http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/servlets/purl/5348544-fHw8kU/
Before delving into the particulars of the USDOE-funded Coal conversion research represented by the above link and attached file, we wanted to point out some information that appeared recently in a Coal Country newspaper you might be familiar with, as follows:
Ethanol a Massive Waste - News, Sports, Jobs - The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register; wherein it is revealed that:
"In 1944, Hitler's Schutzstaffel commandeered the entire European potato crop and turned it into ethanol to fuel V2 rockets. With their foreign oil sources interdicted by Allied advances, the Germans resorted to replacing imported oil supplies by converting civilian food stocks into ethanol.
Beyond the 7,500 civilian and military personnel who were killed outright by the weapon, however, untold thousands more civilians died of starvation and malnutrition in order to feed the vengeance weapon.
To an extent, we are driving down much the same road with our current ethanol program in America but, at least for now, our potatoes are safe. Under the twin banners of reducing dependence on foreign oil and lowering the environmental impact of gasoline, our government chose to divert much of our corn supply into ethanol production. This in turn has driven up the cost of corn-based human and animal food products and, as the realities of supply and demand take hold, producing even more corn for ethanol is crowding out other food crops.
Refined to only 95 percent purity ... ethanol ,,, contains about a third less energy than the same amount of gasoline."
-----------------
One reader of the article responded with a comment, as published in an appended feedback section:
Comments: Ethanol a Massive Waste - News, Sports, Jobs - The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register
"Automotive fuel can be made out of coal. Why in GOD'S name do we have to make it out of FOOD!???"
Indeed, why?
The production of ethanol from agricultural produce - - as many don't fully realize, aside from the objections raised above, also, we claim without herein submitting documentation of the fact, but as is available in some of our previous reports published by the West Virginia Coal Association - - also results, typically, as a function of the total process of cultivation, fermentation, distillation, etc., in the release of significantly more Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, per unit of fuel energy produced and used, than would utilizing Coal or Petroleum products in the same application.
A contributor to that is the fact, that, most often, in Corn Ethanol production, Coal-generated electricity and even dedicated Coal-fired boilers are used to supply the heat for the Ethanol distillation step.
That is the plain truth. If wind or hydro electric generation were used to supply the energy for distillation, then Corn Ethanol's CO2 issue might be a little better; although Ethanol's energy content might not justify the investment needed for such facilities.
But, our true point herein - - as documented yet again by the report accessible via the initial link in this dispatch, wherein it is seen that our US Department of Energy, nearly two decades ago, hired a Pennsylvania college to demonstrate it - - is, that, if we really do want Ethanol, we can make it most efficiently from Coal.
Comment follows very brief excerpts from:
"Ethanol Synthesis and Water Gas Shift Over Bi-functional Sulfide Catalysts
March, 1992
Kamil Klier, et. al.; Department of Chemistry, Lehigh University; Bethlehem, PA
Prepared for the USDOE Pittsburgh Technology Center.
The objective of the proposed research is to investigate and develop a novel catalytic process for the conversion of coal-derived synthesis gas into high octane CI-C 4 alcohols, especially ethanol, by a highly selective and efficient pathway.
The catalysts chosen fall into the general category of bl-functional, base-hydrogenation, sulfur-tolerant chalcogenides with a heavy alkali (content) dispersed on their surfaces.
(The) proposed research is directed to the synthesis of an alternative clean high octane liquid fuel in which all carbon originates from coal."
----------------
And, that is precisely what they accomplished.
The full report, like many we've brought to your attention, is far too technical for our limited capacities to fully understand and make clear; and, again like many similar we have posted, it is only a technical "progress" report.
There is, thus, a complete document somewhere available within our own USDOE that would tell us how, if we do want "high octane alcohols", including and "especially ethanol", we can, via a "highly selective and efficient pathway", make them from "coal-derived synthesis gas".