Document Display | NSCEP | US EPA
First, we submit a statement made by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, via the document we enclose herein, not long after the EPA was conceived of and, through Executive Order, founded, by that notoriously impractical idealist and environmentalist, President Richard Millhouse Nixon:
"(The) SASOL ... complex is amply proven successful for the manufacture of gasoline from coal."
Not long ago, as now accessible on the West Virginia Coal Association's web site, via the link:
West Virginia Coal Association | US EPA Confirms Coal Liquids Cheaper Than Petroleum | Research & Development;
As we thought should be surprising, our source document in that report was a study funded and conducted on the Sasol Coal conversion enterprise by and for the United States Environmental Protection Agency:
"Sasol: South Africa's Oil From Coal Story; EPA-600/8-80-002; TRW Environmental Engineering Division; California; January, 1980; TRW, Inc.; Prepared for: U. S. Environmental Protection Agency; Abstract: The report describes the world's only oil-from-coal plant, known as SASOL, operated by South Africa since 1955. When almost 7 billion worth of expansion is completed in the early 1980s, three SASOL plants will produce a total of 112,000 barrels of oil per day, or about half of South Africa's needs. Production costs average $17 per barrel, well below the 1979 OPEC price of more than $20 per barrel".
And, as we had earlier reported, the US EPA maintained their interest in Coal liquefaction technology over a period of decades, as seen in:
West Virginia Coal Association | US EPA Recommends Coal Liquefaction as a Clean Alternative | Research & Development; concerning:
"Clean Alternative Fuels: Fischer-Tropsch; United States Environmental Protection Agency; March 2002; A Success Story (!) For the past 50 years, Fischer-Tropsch fuels have powered all of South Africa’s vehicles, from buses to trucks to taxicabs. Sasol’s South African facility produces more than 150,000 barrels of high quality fuel from domestic low-grade coal daily. Fischer-Tropsch technology converts coal into a high-value, clean-burning fuel".
And, herein, we see that the US EPA has actually had that intrinsic interest in the conversion of Coal into clean-burning liquid transportation fuels since shortly after it's very inception.
By way of background, as can be learned via:
United States Environmental Protection Agency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; "On July 9, 1970, citing rising concerns over environmental protection and conservation, President Richard Nixon (ordered the creation of) the EPA as a single, independent agency from a number of smaller arms of different federal agencies. Prior to the establishment of the EPA, the federal government was not structured to comprehensively regulate environmental pollutants";
the US EPA was actually founded in 1970, by President Nixon. And, via the document we enclose in this dispatch, we learn that one of their immediate tasks seems to have been the assessment of Coal conversion technologies; since, only four years after their creation, the EPA was able, through the services of a knowledgeable contractor, to compile a dossier of the potentials for converting Coal into a variety of other, more versatile, liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon fuels.
As seen in the document extracted from the initial link in this dispatch, with which we include, initially and with apologies, a more complex link which might prove more durable than that one above, which is actually, we think, just a transient portal to the EPA's library of, more or less, Dead Sea Scrolls:
http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/2000Z5JN.txt?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=Prior%20to%201976&Docs=&Query=FNAME%3D2000Z5JN.TXT%20or%20%28%20sasol%29&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&UseQField=&IntQFieldOp=1&ExtQFieldOp=1&XmlQuery=&File=D%3A%5CZYFILES%5CINDEX%20DATA%5C70THRU75%5CTXT%5C00000004%5C2000Z5JN.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h%7C-&MaximumDocuments=10&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=p%7Cf&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1#
"A SASOL Type Process for Gasoline, Methanol, Synthetic Natural Gas and Low-Btu Gas from Coal
EPA-650/2-74-072; Contract Number 68-02-1308
F.K. Chan; The M.W. Kellogg Company; Houston, TX
(If the "M.W. Kellogg Company" sound familiar to you, they should. Now a component of the petroleum industry services company, Kellogg, Brown & Root, they have appeared in our reports many times, as, for just one example, in:
1944 CO2 + H2O + CH4 = Hydrocarbon Syngas | Research & Development; concerning: "United States Patent 2,355,753 - Catalytic Apparatus; 1944; Assignee: The M.W. Kellogg Company; Abstract: The present invention relates generally to improvements in apparatus for effecting catalytic reactions ... of an endothermic character. My invention is especially well exemplified in it's application to the production of a synthesis gas adapted for use in the synthesis of various organic compounds, as for example, the production of a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen for use in the production of hydrocarbons in accordance with the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis reaction. A synthesis gas suitable for use in this (Fischer-Tropsch) reaction may be prepared by the interaction of methane with carbon dioxide, or with steam, or with a mixture of carbon dioxide and steam";
wherein it is seen, that, even before the end of WWII, they had developed a technology that would enable us to, believe it or not, recycle Carbon Dioxide, by converting CO2 into a "synthesis gas" suitable for the production of "hydrocarbons" via the "Fischer-Tropsch synthesis".)
