- Details
We wrote earlier about the costly inefficiencies, and the deceptive economic and environmental contradictions, inherent in the use of agriculturally-based ethanol as either a gasoline additive, for fuel purposes, or a liquid fuel replacement. It is a simple hydrocarbon, and contains relatively low energy content.
Ethanol is a beneficial additive for gasoline, however, aside from it's popularly misperceived value as a liquid fuel.
It can enhance the process of internal combustion, serving to reduce engine "knock", and thus act as a replacement for lead and the even more toxic lead replacements the fuel industry has been forced into adopting.
Moreover, ethanol, added to gasoline, has been reported to help in the reduction of "smog", commonly attributed to pollution from automotive exhaust.
As we've documented, ethanol can be efficiently synthesized from coal, and that fact, as well as it's value as a gasoline additive, is confirmed by the enclosed report.
Some excerpts, with comments inserted:
"The effect of synthetic ethanol on octane response and fuel performance of fuel mixtures was compared to that of fermented ethanol of 99.9% purity sourced from California. It was concluded that the synthetic ethanol produced from coal compared very favorably to bio-ethanol, and it is therefore a feasible alternative to the fermented alcohol in use elsewhere in the world."
And, interestingly:
"Coal-derived synthetic ethanol is currently used in South Africa as a 12% blend with gasoline."
We'll note that the "coal-derived" ethanol is being blended, in South Africa, with Sasol's "coal-derived" gasoline, their intensive production and use of which we have thoroughly documented.
And, perhaps most interestingly, we learn:
"Synthetic ethanol from coal was half the cost of ethanol from cane."
By "cane", they mean sugarcane, which can be grown in Africa, and which would be readily available throughout the year, unlike highly-touted seasonal US sources of ethanol, such as corn. We would be forced to an ancillary conclusion that "synthetic ethanol from coal would be less than half the cost of ethanol from corn".
Especially so when it is realized that, in most instances, electricity generated from coal is required to help process and ferment, and then to distill ethanol from, agricultural produce.
Further, and importantly:
"The U.S. Senate passed an energy bill that contains a provision (RFS) that would mandate the use of bio-ethanol in gasoline to 5 billion gallons by the year 2012. The Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that this provision will cost taxpayers $5 billion over the next ten years."
So, by blind, unknowledgeable, insistence on "bio"-ethanol, an additional $5 billion will be added to our already-exorbitant bill for liquid fuels.
It has been thoroughly documented: We can manufacture the gasoline we need from our own, domestic coal, and thus stop sending our money overseas to unfriendly regimes. And, to help reduce air pollution and improve engine performance, we can add ethanol to that coal-derived gasoline; ethanol that can itself be made from coal at half the cost of making it from agricultural feed stock.
- Details
We had earlier reported on this Arizona project, wherein algae will be used to recycle, into "liquid transportation fuels" the carbon emissions from a coal gasification plant.
In this facility, the syngas produced from coal gasification will be combusted directly to generate power. Keep in mind that it could, though, instead be passed over a catalyst bed for condensation and conversion, via Fischer-Tropsch derivative technology, into additional liquid fuels.
And, to further illustrate how the true potentials haven't been fully explored or developed, recall from our earlier citations that hot syngas, once generated from coal, can be passed through a "magnetohydrodynamic" (MHD) generator to produce electricity without combustion, and then be directed into a Fischer-Tropsch catalyst bed for liquid fuel synthesis.
The excerpt:
"APS gets $70.5mn for carbon capture project
15 September 2009-- The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded $70.5 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to Arizona Public Service (APS) to expand a reuse carbon mitigation project at a coal-fired power plant.
APS's algae-based carbon mitigation project will be expanded to include testing with a coal-based gasification system. The process aims to minimize production of carbon dioxide when gasifying coal. The company will expand a concept for co-production of electricity and substitute natural gas by coal gasification, while scaling up a technology where CO2 emissions are biologically captured by algae and processed into liquid transportation fuels. APS will focus on the engineering aspects of continuous cultivation, harvesting, and processing of algae grown from power plant emissions. The host facility for this project is the Cholla Power Plant in Arizona.
Funding for the expansion falls under the ARRA's $1.52 billion solicitation for carbon capture and storage from industrial sources. The APS project is one of two existing CCS projects in the industrial carbon capture program administered by DOE's Office of Fossil Energy. The other is a Ramgen Power Systems project to scale-up a device that uses supersonic shockwaves to compress CO2 for capture and storage."
They are, in another facility, in the second project mentioned, developing more efficient industrial technology for the actual capture of CO2, i.e., "supersonic shockwaves to compress CO2". Instead of "capture and storage", however, such improved recovery technology could, conceivably, support more efficient algae cultivation, or provide more concentrated CO2 to a Sabatier or Carnol processor for the direct production of hydrocarbon fuels.
