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Ethanol, as we have addressed in earlier reports, though touted as a renewable solution to liquid fuel needs, has negative and serious economic and social impacts when it is, as in our and other temperate-climate nations, derived from agricultural produce.
A tool for calculating the true economic value of fuels that hasn't yet been well-publicized, or even really translated into plain English, is "Energy Return on Energy Invested", or, more simply, "Energy Return on Investment", most often abbreviated variously as "EROEI" and "EROI". We might attempt a summary explanation of the concept in a later dispatch; but, in brief: It can be demonstrated that it takes more energy to make ethanol from corn than will be returned in the use of that ethanol. Corn ethanol's "EROEI", in the United States, is negative. It is an investment with a negative return that will slowly fritter what wealth we have remaining away if we put our money there.
Only in Brazil, it seems, does agricultural ethanol, as made from sugar cane, which can be grown there year-around and has higher densities of carbohydrates than corn, have a positive "energy return on energy invested", and even that isn't great, relative to fossil fuel extraction and use.
Again, "EROEI" is a topic we will in future dispatches return to. But, it looks, from preliminary analyses of data provided to us by some competent assistants, that coal lies somewhere midway between petroleum, as extracted earlier in the last century, current data seems unavailable, and agricultural/other renewable sources analyzed more recently.
The EROEI of coal liquids, in one web-available, though incomplete, analysis, lies slightly below the midway point between petroleum and agricultural ethanol, but the coal liquid cost was based on indirect coal liquefaction processes, which are, perhaps, more energy intensive, and thus more costly, than other technology options. We would hope that West Virginia University could provide economic analyses, the EROI, of direct coal liquefaction technologies, such as the "West Virginia Process", which should be much more favorable.
In any case, Ethanol is a useful liquid fuel, with higher energy densities than some other alternatives. And, it can, through technology we've earlier documented, with more energy investment, be converted into gasoline.
If it is Ethanol we want, though, since it does offer some emissions benefits, relative to gasoline, when used as a liquid fuel, it's EROI will no doubt be higher if we synthesize it from coal. To further document that ethanol can be synthesized from coal, in support of our earlier citations, we submit the enclosed article, linked above, reporting on a project sponsored by our own, US, DOE, about which we bet no one in Coal Country has heard of.
And, interestingly, though this coal research isn't being conducted in Coal Country, it is being managed from Coal Country. Check out one of the key contacts:
| Name: | Driscoll, Daniel J. |
| Telephone: | (304) 285-4717 |
| Location: | NETL |
| Email Address: |
The area code, 304, is West Virginia, isn't it? Our guess is he's working out of the National Energy Technology Laboratory office in Morgantown. Someone should give him a shout, drop him an email, knock on his door.
Excerpt, with brief, but pointed, comment following:
| "Project Information | |
| Project ID: | DE-FC26-06NT43024 |
| Project Title: | Catalytic Processes for the Synthesis of Ethanol From Coal-Derived Syngas |
| FE Program: | Hydrogen from Coal |
| Research Type: | Basic Research |
| Funding Memorandum: | Cooperative Agree't (nonCCT) - Support |
| Project Performer | |
| Performer Type: | State Higher Education Institution |
| Performer: | Louisiana State University Department of Chemical Engineering 330 Thomas Boyd Hall |
| Project Team Members: | |
| Project Location | |
| City: | Baton Rouge |
| State: | Louisiana |
| Zip Code: | 70803-2901 |
| Congressional District: | 06 |
| Responsible FE Site: | NETL |
| Project Point of Contact | |
| Name: | Spivey, James J. |
| Telephone: | (919) 541-8030 |
| Fax Number: | (919) 541-8049 |
| Email Address: | |
| Fossil Energy Point of Contact | |
| Name: | Driscoll, Daniel J. |
| Telephone: | (304) 285-4717 |
| Location: | NETL |
| Email Address: | |
| Project Dates | |
| Start Date: | 10/01/2006 |
| End Date: | 03/31/2010 |
| Contract Specialist | |
| Name: | Robbins, Brittley |
| Telephone: | (412) 386-5430 |
| Cost & Funding Information | |
| Total Est. Cost: | $2,684,478 |
| DOE Share: | $1,779,899 |
| Non DOE Share: | $904,579 |
| Project Description | |
| The objective of this project is to develop a catalytic process for the selective conversion of coal-derived synthesis gas to ethanol (and higher alcohols). The process will utilize a coal derived syngas feed of 2:1 H2/CO. Performance targets for the process are an ethanol yield of 45%, with greater than 95% selectivity, and a catalyst lifetime of 3 years. | |
| Project Background | |
| Project Milestones | |
| This information is currently unavailable. | |
| Project Accomplishments | |
| Title: | NEPA Approval |
| Date: | 11/27/2006 |
| Description | NEPA approval (CX-B) was obtained for all participants in the project - Louisiana State University, Clemson University and Conoco-Phillips. NEPA forwarded to the contract specialist (12/4/2006) to remove the NEPA work restriction. |
| Title: | Management Plan Approved |
| Date: | 11/16/2006 |
| Description | Louisiana State University submitted a research management plan for review and approval. The plan required no modifications or corrections and was approved in its current form. This completes Task 1.0 of the cooperative agreement." |
If it bears emphasis: A US Government-sponsored project intended to develop liquid fuels from coal, is being conducted in Louisiana, but is, apparently, being managed from West Virginia, in an office next door to West Virginia University.
