[mmm]

If so, why is it currently being pursued in South Africa? And didn't Nazi Germany use it with some success? And isn't China talking about using it?

[Aaron]

Not at all.

It's just much less efficient than conventional oil.

[Kingcoal]

In Pennsylvania they are building a coal to diesel plant Ultra clean fuels that will use the mountains of waste coal that are left over from the coal age. In this case, it probably makes sense because the coal isn't being used for anything else.

[Trab]

The Nazis used Coal Liquification in WWII toward the end of the war simply because they had been cut off from all of their other oil supplies, and that's the only way they could power their tanks and other mechanized war machines.

It was more of a desperation measure than anything else.

[BW3]

Google "sasol china".

Two plants, $6 billion, 60,000,000 tons of oil per year.

[Lucas]

Hello all

I'm new here, but not new to the topic. I'm a junior in highschool and I'm really coming down to the wire on a paper about the possible alternatives to conventional oil. I've basically ruled out high production volume from heavy oil, tar sands, and oil shale b/c of various constraints, but I'm having a hard time finding good information on what the coal/gas-to-liquids is likely to do in the next 20 years or so. This is what I think might happen, but I don't know if I'm right:

1) Prices will soar, and demand will have to be cut.
2) Investors will kick of conversion technologies, but it will take time for them to come on line. In the mean time, oil crisis!
3) Since gas-to-liquids (GTL) is cheaper to build, that will happen first
4) Coal-to-liquids (CTL) will come along later (10 yr or so), as the GTL industry proves some of the relevant technology, and begins to hit max production
5)PRices will still be high, and the wastefulness of CTL will bring about pressure to develop renewable alternatives.

How does that sound?

[t]

www.starrotor.com

[Doly]

Lucas, your scenario sounds about correct. What is exactly the cost of coal-to-liquids compared with oil nowadays?

[Andy]

Lucas,

Sounds like the route we are likely to take in addition to nukes all to our collective environmental detriment.

[ehv_nl]

I seem to have a little trouble finding numbers on how many barrels of oil can be produced from a ton of coal using the Fischer Tropsch process, and at what cost. Can someone give me an insight in these numbers?

I heard that the world has currently a 250 years worth of coal supply, and I read somewhere (I forgot where, will check) that a years supply is worth 10 million barrels of oil, which would mean if we would try to make all the current demand of oil from coal that the total reserves of coal would be worth 250/9 = 27.7777 years. I would like to see more specific numbers, though.

[Ranglepung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Guest LC', 'Y')Ou could put windmills in the barren windswept Mid-West at 1000 / sq mile. The plains have about 2 million square miles. So there's ample room. Not all great wind sites, but ample room. The problem is shipping it to Chicago/St. Louis/ etc. There aren't any transmission lines near there. But they could be built.

[nero]

Here is a pretty detailed presentation on the economics of a coal to liquids plant for Wyoming. There is just way too much info to take in. At current prices it would have a internal rate of return of about 75%. One key draw back I think is the sensitivity it has to the price of coal. It's base case assumes $5/ton. It is still profitable at $10/ton but the IRR is only marginal. The thing is the current price of coal in the PRB is about $8/ton, and the spread between the PRB and Appalachia is currently huge, so it is likely that Wyoming coal could increase as the transportation bottlenecks are removed. One Item I did find interesting is that they found it makes economic sense to combine a CTL plant with an ammonium nitrate plant.

Rentech presentation April 14 2005

Coal prices

[Devilboy]

[quote="nero"]One Item I did find interesting is that they found it makes economic sense to combine a CTL plant with an ammonium nitrate plant.
[quote]

I visited the Sasol plant a few years back. They explained that the main purpose of the plant was to create diesel, but in the process you get different types of 'waste' chemicals. E.g. ammonia. So instead of dumping it, it only makes sense to feed it to another plant to make something useful out of that. And that process has waste of it's own and so your diesel plant turns into quite a big facility that creates maybe 20 different useful chemicals, all sold for profit.

