Saskatchewan is sitting on a massive energy source that could fuel our vehicles and power our homes and businesses for centuries to come, without contaminating the environment with harmful emissions, including greenhouse gases.
[…]
Cruickshank, NuCoal’s president and CEO, and Burns, its managing director, are proposing to a build coal gasification plant that will turn 6,000 tonnes of coal a day into 150,000 barrels of gasoline a day for about $650 million.
If you think that sounds ambitious, they plan to build 10 such plants, turning 60,000 tonnes of coal a day into 150,000 barrels of gasoline per day, for a cool $6.5 billion.
h/t Eric A.
Good catch by Atlantic Jim in the comments – “Good to see that the editors were wide awake on this one. 6000 tonnes for 150,000 barrels a day or 60,000 tonnes for 150,000 barrels a day?”
Good to see that the editors were wide awake on this one.
6000 tonnes for 150,000 barrels a day or 60,000 tonnes for 150,000 barrels a day.
No idea about the technology involved, so anyone here have an idea which one is correct? The latter seems more likely to me.
The problem with this is it needs $90 oil to make any sense. The good news is, $60/bbl is the new $20 so perhaps soon $90 will be the new $30.
Theres companies that have plans for stuff like this in Alberta as well, AlterNRG comes to mind.
It really puts the damper on peak oil fears and even pisses off the greenies even more, as once the price of fuels rises turning coal or other carbon products (trash and wood) into transportation fuels makes more sense then say making hydrogen, but don’t worry once we run out of coal the H2 economy will come. Sometime around 2300.
Now, to cut a gasoline deal with the USA.
Is bullshit a potential energy source? That would be worth looking into.
AtlanticJim: The numbers I’ve seen equate 1 tonne of coal into ~1.5 bbl of fuel. So it seems both numbers are off but the later seems closer.
Must be the law of diminishing returns.
Interesting.
Would that be the Fischer-Tropsch process developed in Germany, in the 1920’s?
The US air force has stated that they are going to fuel their planes with gassified coal.They say its up to the companies to figure out how to get around the regulations.
I believe SaskPower has done studies on the feasibility of gasification. The problem is not with the science but the capital cost and returns. It is a complicated but doable procedure on the chemistry side but the costs for a plant doubled from the initial estimates. Of course, it is probably superior to costs and returns from wind and solar but ‘green’ energy has better PR value.
Considering that 150000 bbls of gasoline weighs around 17,527 tonnes, I think they may break a few laws of physics to acheive the first number.
Cheers duffman and Trevor. I was thinking 6000 seemed a tad light.
And 6000 tonnes/day is pretty easy target for a decent sized pit. 60,000/day is going to be a serious mining operation over several pits I am thinking.
Good luck getting environmental approval for that kind of production, let alone the approval for 10 plants. There is reason you don’t see new oil refineries being built…….
One figure must be after carbon tax.
not to worry about the US of A. they have way more coal than Canaduh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#World_coal_reserves
we all have lots at 90dollar oil and even more at 150 dollar oil .
just a guess , but at about 200$ a barrel , Ill bet Alberta has more reserves than Saudi.
at this rate is going to take centuries to flood LA and NYNY. heck we wont even be able to takeout Amsterdam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
Well why we are putting up big ass fans all over the place and wiping out all the birdies too boot,
the Chinese are buying every commodity and commodity based technology they can get their hands on.
They had been hording copper haven’t looked for awhile to see if they are still at it.
At the rate they are going they are gonna own the planet lock, stock, and barrel.
I think it’s 6000 to make 15000. For 650 mil of capital costs that’s not very much.
“I think it’s 6000 to make 15000. For 650 mil of capital costs that’s not very much.”
At todays oil prices paid for in two years. Factor in double the cost, four years, minus maintenance and retrofitting every couple of years.
Actually, if they did manage to get all 10 up and running, that would equate to about 20% of Canada’s gasoline consumption.
Not an insignificant figure.
I wonder how similar this is to the Standard Oil technology (traded to IG Farben for the rights to certain drugs)which powered the German war machine in WWII. Coal to gasoline is not a new idea.
This could be a public safety hazard….
The Greenies will go balistic to stop this….perhaps suicide bombers….
Their goal is to eliminate ALL forms of energy except the most expensive and unreliable…..
Several have declared that the worst possible scenario for GAIA is the discovery of a cheap, reliable energy source.
These folk seek to eliminate ALL forms of modern transport—except fruit-fly’s diesel bus and the jets which take them to their conferences(paid vacations).
The former looks like a better deal 😉
Seriously, I believe the technology is out there. It is just a matter of industry saying “The hell with waiting for government grants, let’s just do it now”. Our problem is that these days, everyone expects the government (read: you taxpayers) to ante up the dough for the R&D.
speaking of things environmental:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/091026/national/commons_protest
flash mob indeed. more like flash in the pan mob. buuuuuut wait 10 to 30 years for these youngsters to click into the realization life isnt that black & white.
6,000 tonnes of coal a day or 60,000 tonnes of coal a day is still an awful lot of ‘carbon’ based fuel stock.
Even if they convert all that to Unicorn juice and use it as fuel for cars, it is still a ‘carbon’ based fuel.
So how will that “fuel our vehicles and power our homes and businesses for centuries to come, without contaminating the environment with harmful emissions, including greenhouse gases”?
Gassifiers produce combustable hydrocarbon gas similar to propane and byproducts are mostly inert ash. What other waste comes from the process are easily contained and either disposed of or reused in other applications.
Gasifiers do not produce gasoline.
They work by cooking the usefull hydrocarbons out of low grade fuels and trapping the product and the byproducts.
Propane when combusted produces CO2 and H2O.
Unless you believe that co2 is a pollutant then you could say they are a clean because they take an otherwise messy fuel andconvert it into a relatively clean fuel.
There are billions on tons of coal in North America.
You can also gassify the mass of most landfill sites and get the same result.
250 billion tons in North America. second only to Asia ,
that long term inland sea , say devonian to cretaceous did us well. a great carbon sink that we can utilize now , 65 million years later.
burn baby burn
From nucoalenergy.ca:
“NuCoal’s main objective is to create a clean, modular Coal to Liquids Polygen plant. The first stage of each plant will involve 10 or more trains of process modules, each train producing 15,000+/- barrels of gasoline per day where each plant will produce not less than 150,000 barrels of gasoline per day. The plants will be designed to use NuCoal’s lignite as the main feedstock.”
When NuCoal says zero emissions, they are only considering the conversion process, not the consumption of the resulting fuel.
http://math.ishard.net/