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We called your attention yesterday to a US DOE coal liquefaction project being undertaken in Louisiana, but being managed out of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) offices next door to WVU, in Morgantown, WV.
No further comment on the self-evident paradoxes inherent in that arrangement, but herein we alert you to yet another fairly recent, publicly unheralded, undertaking by our local DOE offices, in conjunction with the US Air Force as a part of their extensive coal-to-liquid jet fuel development program, which we have been able to document for you.
Note that a second link, leading to the full report, is included below, following the this excerpt from the link above:
"Release Date: August 29, 2007 | |||
| NETL and USAF Release Feasibility Study for Conceptual Coal+Biomass-to-Liquids Facility Facility Would Capitalize on Domestic Energy Resources, Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions | |||
MORGANTOWN, WV — The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE/NETL) and the U.S. Air Force have released a study that examines the feasibility of producing l00,000 barrels per day of jet fuel from coal and biomass. The coal+biomass-to-liquids (CBTL) facilities could also cut life-cycle emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary greenhouse gas, by 20 percent compared to conventional petroleum processes. The study provides a performance baseline that can be used to show how CBTL with carbon capture and storage would capitalize on domestic energy resources, provide a buffer against rising petroleum and natural gas prices, and mitigate output of CO2. The joint NETL/Air Force report, Increasing Security and Reducing Carbon Emissions of the U.S. Transportation Sector: A Transformational Role for Coal with Biomass, looks at a plant design that would gasify coal and corn stover (the leaves and stalks left in a cornfield after harvest), and then convert the gas to jet fuel using Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) chemistry. The report is the first of a series of feasibility and conceptual plant design studies undertaken for commercial-scale F-T plants employing co-gasification of coal and biomass. At full capacity, a single plant, using the base-case configuration outlined in the report, would use more than 4,500 tons of high-sulfur bituminous coal and nearly 630 tons of corn stover per day. From this feedstock it would produce—
An environmentally friendly energy producer, the conceptual plant is based on the use of “best available control technology” guidelines for sulfur, nitrous oxides, particulate matter, and mercury. In addition, CO2 will be captured and compressed for injection into a pipeline that will ship the CO2 to a sequestration site. Current and projected high oil prices, and rising concerns about dependence on imported oil, are creating new interest in alternative fuels. In the past, liquid fuels derived from coal have been unable to compete with the price of fuels derived from crude oil. The report finds economic benefits for converting coal and biomass to liquids, based on the price of crude oil. At current crude oil prices of over $60 per barrel, the commercial-scale CBTL plant configurations are shown to produce products that are competitive in the liquid fuel markets. The full report [PDF-532KB] is available on DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory’s website. | |||
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We submit the enclosed publication, "Liquid Fuels From US Coal", from our own, US, National Mining Association.
It tells almost the whole Truth of the great potential for converting our abundant coal into the liquid fuels, and industrial chemical raw materials, we're short of.
File incompatibilities and our disabled circumstances prevent us from making pertinent excerpts for you.
But, the entire document is pertinent. It should be printed on glossy paper, in it's entirety, and inserted as a Sunday supplement in every newspaper in West Virginia, in every newspaper in Coal Country.
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Among the people who have told, and who have been telling, us the truth about the resource potential of Carbon Dioxide are two Nobel Prize winners, Paul Sabatier and George Olah.
Though Sabatier won his Nobel for CO2 recycling early in the last century, George Olah is still very much alive and kicking, and at work on recycling Carbon Dioxide out of the University of Southern California's Loker Hydrocarbon Institute.
