Liquid coal touted as good fuel bet if ethanol fails

Graeme

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1476

There will be huge pressures to go this route, in spite of the obviously catastrophic consequences for global warming. Individual Americans may say they care about the future of the earth, but if it interferes with their ability to climb into their cars and go where they want or "need" to go, their concern soon evaporates.

We will continue destroying the earth to keep our insane car culture alive.

And others around the world, particularly in Chindia, are scrambling to imitate our most destructive behaviors.

But I'm sure it will all turn out just fine. Rolling Eyes

Graeme

Yes, it great that you are concerned about CO2. However, they say in the article, quote:

dorlomin · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Aug 05, 2007 Posts: 1151

Coal to liquid is a very mature technology. Not really any breakthroughs being announced here are there? Its pretty widely assumed that CTL will be big energy player as soon as the capital appears to build the plants. It is actualy the single biggest argument against artificialy high oil prices from OPEC, if they have all that oil and create investment enviroments for the damned coal to be competing with there crude the price would collapse to whatever was set by the amount of coal to liquid available to the market.

The two main arguments against are CO2 and production rates of coal. How much new coal can be brought online and when?

Graeme

Good questions. I read somewhere that South Africa provides 30% of its oil requirements with CTL.

In addition, if biofuels can provide 70% of the oil import, who needs crude from the ME!
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Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.

joewp

Oh sure, coal is the answer...

Newcastle Thermal Coal Rises to Record on China Cuts

dinopello

I'm sure this has been discussed before. There is a fair amount of coal, and we are going to use it and the question is what is the best way to use it (least damaging) and as with all limited resources, what are the best things to use it for (priorities). But, you can't find a different way to use the resource and all of a sudden think you have more of it. If you use it for one thing, there will be less available and more expensive for everything else.

anarky321

least damaging? to who?

its amazing people are still worrying about the environment when in reality we'll be out of energy way before we do any SERIOUS damage, not to mention the environment will mostly recover in less than a century after we hit bottom

the question shouldnt be "how bad is LTC to the environment" it should be "How long will LTC stave off the inevitable"; its going to be painfully clear soon to even the dimmest bulbs that ethanol is not an option when your populace cant afford to eat

the answer ifor LTC is no more than a decade, not at this rate of energy use, unless there's some serious demand destruction, but then we get into the problem of global economic meltdown which is just as deadly as far as the next 10 years are concerned

the achilles heel of capitalism is the end of growth, the great depression almost killed it in the 30's, this time the situation is at least 10x worse

dinopello

sicophiliac

I really dont think coal to liquids is necessarily a dirty and polluting way to produce energy, aside from CO2 emissions diesel fuel produced from coal is much cleaner vs oil sourced diesel. If we offset the coal we use now for electricity and instead use solar thermal, pv solar and wind power and nuclear for baseload power then the extra CO2 emitted is essentially neutralized. Great for jet fuel, big rigs and also various other petroleum based products, cars mean while could largely be powered by biofuels/electricity.

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1476

sico, have you been listening to too many of those "increasingly clean coal" industry adds?

James Hansen sees the rapid reduction in coal burning as the most important part of a plan to avert runaway global warming (although it is possible that this is already underway).

We have to move rapidly away from fossil-fuel based energy, not find new ways to use them.

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1476

Oh, and you are obviously not up to date on the latest about bio-fuels. Recent work published in Science pretty well proved that in almost all cases they lead to net increases in global warming gases beyond the fossil fuels they are supposed to replace.

Government support of bio-fuel production has been a huge boondoggle that was very good for a few mega-corporations (adm, monsanto...) and for some agribusiness farmers. But they have been a disaster for the living systems of the earth, already under lethal assault from pollution, global warming, introduced exotic species...

Starvid

Valdemar

CTL is essentially what we had before bio-fuels, as Starvid states. It's basically us going in a circle in a misguided attempt to carry on regardless.

Runaway climate change or a few more years running blind. Let the people decide.
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"Nothing survives. Not your parents. Not your children. Not even stars."
-Pinbacker, Sunshine

Starvid

I don't think climate change is going to be that big an issue, especially not "runway". There aren't enough fossil fuels around with a reasonable ROI and EROEI to push CO2 concentrations that high.

The IPCC are ten, a hundred times worse than the USGS when it comes to estimating reserves. Possible because they don't have any geologists around...
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Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.