Posted on 03/06/2006 6:42:02 PM PST by grandpa jones
JACKSON - Hitler had one big problem in his plan to conquer the world: Germany had no oil or gas. The invasion of Russia was supposed to fix that problem, but that came to a bitter end.
Germany's brilliant engineers came up with a solution. It was called Fischer-Tropsch, a complex chemical process that extracts fuel from tar, coal and lignite. These bulky raw materials were broken down into simple hydrogen and carbon molecules, then reconstituted into liquid fuel. After the failed Russian invasion, Germany embarked on a massive campaign to build the new plants.... After the war, the discovery of cheap oil and gas relegated Fischer-Tropsch to a minor role in chemical engineering until, 50 years later, we started to run low on fossil fuels. Last week, I flew up to Aberdeen, Miss. Van Tine picked me up at the airport and within minutes we were at Stan Pearson's dream come true. With run-of-the-mill refining equipment, they have built a pilot plant that is turning "wood waste" into car fuel at a cost of 85 cents per gallon. With a full-scale plant, Van Tine is confident they could produce 214 gallons of fuel per ton of biomass. If they do, they would quadruple ethanol yields from existing methods and prove biomass could indeed fill America's gas tanks.
(Excerpt) Read more at zwire.com ...
the plants use the co2 to make wood
really? They build plants to make wood?
The biomass takes it from the atmosphere before it becomes biomass.
When the article includes falsehoods, it makes the real stuff look doubtful. The world's reserves have more than doubled since 1980. That is after meeting a continually rising demand.
Remember Paul Erlich???
who's on first?
Any major oil company would suffice, except Exxon. Exxon seems to want to confine their oil production to oil wells for the time being, but they too could invest in this kind of production at any time without warning.
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