Prepared for: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Washington, D.C.; July 1974
(Please note that our further excerpts, due in large part to the extraordinarily awkward formatting of the report, will be disjointed, for want of a better term. We're extracting only what seem to us the most salient of their facts. Part of the problem lies in that Kellogg attempted to illustrate, to extrapolate, the SASOL process in terms of a conjectural, SASOL-type Coal conversion facility sited somewhere in New Mexico; not West Virginia or Pennsylvania, mind you, but New Mexico. Seriously. And, that choice of location negatively impacts the consequent economic extrapolations, as we further explain in comments appended.)
Abstract: This report gives results of a study to assess costs and feasibility of manufacturing gasoline, methanol, Substitute Natural Gas and low-Btu gas from Coal, using the SASOL-type process. This process is based on a SASOL plant which has been operated commercially for more than 20 years for the manufacture of gasoline, fertilizers and other chemicals from Coal.
(Note that the Abstract for this document is actually found on the final page, Number 84; which equates to page 92 of the electronic file.)
It should be noted that a SASOL-type plant as presented in this report is a plant representative of a twenty-year old technology.Improvements in this technology have been made by SASOL principally to suit their needs for fuels and chemicals. Over the years those needs have changed as new products, (e.g., pipeline gas, ammonia, ethylene, synthetic rubber, etc.) were added to the list manufactured from the raw material feeds, viz., coal, water and air.
(Note that the above parenthetical inclusion is a part of the document, not our comment or explication.)
SASOL's continued study of processes in their complex has doubtless given much fundamental information that would be a real asset to a designer tailoring a coal-to-gasoline facility twenty or more years after the original design was committed.
(As we've several times documented, SASOL began converting "coal, water and air" into Gasoline in South Africa on an industrial scale in the mid-1950's. And, importantly, keep in mind that this EPA-contracted assessment seems to be of that multi-decades old, original Coal conversion technology, not, in 1974, the most up-to-date and optimized Coal conversion technology as it was being practiced, basically four decades ago, and three decades after it had been established and first reduced to commercial practice. In other words, in 1974, the EPA were studying what was already by then an antique. The technology was then already better, and, can only have improved in the four decades since.)
(From Document page 21, File page 29-30) It is significant that the major process steps of the SASOL plant have been proven to be compatible members of the complex and that the complex is amply proven successful for the manufacture of gasoline from coal.
Optimization of any such design would require information that is unlikely to be found from any source other than SASOL. Lacking access to SASOL's proprietary information for possible attempts at optimization of the facilities described in this report, the present coal-to-gasoline plant can be presented only on the basis of the twenty-year old technology with some minor updating modifications made public by SASOL in the intervening years.
Tie-ins with other industries may have some interesting prospects for a gasoline-from-coal plant. Gases from a refinery handling natural crude possibly could be processed with gases from a synthesis plant to mutual advantage.
