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For Pete's sake:
"WVU Experts Meet with Chinese Coal to Liquids Leaders".
Couldn't find a publication date, but, some excerpts:
"Morgantown, W.Va.—Seven officials from China's leading research and corporate energy organizations met today with West Virginia University faculty and U.S. Department of Energy and National Energy Technology Laboratory leaders to discuss advances in converting coal to transportation fuels while capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions."
"The meeting was organized by the U.S. China Energy Center, a program of the National Research Center for Coal and Energy (NRCCE) at WVU. The Shenhua Group in China is developing the world's first commercial direct coal liquefaction (DCL) plant in northwestern China at a cost of about $1.5 billion. With support from the U.S. Department of Energy, WVU and Shenhua Group have been evaluating the economic and environmental impacts of the DCL technology."
"WVU participants included:
- Richard Bajura, director, National Research Center for Coal and Energy
- Jerald Fletcher, professor, Div. of Resource Management and director, U.S. China Energy Center
- Tim Carr, Marshall Miller Professor, Dept. of Geology and Geography
- Elliot Kennel, research professor and John Zondlo, professor, Dept. of Chemical Engineering"
And, hey!, it's Morgantown - where WV's Senator Jennings Randolph took off in a coal-powered airplane, in the early 1940's !, to fly to Washington and promote coal-to-oil.
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The attached article was published by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
An excerpt:
"Over the last few years, the number of activities throughout the world focusing on UCG has rapidly increased. The Chinchilla project, operating from 1997 to 2003 in Queensland, Australia, demonstrated the first long-term UCG pilot in the Western world. That project has now advanced to the stage of raising capital for a coal gas-to-liquids pilot that will make ultraclean diesel and aviation fuel."
You do recall, do you not, the Underground Coal Gasification project in the Pine Grove area, way back in the day?
Point is:
Even where we have coal seams that can't be mined because of depth, thickness or difficult ground conditions, we can still gasify the coal, and make liquid fuels from the gas.
Another, perhaps more important, point:
Livermore isn't investigating whether you can, or how to, convert coal-derived syngas to liquid fuels. That, by implication, is a given. They are developing more ways to get the syngas.
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For Pete's sake!
Our very own Senator Randolph:
"... and a professional pilot flew in an aircraft powered by gasoline derived from coal. The small, single-engine airplane flew from Morgantown, West Virginia to National Airport in Washington, DC..." --- in 1943!!!
And,
"In 1942 he proposed a Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act, which would fund the transformation of coal and its products into other useful forms of energy. To promote the viability of synthetic fuelSynthetic fuel ...".
C'mon, Brother. We think it's time you blew the lid off this thing. Don't you?
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As you can tell from the stilted English, this a European Union release.
They refer to their coal conversion method as "Low Temperature Carbonisation" - meaning they don't want to give the USBM credit and call it by it's real name: The Karrick Process.
Just sending it along to affirm that others are at work on this, and that Karrick will turn a lot of carbonaceous material (which, in the case of the Schuykill, PA, CTL plant, means coal waste) into stuff we can fill our gas tanks with.
Corn stalks, sawmill dust and used toilet paper would work, too.
We have a lot of options.
PS. An excerpt:
"Summary
For sustainable and sound economic development there is a strong demand for extended clean power production, which is affordable by cost, utilising extended volumes of renewable biomass and continuously increased waste streams as well, and also offering high level of process safety with comprehensive long term management of residual process streams.
Among various available technologies for clean energy production, the Low Temperature Carbonisation (LTC) fuel pre-treatment technology is looking promising for future project implementations. The Low Temperature Carbonisation (LTC) technology is essentially a process for producing fuels – solid, liquid, and gaseous – from coal and other carbonaceous material, such as biomass and organic wastes. It is a value added technology, since it converts widely available low-grade fuels to high-grade fuels, while removing hazardous air pollutants, such as Sulphur, Chlorine and Mercury, which can be separately treated or recycled. Thus, produced Clean Coal can be utilised in power production, making LTC a complete and cost efficient revitalisation option. LTC is a preventive environmental protection technology that may utilise available domestic fuels and may contribute to compliance with environmental legislation in energy production. It is therefore consistent with both demands of an energy market operating under open market principles and sustainable environmental protection.
In the framework of this work-package an overview of Low Temperature Carbonisation (LTC) technology is attempted, including its present status, properties, yields and utilisation of LTC chars, a survey of competitive carbonisation methods, carbonisation conditions and their effect, and short assessment of advantages, economic and technological development of LTC"
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We couldn't track down the original, but the following is excerpted text from a 2007 Penn State PR release:
"Penn State University has really been on a green roll these last few days, getting three stories featured on our site. One had to do with a novel way to extract hydrogen from water using nanotechnology and sunlight and the second had to do with using coal and papermaking waste to make a liquid fuel. This third story again has to do with coal-based liquid fuels. Instead of looking at paper mills as potential sources for products to add to coal, they are looking to existing fuel refineries. They believe that many different fuels, including jet fuel, gasoline substitutes and diesel substitutes, can be made from coal if you add the correct refinery by-products. Penn State researchers have been working on this idea for a while now, first focusing solely on jet fuel. But, they found that while making the jet fuel they also ended up with certain amounts of fuel oil, diesel fuel and gasoline as co-products.
The refinery by-products of coal tar, refinery solvent and decant oil are being mixed with coal in different fractions. Fuel-grade coke, which is a fuel used in the steel industry, has also been used. Penn State should be familiar with the steel industry being that Pennsylvania is known as the steel capital of the U.S. (and hence the Pittsburgh Steelers football team). No mention was made of the emissions of these various fuels, so we are not suggesting that these are green fuels in any way. In fact, they are almost assuredly not green in any way. None of that means that the fuels will not be used, of course. Hopefully, the nation and the world will be on to bigger and better things by then!
[Source: Penn State]"
Note especially the mention the mention of papermaking waste and oil refinery by-products as co-raw materials, with coal, for making liquid fuels - something we've earlier suggested would be possible.
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