Like much about the very real, and practical, technologies that exist for converting our abundant coal into the liquid fuels we need, the language of this entry on the subject of coal-to-liquid conversion is so obscure, one might be forced to conclude deliberately so, that the true message is difficult to ascertain.
Explanation follows the excerpt:
"A New Low-Temperature Synthesis Route of Methanol: Catalytic Effect of the Alcoholic Solvent
Jianqing Zeng, Kaoru Fujimoto, and Noritatsu Tsubaki
[Unable to display image]Guangzhou Institute of Chemistry, CAS, Guangzhou, 510650, P.R. China
School of Engineering, The University of Kitakyushu, Wakamatsu, Kitakyushu, 808-0813, Japan
Department of Material System and Life Science, School of Engineering, Toyama University, Japan
December 4, 2001; Copyright © 2002 American Chemical Society
The effects of different alcohols as reaction solvent on the synthesis of methanol from CO/CO2/H2 on solid Cu/ZnO catalyst were investigated. In the presence of some alcohol, especially 2-alcohol, as reaction medium, the reaction of methanol synthesis proceeded with high activity at temperatures as low as 423−443 K, much lower than the temperature in the present industrial methanol production process. This method is very promising to become a new technology for low-temperature synthesis of methanol where complete purification of syngas is not necessary."
First, "CO/CO2/H2", is, simply, syngas, as we can, through well-known and well-established processes, obtain from coal.
Then, note: "methanol synthesis proceeded ... at temperatures ... much lower than the temperature in the present industrial methanol production process" in "the presence of ... 2-alcohol".
Your "2-alcohol", we submit, is your basic corn squeezins - i.e., ethanol, aka C2H5OH.
In other words, and as we have earlier documented from other sources, renewable and carbon-recycling bio ethanol enhances, improves and facilitates the conversion of coal into the liquid fuel, and plastics manufacturing raw material, methanol; which can itself be further converted, as we have thoroughly documented, into gasoline.
An argument against converting coal into liquid fuels has been that it takes more energy to effect the conversion than is obtained when the liquid fuel is combusted for useful energy.
Well, duh. There are inefficiencies and costs involved in any energy conversion. Has anyone calculated, for instance, the true costs, the losses, incurred by utilizing battery-powered electric vehicles?
The energy losses there include, first, the rather significant costs of making the batteries. But, almost always left unmentioned, undisclosed, is the loss of energy caused by transmission of electricity through power lines (it takes a lot of "pressure", known as voltage, to squeeze the juice through the lines, and that is all "lost" energy) in addition to all of the costs involved in constructing a generating source, and the huge inefficiencies involved in converting, very crudely, one form of energy - wind, nuclear, hydro, whatever - into another, i.e., electricity.
Whenever we convert one form of energy into another, there will be costs, losses, of energy involved. Simple physics.
However, in this submission, from both China and Japan, we have documentation that a technology exists to lower the energy costs of converting coal into liquid fuels; and, that cost "lowering" comes via a renewable resource that helps both to recycle carbon and to establish some basis of sustainability.