In any case, the issues of punitive Cap&Trade and the oil industry's running dog Sequestration are beginning to seem more and more like irrelevant, coal industry-crippling wastes of time and money; and irresponsible squanderings of a potentially-valuable raw material resource.
- Details
Subject: Stewart, CoalTL: Consol Holds 14+ CoalTL Patents
We introduce you herein to Dr. Everett Gorin, formerly a researcher with Consolidation Coal (Consol), by last reports retired and living in California.
He was a prolific researcher during his Consol career, accumulating more than 50 patents, some of which we will reference for you below.
First, though, some statements made about him, during presentation to him of the American Chemical Society's Henry Storch Award for Fuel Chemistry, in 1965:
"He is credited with being the inventor of the Consol "Coal to Gasoline Process" which is embodied in a pilot plant being erected in Cresap, West Virginia. This process, involving partial conversion of coal to gasoline and utilization of the residue for power generation, permits a substantial decrease in the manufacturing cost of gasoline as compared to prior coal conversion processes."
"Dr. Gorin has made significant contributions to an array of coal conversion processes, including low temperature carbonization, gasification of char, desulfurization of char, manufacture of hydrogen, synthesis of high BTU pipeline gas, direct generation of electricity from coal via fuel cells and conversion of coal to gasoline."
"One of Dr. Gorin’s most recent achievements is a direct one-step conversion of coal extract to gasoline in high yields, Dr. Gorin holds approximately 50 U.S., patents on coal processing."
In 1965, Dr. Gorin already held, approximately, 50 US patents on coal processing. Among them were:
United States Patent 3018241: Production of hydrogen-rich liquid fuels from coal, January 23, 1962 (aka, in other sources:: "Gasoline feedstock from bituminous coal").
That was far from his only patent related to the technology of converting coal into liquid fuels, though it might have been the first. Later ones included:
| T989004 | Hydrogen transfer solvent extraction of coal | December 4, 1979 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A coal liquefaction process is provided in which a hydrogen donor solvent is used in the liquefaction of the coal. The process is designed to maintain the hydrogen donor solvent in balance by hydrogenation of the spent hydrogen donor solvent and selected precursors of the hydrogen donor
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- Details
As you should by now know, we have elaborated on the direct capture, at the point of emission, and recycling, into liquid fuels, via Sabatier or Carnol technologies, of Carbon Dioxide produced by various types of coal processors, as a preferred and profitable course to follow in the resolution of carbon emission issues, as opposed to the costly, punitive and counter-productive concepts of Sequestration and Cap&Trade.
Harvesting waste or purpose-grown botanical cellulose in various forms, as well, and adding it directly to the coal being processed in a coal-to-liquid fuel conversion facility of appropriate technical design, would also serve to recycle Carbon Dioxide and help to stabilize it's atmospheric concentrations.
We have also documented efforts underway to establish "farms" for the intensive cultivation of algae as a means to capture and recycle CO2. Such concepts utilizing algae might provide additional options for the uses of algal biomass. Oil expressed from algae, for instance, has been successfully employed, with some processing, as a jet fuel and diesel replacement, as we've documented. High-cellulose strains could, presumably, also be liquefied with coal after, oil is extracted from them, via some of the coal conversion technologies, such as in Mobil's 1981 patented process we've recorded for you.
Following are a few excerpts from the enclosed article, which presents a fuller case for the use of algae to help coal help us achieve domestic energy independence. Additional comment followins.
"Sequestration prevents carbon from entering the atmosphere by capturing and storing the gas underground in geologic caverns and oil formations. Sequestration is extremely costly."
And:
"It doesn't make sense spending public dollars putting a valuable waste product (carbon dioxide) underground. Algae are a biological alternative. There are certainly challenges to growing algae near coal plants: algae bioreactors have not been implemented on a large scale, coal power plants don't have a lot of excess water, and power companies are not farmers! Growing algae is fundamentally a farming operation - controlling inputs and harvesting algae sustainably. When has the word "harvest" entered the vocabulary of a coal plant operator? Coal farmers - a foreign concept."
We all know that "Sequestration is extremely costly". And, the real cost must include a calculation for the fact that, as we have repeatedly said, "It doesn't make sense spending public dollars putting a valuable waste product (carbon dioxide) underground". Carbon dioxide is actually a by-product of our coal use. It only becomes a "waste product" when we treat it like one.
In any case, this article on the use of algae to take advantage of a valuable coal-use by-product, we're certain inadvertently, evokes again the spirit of West Virginia's State Seal: The Miner and the Farmer, together, working for the future. The excerpt concludes with the thought that "Coal farmers" would be "a foreign concept". We think, instead, that it could, and should, become a domestic ideal.
- Details
"United States Patent 4618736"
For reasons that we'll explain, we refer to this US Patent for converting cellulose into liquid fuel, awarded more than 20 years ago to British inventors, as a "WVU CTL Tech(nology)".
We are compelled to excerpt extensive passages from this Patent, and we trust you will agree that some of the implications are significant, for a number of reasons, and the excessive verbiage thus worthwhile.
