NEWS ANALYSIS/COMMENTARY: Technology for Turning Coal into Liquid Fuel Has Been Around for 80 Years; All We Need is Capital—and a Way to Stop Big Oil from Killing the Efforts
By David M. KinchenEditor, Huntington News Network
Hinton, WV (HNN) – When Gov. Joe Manchin proposed a coal liquefaction plant for the Mountain State this week, he wasn’t talking about some pie-in-the-sky scheme decades away technology-wise. Turning coal into liquid fuel for cars and trucks has been around since the 1920s; the Nazis used it during World War II to power their war machine and apartheid South Africa used it when many countries wouldn’t trade with the racist country. South Africa still produces 150,000 barrels of fuel a day from its rich coal resources.
The process is called Fischer-Tropsch, named for the German scientists who developed the process in the 1920s for converting coal to diesel fuel, which powered German tanks and trucks. A story in the Aug. 2, 2005 Billings (Mont.) Gazette by Jim Gransbery mentions the process and tells how “energy technology firms in the United States and elsewhere have fine-tuned F-T to make both its process and products pollution-free.”
The version proposed by Manchin would focus on the development of “state-of-the-art, multi-product facilities that would adapt to the changing needs of the marketplace and produce whatever product is most needed at a specific time – be it natural gas, diesel fuel, jet fuel, hydrogen, or chemicals.” This sets it apart from the two major federally-funded coal gasification plants that are operating near Tampa, FL and Terre Haute, IN.
Gransbery’s article – worth looking up via the link at the end of this story
for those who want the complete text – says that Manchin’s counterpart in
Montana, Gov. Brian Schweitzer, has become a fan of liquefaction of coal
“because the price of oil is at unheard- of levels, and the United States
needs alternative energy supplies,” Gransbery writes. Everyone said that
liquefaction would be economically practical only when oil sells for more
than $40 a barrel. It’s almost $60 right now.
Both Schweitzer and U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. are in favor of the F-T process, suitably modified. Baucus has put tax incentives for the process into the new energy and highway bills, and several U.S. energy technology firms have perfected the method. The raw material for liquefaction in the Big Sky state would be 533 million tons of federal coal acquired by the state of Montana three years ago near Ashland, Mont., Gransbery writes. What’s missing? Money, of course: That’s what’s missing for most of us! In this case billions of dollars worth of investment capital would be needed. Schweitzer has been quoted as saying: "there are a great number of believers, potential partners, who will put their money down" on the project.
There should be, if Big Oil doesn’t try to kill this puppy before it can bark and bite! My big fear is the lobbyists for Big Oil, which has a stake in the status quo, will try to team up with pseudo-environmentalists to squelch the project, as well as the one in West Virginia.
We’ve got to break our habit of depending on foreign sources of energy. The French produce almost 80 percent of their electricity from nuclear power plants. We’ve got to overcome our irrational fears – fed by mainstream media nervous Nellies – of nuclear power. If the French -- most famous for handbags and 256 varieties of cheese (just kidding, they’re one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world!) can do it, we – the nation that invented the technology for nuclear power – certainly can.
In his press release, Manchin said: "We are committing today to a complete coal conversion plant package, comprised of property, a permitting plan, identified and ready fuel supplies, and a knowledgeable and trained work force. These efforts, along with those of other states, will ensure West Virginia's energy independence well into the future. With any estimated 50 billion tons of coal reserves in West Virginia that could make up to 3 barrels of liquid fuel per ton, it just makes common sense for our state to take the lead in advancing our efforts to the next level."
Along with solar power, wind power, nuclear power, clean coal technology, WE CAN ACHIEVE energy independence. We just need the will to do it – the same kind of will behind the Manhattan Project and the Space Program that resulted in a moon landing in 1969. A bonus is that the plants would be built inland, far from the disasters that regularly ravage the Gulf Coast, most recently Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Editor’s Note: More information on coal conversion technology, including details on the Florida and Indiana gasification plants, can be found at the Department of Energy web site:
http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification
Link to Jim Gransbery:
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2005/08/02/build/state/25-coal-fuel.inc