We have reported to the West Virginia Coal Association on both men's achievements, and the implications of those achievements for West Virginia, and for coal-producing states like her, relative to what we contend to be a disinformation campaign regarding the putative dangers of the CO2 raw material resource that arises, relative to natural sources such as volcanoes, in a very small way from our varied industrial uses of coal.
In another, unrelated, report, we quoted an official with the US Defense Department who, speaking of the very real potentials for converting coal into liquid fuels, referred to West Virginia as the "New Kuwait".
Even if West Virginians, and US citizens in general, are able to clear the air, so to speak, regarding what we contend to be Big Oil's disinformation smoke screen, deepened by their, perhaps unwitting, environmentalist group proxies' smog, and start converting abundant Appalachian coal, cleanly and efficiently, as we have documented beyond argument to be feasible and practical, into liquid fuels, West Virginia might now have competition for the title of "New Kuwait".
We earlier presented hard data on the measured amounts of CO2 emitted by volcanoes in Hawaii, and compared those numbers to the recorded CO2 generated by coal-fired power plants. Our little ole' coal industry was like a pygmy in a giant's nudist camp, in terms of embarrassing things that might be offensive to some.
Tropical Hawaii, as it happens, isn't the only volcanic ocean island, and isn't even the most active.
In the cold North Atlantic, the small nation of Iceland, roughly the size of Kuwait, might well be.
And, as a result of the still-active volcanism that formed it, Iceland has an abundance of two things: Geothermal energy and Carbon Dioxide.
We introduce, via the link enclosed above, a company founded to take advantage of those resources: Carbon Recycling International (CRI).
Some very brief, very pertinent excerpts from that link to their web site:
"Founded in 2006, Carbon Recycling International, Ehf, captures carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and converts carbon dioxide to renewable fuel, including renewable methanol and renewable Di-Methyl-Ether (DME). Other fuels, such as gasoline and diesel, can be derived from these feed stocks.
CRI is a venture-backed Icelandic American company with headquarters in Iceland and operations in Iceland."
And, they post a list of officers and "Advisors". Among them, we find:
"Advisors
- George Olah, Ph.D.: Nobel Prize Laureate, Chemistry, USC, USA".
Should any of our readers need a reintroduction to the Nobel-winning Dr. Olah, we submit, following, yet another, quite recent, citation attesting to his Carbon Dioxide expertise:
"Chemical Recycling of Carbon Dioxide to Methanol and Dimethyl Ether: From Greenhouse Gas to Renewable, Environmentally Carbon Neutral Fuels and Synthetic Hydrocarbons
George A. Olah, Alain Goeppert and G. K. Surya Prakash
[Unable to display image]Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute and Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California, University Park, Los Angeles, California 90089-1661
Journal of Organic Chemistry,2009, 74 (2), pp 487–498
Publication Date (Web): December 8, 2008
Copyright 2008 American Chemical Society
Nature’s photosynthesis uses the sun’s energy with chlorophyll in plants as a catalyst to recycle carbon dioxide and water into new plant life. Only given sufficient geological time can new fossil fuels be formed naturally. In contrast, chemical recycling of carbon dioxide from natural and industrial sources as well as varied human activities or even from the air itself to methanol or dimethyl ether (DME) and their varied products can be achieved via its capture and subsequent reductive hydrogenative conversion. The present Perspective reviews this new approach and our research in the field over the last 15 years. Carbon recycling represents a significant aspect of our proposed Methanol Economy. Any available energy source (alternative energies such as solar, wind, geothermal, and atomic energy) can be used for the production of needed hydrogen and chemical conversion of CO2. Improved new methods for the efficient reductive conversion of CO2 to methanol and/or DME that we have developed include bireforming with methane and ways of catalytic or electrochemical conversions. Liquid methanol is preferable to highly volatile and potentially explosive hydrogen for energy storage and transportation. Together with the derived DME, they are excellent transportation fuels for internal combustion engines (ICE) and fuel cells as well as convenient starting materials for synthetic hydrocarbons and their varied products. Carbon dioxide thus can be chemically transformed from a detrimental greenhouse gas causing global warming into a valuable, renewable and inexhaustible carbon source of the future allowing environmentally neutral use of carbon fuels and derived hydrocarbon products."
We emphasize: "Chemical recycling of carbon dioxide from natural and industrial sources as well as varied human activities or even from the air itself to methanol or dimethyl ether (DME) and their varied products can be achieved."
