the "waste" heat from the liquid coversion process can then be used to generate electric.

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba656

Benefit: Secure Energy Source. A number of nations produce fuel through the FT process. China, Qatar and South Africa lead the world in current production and new capacity under construction. [See the figure.] While Qatar turns natural gas into liquid fuel, both China and South Africa use coal. South Africa supplies 30 percent of its transportation fuel in this way. The United States has more coal than any other nation, with currently estimated reserves of 270 billion tons. CTL production utilizing coal would increase the nation's energy security.

* America uses approximately 1.1 billion tons of coal annually — or about 3 million tons per day. Given that it takes approximately one-half ton of coal to produce a barrel of CTL diesel:
* It would require 2.3 millions tons per day to replace all domestically refined diesel.
* That would increase annual coal demand by 839 million tons, or 83 percent.

The increased demand would still leave America with nearly 100 years of coal reserves — but the supply is even greater, since the FT process can utilize “junk” coal that is unusable for most purposes.

Barnzy · Post by **Barnzy** » Wed. Jun. 01, 2011 7:22 pm

Jack Rich Family, the owners of Reading Anthracite, Reading Stove, etc. has been wanting to do
this by Frackville, PA., off I-81 for a while now.

Check Out the website at http://www.ultracleanfuels.com

AA130FIREMAN · Post by **AA130FIREMAN** » Wed. Jun. 01, 2011 7:28 pm

Lets hope they keep coal for coal. Supply and demand,price goes up. If it is widely used to make liquid fuels, might as well use fuel oil for heat

dlj · Post by **dlj** » Wed. Jun. 01, 2011 10:43 pm

AA130FIREMAN wrote:Lets hope they keep coal for coal. Supply and demand,price goes up. If it is widely used to make liquid fuels, might as well use fuel oil for heat

I don't think they'd be turning anthracite into liquid fractions, too expensive a feed stock. They'd be using bituminous... So I wouldn't fret over that one...

dj