I thought the main process was called the Fischer-Tropsch process. It's in large-scale use in only one place in the world, the Sasol plant in South Africa.

Here is some information on the chemistry:

http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/t ... /coal.html

I haven't been able to find industrial numbers - I'd love to know the "actuals" from Sasol, i.e. how much coal goes in, where does the hydrogen come from, how much oil-equivalent is produced, and what by-products are produced.

Also of interest would be the break-even costs; I could swear that above $25/barrel, this process becomes competitive with crude oil.

You need about 1 km² pr 20 MW of available electricity from windmills.
They can't stand so close, because they interfere with eachother then.

So with the above figure of 905 000 MW, you need an area of roughly 42 000 km². That's about the size of Denmark.

Here is a pretty detailed presentation on the economics of a coal to liquids plant for Wyoming. There is just way too much info to take in. At current prices it would have a internal rate of return of about 75%. One key draw back I think is the sensitivity it has to the price of coal. It's base case assumes $5/ton. It is still profitable at $10/ton but the IRR is only marginal. The thing is the current price of coal in the PRB is about $8/ton, and the spread between the PRB and Appalachia is currently huge, so it is likely that Wyoming coal could increase as the transportation bottlenecks are removed. One Item I did find interesting is that they found it makes economic sense to combine a CTL plant with an ammonium nitrate plant.

Rentech presentation April 14 2005

Coal prices

[quote="nero"]One Item I did find interesting is that they found it makes economic sense to combine a CTL plant with an ammonium nitrate plant.
[quote]

I visited the Sasol plant a few years back. They explained that the main purpose of the plant was to create diesel, but in the process you get different types of 'waste' chemicals. E.g. ammonia. So instead of dumping it, it only makes sense to feed it to another plant to make something useful out of that. And that process has waste of it's own and so your diesel plant turns into quite a big facility that creates maybe 20 different useful chemicals, all sold for profit.

Sasol treats each plant as a seperate entity that must buy the chemicals from the other entities - and they all have to make money. Very interesting stuff.

I have been wondering, since I believe CTL is about the only halfway feasible source as a replacement for oil in the medium term, about the max rate of production and/or rate of increase in production that could be achieved when "push comes to shove" as it were. For purpose of this discussion I am ignoring potential eviro impacts and how expensive it would be.

I am assuming that since the US has large coal reserves production could be ramped up. I am unclear at what rate though (i.e could it replace the decline in oil production after peak). This rate of increase and the max. production rate surely is not representative of a hubbert curve as it relates to reserves, since it has to be mined. There may be 100+ years ot coal reserves left, but your problebly not going to get 20 mbd of liquid out. Anyone seen any estimate on this?

Yes,excluding environmental concern for the moment, I also am interested in what rate could be achieved realistically, as I keep obsessing over and stressing rate. This is one of the most important components in my opinion. It doesn't matter how many trillions of whatevers of pseudo-oil treacle you have in the ground somewhere, if the rate of extraction/processing is limited, it doesn't really change peak oil outlook very much. Of course, realistic ramping up times might change in a big hurry under the right conditions, but just as easily, ramping up may prove virtually impossible if we are trying to increase production suddenly, just when we are being hit the hardest economically.

With pollitical figures once again advocating more coal use it seemed like a good time to bump this thread.

They also don't burn as much coal at night. Plus India and China will keep these crude oil prices high even if we (USA) start using electric cars. Electric cars suck, they can't go as fast, expensive, use tons of energy, small, takes hours to fill up, power outages would ruin people, nobody would be able to escape from natural disasters since there's no power. No car maker is even thinking of making such a car.

People are looking towards hydrogen cars over electric ones since they are more greener. Which proves that half of society is retarded.

Batteries need to be replaced often, takes hours to charge, traffic jam and everyone's battery runs dry, speed is to slow, battery gets to hot, just tons of problems associated with battery cars.

I do find myself wondering what the true cost of Coal to Liquid fuels is. The oft repeated figure I have seen is Lignite to Diesel at 2 bbl/ton yeild ratio. Lignite is a lousy fuel for power plants, very low density compared to harder coal types. Heck half the time it looks like solidified brown mud! According to the EIA TABLE Lignite was selling for $12.07/ton in 2006. Because Lignite is one of those stable comodities that doesn't bounce around a lot in price and is rarely if ever exported because nobody uses it unless they can get it dirt cheap. Hell it costs me more than that for fill dirt if I have a home improvement project!

Anyhow, presuming the Federal Governement, meaning the taxpayers, foot the bill to build CTL plants near all the Lignite resources int he USA so that the operator has no initial capital investment, how much money could they make? From that number you can figure out how much they can afford to invest in building the plants, assuming the Taxpayer are not actually going to do the building.

Any educated guesses? Pupp, Dante?

Assuming CTL is economic at $25 - $45/barrel, the expected ramp up should max at 5.4-mbd in 2030 and plateau for several decades.

Large supplies of coal. Combined with a long-used proven technology which can convert coal to liquid into a clean pumpable liquid with low burnoff emissions- CTL. Both are now readily available at competitive costs.There are vast available coal deposits in the USA, China, India ,Canada, and Australia, allowing enough liquid coal for scores, maybe hundreds of years, even if demand accelerates.

Interesting audio podcast about CTL in the USA and South Africa can be heard PODCAST HERE.

Not sure what to make of it as I had to turn the volume up as the speakers is rather soft spoken ad hard for me to hear compared to most others I listen too.

Coal to Liquids is the generic term used to describe the process of converting a gas into a liquid hydrocarbon product. This technology has already been tested and proven by numerous companies including major oil companies. The combination of UCG and CTL is subsequently called Coal to Liquids (CTL), as the initial energy source is coal.

How much is linc energy paying for all these new account names to be created promoting their company anyhow? They seem to pop up regularly in all the coal related threads on PO.com for the last couple of months.

In this case the statement is wrong, CTL was created a long time before the Fischer-Tropsch process of completely gassifying the coal and then reformulating the gasses into liquid fuels. The earliest forms were coke ovens with petrochemical extraction and recovery that produced large volumes of Kerosene (coal oil), Ammonia (fertilizer), solvants (benzene, naptha), Creosote, Asphalt, and a host of associated chemicals as well as a solid residual fuel, Coke.