Earlier this week, I made the two day drive from Maryland to Tennessee. Throughout much of West Virginia and East Kentucky, I saw a lot of signs of coal production, past & present. This prompted me to do some research:
- Is there a technology that converts coal into oil, or some kind of liquid energy substance?
- At scale, what would the cost be to create a gallon of this liquid fuel, converted from coal?
- What are the coal reserves of America?
So, my question to SDA’s resident energy expert, Brian Zinchuk, and everyone else, is this: Why is there so much hand wringing from the usual suspects over oil running out, when this coal will extend liquid fuel usage for many years to come?
The Germans made liquid fuel out of coal in WW2, so the technology exists and it isn’t new. I know nothing about the economics of it, but I imagine it’s more expensive that using oil.
Here’s a synopsis of that:
“Nazi Germany established the world’s first technologically successful synthetic fuel industry to achieve energy autarchy. Driven by the Four-Year Plan of 1936, the state heavily invested in two primary processes developed in the 1920s:
Coal Hydrogenation (Bergius Process): Invented by Friedrich Bergius, this method produced high-quality aviation and motor gasoline from coal.
Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (F-T): Developed by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, this process converted coal gas into diesel, lubricating oils, and waxes.
By late 1944, approximately 75% of Germany’s fuel was synthetic, with 25 plants producing roughly 124,000 barrels per day.”
Synthetic Fuel, Code Named: Genesis
Trailer: The Formula (1980)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bes62O0Y5-w&t=5s
The hand wringers are wrong. Oil continues to be discovered globally and eventually as increased prices reflect a slowing of discoveries, NG, in greater abundance, can be substituted in transportation. Enlightened regimes with sane regulatory features will eventually displace all other systems with nuclear power freeing up NG for such uses. Coal-based liquification and gasification is likely a costlier alternative which might be feasible when NG is declining a century or so in the future but out of the question where Carbon-phobia is still in vogue.
“The hand wringers are wrong. Oil continues to be discovered globally and eventually as increased prices reflect a slowing of discoveries,”
Yeah, they were shrieking about ‘peak oil’ back in the 90’s and early 2000’s. Then new oil discoveries shut them up ( much like what is happening in the climate change industry).
ha ha ha ‘carbon phobia’.
like, we call ourselves a ‘carbon based life form’ but the ones in the other room are announcing carbon will be the end of us?
Unless there is some scientific or technological breakthrough, liquid fuels will always be prefered as they are easier to store, transport and use than gaseous fuels or electricity. Even with electric drive trains, fuel cells will be preferable to batteries.
Oil, or rather fuel, from coal is old hat. We have enough fossil fuel to last hundreds of years yet, I suspect. We have enough fissile material to effectively last for ever, with fast breeders and thorium. By which time fusion should have been made to work. So, I’m not worried.
So, I foresee fission plants making liquid fuels.
progress in cold fusion is very slow. but measurable.
lm hopeful for the generation that really needs it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
Not only Germany, but South Africa used this process and augmented it during the boycotts. Absolutely can be done, and is technically very feasible.
regarding hydrocarbons in the ground, l cannot believe coal is from buried prehistoric forests, nor is oil in all its forms from rotted dinosaur guts.
there are qtys so large in the same place and so deep there is no ‘model’ to explain that.
true, there is this ‘swamp gas’ thing and ‘peat bogs’, but grossly insufficient.
it has to be geological in nature. further proof: why is the atmosphere of Neptune full of methane? dinosaurs living and breeding at -100C ?
i was always getting scolded in grade school for questioning the standard account.
so what l *really* learned was to shaddup. crikey, if l had to go thru those 8 years now sumbuddy would have paid a horrendous price.
There is something of a Holy War between those who believe hydrocarbons are of organic origin and those who believe in a non-organic (abiotic) origin.
I accept that coal is old forests and much oil is of organic origin too. But, let’s not forget that methane and other hydrocarbons can be created abiotically. There are whole moons with seas of methane, in our very own solar system. So, I do not regard abiotic origin of organic compounds in the Earth as unreasonable.
It’s a ridiculous conversation. Regardless of the conclusion its resolution has no bearing on life in the 21st century.
To answer Robert’s 3rd question, it is generally believed the US has 300 years of coal reserves in the ground.
“There is something of a Holy War between those who believe hydrocarbons are of organic origin and those who believe in a non-organic (abiotic) origin.”
Yes, and the irony is that in all likelihood they’re fighting over nothing. While most crude oil shows markers that indicate it’s of organic origin, we know that processes in the mantle produce methane (natural gas) which readily polymerizes into crude oil via the Fischer-Tropsch process mentioned above.
Great Plains Synfuels Plant in North Dakota produces up to 170 million Standard cubic feet of Synthetic Natural Gas from Coal along with a bunch of other products. There were a bunch of other projects to do similar or Coal to Liquid, but they keep getting cancelled during Democrat regimes.
Even sends CO2 to canada for enhanced oil recovery through a 205 mile pipeline
Correct! And CO2 for enhanced oil recovery is old hat as well. We’ve been doing it since the early 1970s but now it’s called ‘Carbon Sequestration’.
“Why is there so much hand wringing from the usual suspects over oil running out, when this coal will extend liquid fuel usage for many years to come?”
Because the Chicoms/Russians/Soros are paying them to wring their hands and shriek, that’s why. There’s good money in being a Greenie or Communist organizer. #TheDonald made a whole speech about it on Thursday.
Same reason we don’t have nuclear the way we should.
Some people need an existential threat to counter because it gives them a purpose and feeling of importance.
Whether the threat is real or imaginary doesn’t matter to them.
Robert, Robert, Robert … synfuels of the future are coming from algae!
Algae can be converted into various types of fuels, including biodiesel, biobutanol, and jet fuel, by extracting the oily part of the algae biomass. This process involves using techniques similar to those used for traditional biofuels, but algae-based fuels are still in the research and development stage and are not yet cost-competitive with fossil fuels
Yeah … but the BIG breakthrough is just one more $Trillion Green New Deal Bill away. When Congress gets wrestled away from the BadOrangeMan … algae fuel will be on its way!
Besides the Germans during WWII and the South Africans during the 1990s creating fuel from lignite there is also a process currently being used to create engine lubricating oil from natural gas.
Silly question, in the ’60s there were coal mines in Nova Scotia. Is there any coal left and at what price point does it become economically viable to mine it?
I don’t know if the coal is still there, but the price point has to be higher for the miners to actually go back to work as opposed to the LieBerals paying them to stay home and vote LieBeral.
I wish you’d passed through my town a little further south!
Well, the coal is located deep enough underground that mining it is even more dangerous than mining used to be. Local people are generally pro-employment and pro-money, but organize opposition to specific proposed locations and methods for mining. “You can’t strip-mine ROCKY TOP!” You can’t legally strip-mine any part of Virginia, and i’m glad. You can dig deeper into the Earth if you really want to, and can afford the machinery–but you risk unexpected, very expensive results. I think the future of the Point of Virginia will be producing our own solar power, phasing out “grids.”