Sasol treats each plant as a seperate entity that must buy the chemicals from the other entities - and they all have to make money. Very interesting stuff.

[ohanian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'V').B. Price: A slick slope

Unending oil binge, economic hubris may doom us yet

By V.B. Price / Tribune Columnist
May 28, 2005

Let's say we really are facing what urban critic James Howard Kunstler calls "The Long Emergency," when plentiful oil begins to dwindle and prices go beyond the bounds of wanton and undisciplined spending that booming growth requires.

...

We know Australians have been making gasoline from coal since World War II and that shale oil in vast quantities exists in the Green River Valley of Wyoming.

[Antimatter]

We use amazing new technology to create petrol from crude oil

[biggav]

I suspect the author meant south africa rather than Australia (though I'm not sure if they still do it - it was more an apartheid era necessity due to difficulties in getting hold of oil).

[Kingcoal]

What's so amazing about this? It's been going on since WW2 when the Nazis were doing it. Read up on some of the articles here regarding shale oil, coal to gas, etc.

[Dan1195]

I have been wondering, since I believe CTL is about the only halfway feasible source as a replacement for oil in the medium term, about the max rate of production and/or rate of increase in production that could be achieved when "push comes to shove" as it were. For purpose of this discussion I am ignoring potential eviro impacts and how expensive it would be.

I am assuming that since the US has large coal reserves production could be ramped up. I am unclear at what rate though (i.e could it replace the decline in oil production after peak). This rate of increase and the max. production rate surely is not representative of a hubbert curve as it relates to reserves, since it has to be mined. There may be 100+ years ot coal reserves left, but your problebly not going to get 20 mbd of liquid out. Anyone seen any estimate on this?

[ubercrap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dan1195', 'I') have been wondering, since I believe CTL is about the only halfway feasible source as a replacement for oil in the medium term, about the max rate of production and/or rate of increase in production that could be achieved when "push comes to shove" as it were. For purpose of this discussion I am ignoring potential eviro impacts and how expensive it would be.

I am assuming that since the US has large coal reserves production could be ramped up. I am unclear at what rate though (i.e could it replace the decline in oil production after peak). This rate of increase and the max. production rate surely is not representative of a hubbert curve as it relates to reserves, since it has to be mined. There may be 100+ years ot coal reserves left, but your problebly not going to get 20 mbd of liquid out. Anyone seen any estimate on this?

[JohnDenver]

Coal liquefaction is going to play a big role on the downslope, so let's note a few things about it:

1) The sound bite that "oil is a feedstock with no substitutes" is a myth. All petrochemicals can be made from liquefied coal, and coal gas (syn gas). There is no significant difference in chemistry between natural crude oil and synthetic crude produced from coal (except that synthetic crude is cleaner). Detergents, pesticides, fertilizer, plastics, synthetic fibers and synthetic rubber can all be made from coal. Also, coal can be profitably liquefied in the U.S. today, provided that the price of crude oil stays above $35/bbl.

2) Clearly, these new synthetic liquids are going to be called "oil". They are chemically identical to oil products, and they do the same jobs as oil products. They will also be mixed together with oil products in the refining step. It's reallly pointless to separate the two.
This means that coal reserves are in fact oil reserves. Total recoverable coal reserves in the U.S. are estimated at about 250 billion short tons. At 20,754,000 btus/short ton, the U.S. has 5.2 x 10^18 btus of recoverable coal reserves. The thermal efficiency of coal liquefaction is about 65%. So if we liquefy the coal reserves of the U.S., we get 3.4 x 10^18 btus of synthetic oil. There are about 5.8 x 10^6 btus in a barrel of oil, so total reserves of oil located in coal reserves in the U.S. is roughly 5.9 x 10^11 barrels = 590 giga barrels. That's about 80 years of oil at current U.S. consumption rates of 20 mbd.
The point is not that all of that coal will be liquefied. However, a substantial portion of it will be, and that portion needs to be reclassified as "new oil".