It should be remembered that the products of the synthesis are remarkably free of many troublesome contaminants, e.g., metals, sulfur.
With respect to the technology involved, gasoline-from-coal plant has been operated commercially by SASOL for more than twenty years (and) Methanol unquestionably can be manufactured from coal cheaper than gasoline ... .
(Synthetic Natural Gas) SNG ... can be produced cheaper than gasoline or methanol.
Production of a singular specialized product may not be the best utilization of the SASOL-type process as reflected by (the) SASOL facility which includes the manufacture of a wide spectrum of chemicals, plastics, oil, gas and fertilizers.
(From Document page 63, File Page 71:) Gasoline Cost = $15.11/Barrel (with By-Product Credits)"
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Kellogg do some complex calculations for the EPA, complete with charts and graphs; all of which are somewhat meaningless today, given what's happened to the prices of both Oil and Coal, and the other products, the gases and chemicals, in the intervening decades.
The current cost, and it's implications, will of course be different.
But, further, in calculating their costs for "gasoline-from-coal", Kellogg did not include the return that could be, and in South Africa were and are being, realized from all the byproduct "chemicals, plastics ... and fertilizers", despite their seeming inclusion in the parenthetical "with By-Product Credits".
Nor did they adequately explain or derive the best, most profitable balance of primary hydrocarbon products which can be made from Coal, concurrently, at the same facility, i.e., Gasoline, Methanol, Methane (or, Substitute Natural Gas, "SNG"), and "Low-Btu Gas".
Moreover, they based their projected costs, for a process that needs a lot of water, on a conjectural plant not along the Ohio River, but, in semi-arid New Mexico; and, the costs for the Coal they used were based on the low-Btu, surface-mined Coal found and mined in that region; which, even though cheap, entails some inefficiencies in it's processing unlikely to be found in high-quality eastern bituminous Coal.
All of the projected and established costs they used in their calculations, now, very nearly four decades later, with all that has happened since, must be seen as wildly inaccurate; that, especially, when they themselves confessed that they were forced by SASOL secrecy concerning technical advances to base their calculations on known operational facts that were, almost forty years ago, already two decades old.
And, consider: All of this was done in what must be seen as secrecy.
Was any of it ever published, anywhere, where anyone actually concerned with the Coal industry, and concerned with the people of Appalachian Coal Country, could be expected to stumble across it and make use of the information?
Well, it's here now; and, if the potentials revealed herein - potentials for Coal Country prosperity and United States freedom from OPEC oil - aren't someday soon more fully revealed and explained to the Coal Country public, then we, those of us sadly few who know the truth, those of us sadly few who actually seem to care, have to begin asking ourselves, asking our brothers and our sisters:
Whose side, really, are the Coal Country organs of public communication actually on?
And, does anyone, anyone in any position of social leadership and responsibility actually care?
Far, far past time some of those questions got answered, ain't it?
NOTE:
Despite multiple attempts at retransmission, the links included in the above-linked report, concerning:
"A SASOL Type Process for Gasoline, Methanol, Synthetic Natural Gas and Low-Btu Gas from Coal;
EPA-650/2-74-072; Contract Number 68-02-1308; F.K. Chan; The M.W. Kellogg Company; Houston, TX;
Prepared for: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Washington, D.C.; July 1974";
are not seeming to transmit with their functionality intact.
As they are now published on the West Virginia Coal Association's web site, they do now take you to the EPA's library; but, a notice appears there that the requested documents are not available.
We don't know if that reflects a recent change at the EPA concerning what is or what is not available to the public; or, if it is due, as seems much more likely, to our own technical insufficiencies here, prior to our handing these reports off electronically to the Coal Association's web keepers.
For anyone that might be interested, but who hasn't been able to access "EPA-650/2-74-072" through any of the links we've tried to send, attached is a downloaded file of the document.
It is large, and we do regret our presumption of anyone's interest. But, we are, given our personal sense of the subject matter's importance, intent on being as thorough as we can.