While you are right about natural gas for power plants, I think what he's trying to do is to make fuel oil and diesel, which might be more economic. A liquid fuel has considerably more energy density than natural gas in transportation uses.
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/news/techlines/2013/13005-OSU_Researchers_Advance_Chemical_L.html
Here is the study that 5 million taxpayer dollars was spent on....in a welfare money for scientists scam. Hey they gotta eat too! Who here is so cruel to deny a university carbon capture scientist a living and his grad assistants too? They gotta eat, those beans and eggs dinners get old fast. I see no mention of coal>>>liquids which would make some sense for transportation. All I see is Rube Goldberg BS to capture and compress CO2 and send it somewhere (did not read all the way down) So, as I suspected (before even reading this study) all they are doing is reinventing the wheel but a much much more expensive wheel. All stemming from CO2 paranoia, the great global warming scam and racket. Read James Delingpole for more about shameless green rip off artists with their foreign owned windmill companies despoiling the English countryside these scammers are in the UK. And getting subsidies up the wazoo. Plenty of money to be made on global warming
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=coal-australian&months=120¤cy=eur
Thermal coal is roughly $100/metric ton. This process adds $40/ton when installed in a new coal to electric plant. To retrofit an older plant is either impossible or absurdly high (my guess)
The $40 figure is probably a lie so double this $80. So you are doubling the cost of the coal you burn to make electric. Just trash and decommission the old coal burning plants and built these white elephants. The numbers might work out under Obama style socialism with some green subsidies