Energy Citations Database (ECD) - - Document #6529955
We've earlier documented that a number of Federally-sponsored research efforts, centered on the development of coal liquefaction technologies, that took place around the nation in decades past were managed by, and reported to, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Mines, later the USDOE, center in Morgantown, WV.
Herein, it's reported that the Morgantown USBM lab undertook some in-house developments of their own, working on the "Synthane" process, about which we've previously reported, wherein a primarily Methane gas is generated from Coal.
Comment follows the excerpts:
Title: Economic evaluation of Synthane gasification of Pittsburgh seam coal at 1,000 psia followed by shift conversion, purification, and single-stage tube wall methanation.
Date: October, 1971
OSTI ID: 6529955; USBM-72-9A; Technical Report
Research Organization: Bureau of Mines, Morgantown, WV. Process Evaluation Group
Abstract: An economic evaluation was made of an integrated plant sized and designed to produce 250 million scfd of 927-Btu gas by a fluidized gasification system followed by shift conversion, purification, and single-stage tube wall methanation. The total capital investment is estimated to be $194,606,200 or $0.78 per daily standard cubic feet of gas production capacity. Based on a 330-day operating year for the plant and allowing credit for the sulfur and tar produced, the average selling price of the gas will be $0.67, $0.79, and $0.90 per thousand standard cubic feet of product for $4, $6, and $8 coal using the financial analysis described below. The average price is based on a 20-year life for the plant.
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First of all, to correct any misperceptions our headline might cause, the "Pittsburgh seam" is a major coal deposit that is actually composed of multiple seams, or layers, that spread out from the Pittsburgh region, and which have been mined in northern WV and eastern Ohio as well as in Pennsylvania. We speculate these Morgantown researchers likely worked with Coal mined near Blacksville, WV.
Second, the "numbers" have no-doubt changed in the intervening decades. The price of everything has gone up; but, most especially the price of crude oil, from which we make our liquid fuels.
And, that's our point: Once we have the Methane, from Coal, we can, as we have thoroughly documented, either convert it directly into liquid fuels; or, we can use it to enhance the productivity of indirect Coal liquefaction processes to make liquid fuels; or, we can combine it with Carbon Dioxide to consume that supposed pollutant in a tri-reforming process to make liquid fuels.
We need to look at the comparative costs now, keeping in mind that the money spent on making liquid fuels derived, through Methane, from Coal, would all be spent in the United States - and not poured into, and forever lost to, the treasuries of unfriendly overseas petroleum powers, nations that we already have to spend a great deal of our tax money, from our own treasury, on, either fighting or defending.
Those costs haven't been yet been publicly figured into the price of a gallon of gas, though some estimates, as we long ago reported, have been made - and, they're shocking.
The true cost of fuel, to us, to the US, isn't just what we spend at the pump.