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.
I think Slick Willie turned that into the Grand Teton Monumnet with an EO and took it off limits for production. This was to help his Indonesian friend Riaddy who also has a lot of clean coal to sell.
Obama is trying to do eleven more of those "monument" things to take lots of oil and gas off the market.
Is there any doubt the Democrats are trying to destroy America?
I believe lots of water is needed for these conversion processes. That could be a problem. Plus they polute like an oil refinery does....That’ll upset the greenie halfwits and stop development. They rather we bankrupt ourselves importing oil and building their dumbass windmills
Greenies are going to really regret it if they make us into a low energy use/3rd world nation. They are too soft and dumb to survive in such a situation
It was common for use in lamps and was called "coal oil" in my neighborhood. It looked like diesel fuel or kerosene.
Ooops, must have dropped a 2 somewhere in my math. Still, if you’re used to moving around a bunch of oil, moving aroung 4 times as much coal by weight should be doable. Not easy, but doable. As someone else mentioned (you?), putting the gasification plant next to a coal mine sure would make sense.
Probably all irrelevant anyway, at least for several years. Obama and the donks will almost certainly kill this tech on the econut altar...
You are thinking of the Grand Escalanti Staircase in South East Utah.
The Wyoming coal is in central Wyoming between Rock Springs and Rawlins, and around Gillette in Northeast Wyoming.
There are others, but those are the ones being mined right now.
Thank you for the correction. Yes, it was the Grand Escalanti Staircase I was thinking of.
You are right. Their real goal is to destroy the American economy.
So we see that liquid fuel has been made from coal for a long time. A friend of mine is attempting in his basement to develop a process for doing that using high-sulphur coal, in a manner that the sulphur does not end up in the liquid nor the atmosphere.
The newly announced process will succeed only if it results in liquid products that compete price-wise with those derived from crude oil, and it does not produce nasty waste.
“One is a theory ...”
Oil from coal is indeed a fact, and some of it has been sold commercially. The claim by those guys about their new process says nothing about how it is better than other processes. I won’t be an investor until I hear a lot more.
Fischer-Tropsch method?
the Fischer-Tropsch process
I don’t know if this particular outfit is dealing with this particular process or not... and I only mention this as something that has happened in the past and is going on today.
As for this particular outfit, it remains to be seen what their process is... it might be something completely different or some variant...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.