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To: alloysteel
"Coal has some excellent and unparalleled advantages in a number of industrial uses."

Not any more. Sorry to bust your bubble, but coal as a feedstock is simply a dead issue. The petrochemical industry has long run on natural gas. All the longwinded chemistry to convert coal to hydrocarbons is simply not either necessary or desirable, given directional drilling and fracking, and the immense shale deposits that exist in the US.

About coal's only economic usage these days is to generate electricity, and given the realities of natural gas, even that begins to lack luster, as combined cycle power plants run by natural gas are much more efficient.

Note...I spent my career in the petrochem industry, and watched the attempt by the company I worked for begin to switch from (then supposedly in short supply) natural gas feedstock to gasified coal. The full-scale prototype gasification plant that was built and run for a few years is now a bare vacant lot.

57 posted on 05/27/2017 7:59:15 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel and NRA Life Member)
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To: Wonder Warthog

Dow tried it, process ended up with Conoco, who sold it to CB&I. $billions worth of the technology is now in startup overseas.

But that’s for chemicals.

Its still kind of hard to get a blast furnace to smelt iron oxide without coke.


58 posted on 05/27/2017 8:06:50 AM PDT by Hamiltonian
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