Posted on 02/19/2010 2:44:12 PM PST by engrpat
ARLINGTON - How would you like to buy gasoline made from $30 domestic oil versus $75 imported oil?
Researchers at UT Arlington say they've found a practical way to make synthetic crude from cheap coal that's common in Texas.
They say they are just weeks away from signing a contract for commercial production.
People have been turning coal into oil for 100 years or more.
But researchers at UTA say they've invented a better way to do it. So much better, they expect to sign a deal with an oil company within weeks.
"This is east Texas lignite coal. We go from that to this really nice liquid," said Professor Brian Dennis of a light synthetic crude, easily refined into gasoline.
Professor Dennis and a team of scientists have been working on it for about a year and a half.
"I had the idea for this while I was walking to my car. And I ran back to the lab and I started drawing it out in my notebook," he said.
They only showed Channel 8 an early model reactor which doesn't look like much, but it's the only one they can show us.
The current reactor is secret, extremely efficient and they say emits no pollution.
"We're improving the cost every day. We started off sometime ago at an uneconomical $17,000 a barrel. Today, we're at a cost of $28.84 a barrel," said engineering dean Rick Billo.
That's $28 a barrel versus $75 we pay now for imported crude.
Texas lignite coal is dirt cheap - less than $18 a ton. A ton of coal will produce up to 1.5 barrels of oil.
UTA researchers expect micro-refineries to be built within a year, turning coal into cheap oil and producing new jobs.
It's still fossil fuel, but scientists say it could bridge the gap until greener technologies catch up.
Doesn't seem very efficient to me.
Doesn't seem very efficient to me.
Remember cold fusion? I need to hear something about the chemistry behind this process.
Same thing with South Africa. SASOL is the SA big oil company and has technology like this.
Anyone know how many potential barrels of oil Texas may have? I would love TX to screw the Saudis with TX coal oil.
***This is east Texas lignite coal.***
This is the poorest form of coal. A good use for it!
The democrats will ban this shortly.
Texans and Americans better make this happen because Saudi and ME oil and the money going to the ME is undermining the West and spreading Islam through the Muslim brotherhood.
I wonder how much is in Texas? I wonder how many possible barrels?
I have never considered that. You have made a light come on in my head. Thanks.
Fine, we'll just use it in TX then.
We will just have to wait and see.
Of course, but the money people don’t give a rat’s a** about terrorism - money trumps all for them.
I love Texans - I agree with you - I may move to Texas!
Mine too.
Riadys in Indonesia - where Hussein is from. Clinton practically made all of Utah and national park because they have so much high quality coal in UT. UT should seceeed because it would be one of the wealthiest countries in the world with all the coal and this process.
Utah would be wealthier than Saudi Arabia.
The State of Arkansas has large reserves of lignite. The rights to those reserves were bought up over 30 years ago by the oil companies. The lignite was suppose to be used by electric power plants but it was never used.
Thanks, I missed the spelling by a mile.
Yes and my car can run on water and when that is not available, I’ll use static from the air.
Ummmm..., making oil from coal has been around for quite a long time, and has been successfully done. The key here is not that it was done at all, because it was done a long time ago.
The key here was the cost factor. And that's merely an "incremental thing"... and from the article we can see that they've "incremented it down" to a very reasonable cost factor, compared to the oil coming out of the ground... :-)
...
Inasmuch as natural oil deposits in Germany were so few, long before the war efforts had been made to discover synthetic methods of producing gasoline and oil. In view of the country’s wealth of coal, it was logical to look in this direction for a solution. Both coal and petroleum are mixtures of hydrocarbons, and the problem was how best and most efficiently to isolate these elements from the coal and transmute them into oil. By the time Hitler became chancellor in 1933, four methods of achieving this were either available or in early stages of perfection.
The first process produced benzol, a byproduct of coking. Benzol was used as a fuel in admixture with gasoline. The drawback to increased production of benzol was the fact that it was tied to the quantities of coke that were needed at any given time, and these in turn were determined by the production limits of crude iron.
The second method produced a distillate from lignite coal. Brown or soft coal was gently heated, and the tars and oil were then extracted and distilled into fuel. The end product was of such low quality, however, that only 10 percent could be used as gasoline, with the remaining 90 percent useful only as heating oil and diesel fuel.
A third formula, the Fischer-Tropsch process, was, at that time, still in the research and testing stage. Under this system, coal is compressed into gas which is mixed with hydrogen. By placing this mixture in contact ovens and adding certain catalysts, oil molecules are formed. Further treatment of this primary substance generates fuel, chiefly diesel oil.
Coking and distillation extracted oils and tars from coal, and additional cracking refined them into gasoline. The Fischer-Tropsch process and a fourth method, the hydrogenation process, changed coal directly into gasoline. As coal is a hydrocarbon containing little hydrogen and gasoline is a hydrocarbon with a high hydrogen content, the problem consisted of attaching hydrogen molecules to coal, thereby liquefying it. This was the basis of the hydrogenation process, which required high temperatures and high pressures. By 1933, this method had been thoroughly tested and was ready for large-scale practical application. The advantage of the hydrogenation method was that as primary material it could use the tars from the distillation of both lignite and bituminous coal (although the distillation of the latter was not possible on a large scale until 1943) as well as lignite and bituminous coal directly.
...
Remember cold fusion? I need to hear something about the chemistry behind this process.
The difference here in your comparison to cold fusion -- is that it hasn't been used at any time to power anything for commercial use -- while -- making oil from coal has been used commercially, in the past.
So, one is a theory and the other (namely oil from coal) is an accomplished fact and an accomplished fact, commercially... :-)
See post #38.
Doesn't seem very efficient to me.
Have you ever seen how many tons of dirt have to be processed to make an ounce (or however much) of gold? LOL...
It's all in the profit. If you can make a profit, it's efficient, and that's all it takes.
And you saw the numbers expressed in the article -- and that's what you call "profit".
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