Our comments are interspersed parenthetically throughout, and appended.
As follows:
"A process for converting cellulose-containing refuse into a fuel comprising forming a suspension of said cellulosic material in a polycyclic hydrogen donor substance and hydrogenating the suspension at elevated temperature and pressure in the presence of a catalyst to produce a mixture of gaseous, liquid and solid hydrocarbons having a low oxygen content and correspondingly high calorific value."
(First of all, "cellulose-containing refuse" would include scrap wood, sawdust, some crop wastes, sewage plant sludge and, yes, Intel's and News-Registers, post-, or pre-, reading. And, the "polycyclic hydrogen donor substance" is revealed to be "Tetralin" - 1,2,3,4-tetrahydronaphthalene - which is at the heart of WVU's West Virginia Process for liquefying coal and converting it into liquid fuels. - JtM)
"Filing Date: 08/06/1985
Assignee: Salford University Industrial Centre Limited (Manchester, UK)
Inventors: Benn, Frederick R. (Sale, GB2); Mcauliffe, Charles A. (Altrincham, GB2)
Application Number: 06/763049
Publication Date: 10/21/1986
Filing Date: 08/06/1985
It is well known that cellulose can be hydrogenated at elevated temperature and pressure in the presence of a metal catalyst in an oil solvent to form a mixture of gaseous, liquid and solid products. It is also known that certain hydrogen donor substances such as tetralin can be used to extract soluble components from coal and to facilitate hydrogenation of the soluble components."
(Never mind that "It is well known that cellulose can be hydrogenated" into liquid hydrocarbons. DO note that, in 1985, it was "known that certain hydrogen donor substances such as tetralin can be used to extract soluble components from coal and to facilitate hydrogenation of the soluble components." Not so well known in the United States, apparently. - JtM)
"It has now been discovered that cellulose can be hydrogenated in the presence of a hydrogen donor substance such as tetralin even though cellulose is not soluble in tetralin, to yield a product having a low oxygen content and high calorific value."
(So, the coal liquefaction and hydrogenation solvent, tetralin, specified by WVU in their coal liquefaction technology, can hydrogenate cellulose and thus help to convert it into more valuable hydrocarbons with "high calorific value". - JtM)
"According to the invention there is provided a process for the production of hydrocarbons from cellulosic material comprising the steps of forming a suspension of cellulosic material in a liquid polycyclic hydrogen donor substance, said liquid polycyclic hydrogen donor substance being a non-solvent for the cellulosic material, subjecting the suspension to increased pressure and elevated temperature to bring about hydrogenation of the cellulosic material and produce a mixture of gaseous, liquid and solid hydrocarbons having an oxygen content below 10% by weight, separating the mixture of hydrocarbon and recovering the liquid polycyclic hydrogen donor substance from the liquid phase."
(We have in other reports, via other citations, suggested that tetralin might have some potential to be recyclable, as in: "recovering the liquid polycyclic hydrogen donor substance from the liquid phase".- JtM)
"The preferred polycyclic hydrogen donor substance is tetralin. Other useful hydrogen donor substances include partially reduced polycyclic aromatic compounds such as dihydroanthracene and dihydrophenanthrene; and crude polycyclic aromatic fractions. Crude polycyclic aromatic fractions may, if desired, be treated before use to partially hydrogenate them but it is economically advantageous to omit such partial hydrogenation."
We won't herein quote references or include reference links, but: "partially reduced polycyclic aromatic compounds such as dihydroanthracene and dihydrophenanthrene; and crude polycyclic aromatic fractions" are all components of coal and coal tar, or can be readily produced from them. Those compounds, extracted from coal, accordingly, can be added to the liquefied and hydrogenated cellulose to increase productivity of the overall liquid fuel production system.
We have previously documented, from other sources, the fact that cellulose and coal can be converted synergistically together into liquid fuel raw materials, in a coordinated and partially-shared process stream that enhances and improves the efficiency of production. The importance of this additional documentation is that it further confirms the fact that coal liquefaction industry could not only supply our national liquid fuel needs through full utilization of our most abundant natural resource, but: Coal liquefaction could also lead us into a "cleaner" environment, and a more "renewable" liquid fuel supply, through the inclusion both of solid wastes, such as sewer sludge, that otherwise pose problems of disposal, and of botanically-derived cellulose, in it's various forms, that provides an inherent, integral route for the recycling of environmental Carbon Dioxide.
Coal can do all of that.
Join Friends of Coal
Be part of West Virginia's coal industry future. Together, we can continue building a stronger, more prosperous Mountain State by supporting our miners and communities.
West Virginia Coal Association
The West Virginia Coal Association has been the voice of the coal industry for over 100 years, advocating for safe, responsible mining practices and supporting the communities that depend on coal.
Join the FOC
Become a Friend of Coal and download our app to stay connected and support the industry.