Note how both CRI's corporate web site and Olah's very recent American Chemical Society report echo with similar words, phrases, meanings and implications. And then consider, in light of the fact that coal liquefaction technology, as well as a method for Carbon Dioxide recycling, as we've documented, both won Nobel Prizes in the first half of the last century; that we are, somehow, "short" of liquid petroleum-type fuels; and, that our coal industries are being legislated and politicized into an impotent insignificance directed towards extinction.
Aren't we increasingly-poor citizens of Coal Country tired, yet, of having the wool pulled over our eyes and our shorts yanked up over our heads, while Big Oil and his unwitting environmentalist stooges pick our pockets and split the take with Oil Sheiks lounging under palm trees in the desert?
- Details
Pursuant to our most recent submissions concerning coal liquefaction developments in Pittsburgh and Japan, and some earlier, that made reference to the utility of some coal oils, derived from coal through distillation processes, "coking", in the synthesis of liquid hydrocarbons from coal, and, in a similar fashion, from cellulose, we present the two enclosed articles, from researchers in Spain, confirming the synergies that can be achieved by extracting coal oils and then using them as beneficial additives in coal liquefaction processes.
Excerpts from the above link, with an additional link and excerpt following:
"Document title
Coal liquefaction with anthracene oil. Influence of solvent pretreatment, temperature, catalyst and pressure
Authors
CABALLERO B. M. ; DE MARCO I. ; CHOMON M. J. ; LEGARRETA J. A. ;
Affiliation
Univ. País Vasco, escuela ing. industriales telecomunicación Bilbao, dep. ing. química medio ambiente, 48013 Bilbao, ESPAGNE
Abstract
The effect of solvent pretreatment, temperature, a CoMo/Al2O3 catalyst and pressure on coal liquefaction with anthracene oil has been evaluated. The experiments were conducted in a 500 ml autoclave with 10 g of a Spanish subbituminous A coal, 30 g of solvent, 1 hour reaction time and 400 rpm stirring speed. The liquefaction products were fractionated into oils, asphaltenes and preasphaltenes using pentane, toluene and THF as extractive solvents. The behaviour of anthracene oil as coal liquefaction solvent is very much enhanced by prehydrogenating it and by the addition of an active catalyst. The influence of temperature depends on the operating conditions such as solvent pretreatment, catalyst, pressure etc
Journal
Fuel science & technology international ISSN 0884-3759 CODEN FSCTEG; 1994, vol. 12, n7-8, pp. 1067-1079 (28 ref.)
Publisher
Dekker, New York, NY, ETATS-UNIS (1986-1996) (Revue)
Document title
Hydrogen-transferring liquefaction of two different rank coals employing hydrogenated anthracene oil as a donor solvent Univ. Oviedo, dep. ing. quimica, 33071 Ovieda, Espagne
Authors
ROSAL R. ; DIEZ F. V. ; SASTRE H. ;
Affiliation
Univ. Oviedo, dep. ing. quimica, 33071 Ovieda, Espagne
Abstract
The liquefaction of two coals, a low-volatile bituminous coal and a lignite, was studied using a hydrogenated anthracene oil as donor solvent. An inert atmosphere was employed to ensure that all the hydrogen incorporated by coal was supplied by hydrogenated compounds from the anthracene oil. Reaction products were separated according to their solubility and the following fractions were obtained: oils, asphaltenes, preasphaltenes, and an unreacted coal organic matter. The amount of hydrogenated compounds in the oil was related to the kinetics of coal solubilization
Journal
Industrial & engineering chemistry research ISSN 0888-5885 CODEN IECRED; 1992, vol. 31, n10, pp. 2407-2412 (24 ref.)
Publisher
American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, ETATS-UNIS (1987) (Revue)"
Note that both these articles, though from Spanish researchers working in Spain, were published in the United States, in English, more than a decade ago.
In any case, they, as with the earlier references we submitted, including some much earlier describing the utility of coke oven gas and tars in coal liquefaction processes, demonstrate that even coal by-products can be employed in the process of converting coal into liquid hydrocarbons for the purposes of liquid fuel and organic chemical synthesis. Moreover, they are evidence, in addition to our most-recently submitted articles from Pittsburgh and Japan, that the processes of coal liquefaction, and the enhancement of those liquefaction processes, is well-understood, among certain circles on at least three continents, essentially world-wide.
It seems far past time that understanding was extended to the public at large, especially the US public, and, most especially, the Coal Country public.
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