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We've earlier reported that methanol is a pretty good liquid fuel in it's own right, and that you can extract it from coal, waste wood, sewer sludge and some garbage. Even previously-loved Intel's could be tossed into the feed.
And, we've documented how methanol can itself be converted into perfectly useable gasoline, as with Exxon-Mobil's patented "MTG", Methanol-To-Gasoline, process.
Now, in this article, we discover that CO2 - generated in both the processes of burning coal and/or converting it into liquid fuel, and then burning that - can be captured, from the atmosphere (and, one expects, from various exhaust flues), and directly employed to make more liquid fuel.
As we've been saying, the "wastes" from coal utilization processes should be seen as raw material opportunities.
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The excerpt:
"In the long term, recycling of carbon dioxide captured from the air itself will be possible." — Nobel Laureate George Olah; Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, University of Southern California.
CO2 recycling and energy independence. We get CO2 from burning coal for power and from converting it into liquid fuels, don't we?
Why don't we set our national will on making the "long term" a lot shorter? We got to the moon in ten years, didn't we?
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As we've been saying, as more of these things get done, the costs and efficiencies will improve. And, the Indonesian raw material is, in essence, "brown" coal - lignite - which has lower BTU content and much higher waste, non-volatile "slag", than WV bituminous. It might compare to WV coal mine waste piles, which thus might have the potential to be exploited - "recycled" and reclaimed.
December 27, 2008
Sasol making 1.1 million barrel per day Coal to Liquid Operation in Indonesia by 2015, Competitive prices with Oilsands and Deep Water Oil
South Africa's Sasol Synfuels has a US$10 billion project to build 1.1 million barrels per day of oil equivalent with a massive coal to liquid operation in Indonesia.
Until recently coal to liquid cost $1 billion for 10,000 barrels per day of oil equivalent. So the Sasol operation is eleven times more cost effective at $1 billion for 110,000 barrels of CTL liquid per day
If the price of ten billion dollars for 1.1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day could be hit by 2015, then such a project would be competitive with the pricing and timescale of oilsand projects and deep water oil. It would also be competitive with the scale of those other large oil projects.
The environmental impact of CTL is discussed at gristmill. Look at the discussion to see some less biased assessment. 1.08 times the CO2 of diesel.
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"Texas Syngas, Inc is a Houston based company focused on providing “Energy Solutions for the Future”. The company utilizes low cost hydrocarbons such as biomass, coal, and waste products in an environmentally friendly process to produce low cost energy - electricity, steam, hydrogen, methane, transportation fuels and chemical feedstocks."
You'll note, as we've been urging, the inclusion of various other raw material feed stocks in addition to coal, especially biomass. That way, we'll be able to keep our cars on the road after we've redirected our coal to more valuable chemical manufacturing processes.
Texas Syngas, by the way uses some technologies that differ in certain respects from the Fischer-Tropsch, Bergius and our own "West Virginia" processes for gasification/conversion, etc. As we've been saying all along, there are a lot of ways to skin this particular ole' cat. Why we're not yet employing any of them is a mystery that should get your investigative reporter juices flowing.
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Should the link not open, the article appeared in yesterday's Alaska Journal, and should be readily available through a quick search.
But, an excerpt:
"The U.S. Defense Logistics Agency is developing a pilot program to supply a blend of alternative fuels to Air Force and Army units operating in Alaska, officials with the agency said March 11 at a conference in Anchorage.
Mark Iden, deputy operations director of the Defense Energy Support Center, a part of the Defense Logistics Agency, said his agency is soliciting proposals from industry to supply a 50-50 blend of alternative and conventional fuels.
The agency wants the alternative fuels made through the Fischer-Tropsch process, a chemical process that converts carbon-based material like biomass, natural gas or coal to high-quality liquid products."
There have been other, spurious, reports that the Air Force ended their coal-to-jet fuel program. Obviously not true.
Remember: A Dept. of Defense under secretary referred, last summer, when speaking in Pittsburgh, to West Virginia as the, potentially, "new Kuwait", based on her coal reserves and the reality of coal-to-liquid technologies.
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