Japan Recycles Coal Plant CO2

  
As threatened, we are following up on our submissions concerning not only the hard-but-hidden truth that our abundant domestic coal can be converted into the wide variety of liquid fuels and industrial chemicals we desperately need; but, that the primary co-product of our coal use industries, Carbon Dioxide, can itself be efficiently captured and converted into the same products.
 
We've cited a number of US sources attesting to the potential for CO2 commercial utilization. Herein is one from Japan, where it is posited that a CO2 collection and conversion system could be profitably installed as an integral component of a coal-fired power generation plant.
 
The excerpt:
 
"DME Fuel Synthesized from CO2 in Power Plant Emissions. Kansai Electric Power Co., has successfully synthesized dimethyl ether (DME) from carbon dioxide (CO2) gases contained in emissions from a pilot plant at the Nanko Power Station in Osaka, Japan, utilizing the technology developed jointly with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. This was the first successful synthesis of DME from CO2 at plant in actual operation in Japan.

DME, which is human-friendly and thus used as an aerosol propellant in spray cans for cosmetics or alike, is recently drawing attention as a new clean energy source to replace LPG and diesel oil. The company has been researching this alternative fuel as a promising option to use CO2 effectively.

The conventional method to synthesize DME is first to generate methanol from natural gas and then to separate water from the methanol. On the other hand, the newly developed method is to use CO2 contained in the emissions from thermal power plants and to cause chemical reactions between CO2 and hydrogen, thereby synthesizing DME directly. The company said that the simplified synthesis process enables the production facility to be smaller in the future."
 
As a concept, it beats spending all the money to collect the CO2 from the stack gas, just to pump it all down a geologic sequestration rat hole, doesn't it?
 
It definitely beats the heck our of taxing our coal-use industries out of existence with Cap&Trade shell games.

British Convert Coal in WWII

 
We have thoroughly documented that Germany and Japan both developed coal-to-liquid fuel technologies, and used them extensively during WWII, establishing multiple coal conversion factories in Germany, Japan and the Axis-occupied Far East to supply their military machines with liquid fuels synthesized from coal. 
 
What isn't so well known is that the United States, after WWII, used, as we've documented, captured German technology to establish several domestic coal-to-liquid conversion factories in the continental US.
Needless to say, those enterprises weren't allowed to operate for very long, and didn't receive much press.
 
Perhaps even less known is that our staunch allies, the British, were making their own gasoline, from their own domestic coal: before, during and after WWII.
 
An excerpt from the enclosed link:
 
"Although the technology of coal hydrogenation was taken to many countries, it never became a global enterprise. By the early 1920s the key patents were controlled by I. G. Farben in Germany, but a decade later the international rights were controlled jointly by I. G. Farben, the American oil company Standard Oil, the Anglo-Dutch oil company Royal Dutch Shell, and the British chemical combine Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). ICI first built a plant in Billingham, England, where it produced gasoline from 1935 to 1958, and added a second one at Heysham in Lancashire during the war. On its defeat Germany was banned from hydrogenating coal; in 1949 its unused plants were ordered to be dismantled. The Soviet Union took four of these plants to Siberia. In Soviet-controlled East Germany, isolated from Western oil markets, coal continued to be hydrogenated until the 1960s. Spain meanwhile developed a synthetic fuel program at Puertollano following a 1944 deal between the pro-Axis Spanish government and Germany. In 1950 Spain’s government signed new deals for technology with BASF and others; production started in 1956 and lasted until 1966."
 
Add Spain to the list of people who know it can be done, too, we guess.
 
And, note that, ominously to us, the coal conversion patents were once "controlled" by "the American oil company Standard Oil", among others.
 
How come we haven't figured all of this out yet in Coal Country? How come nobody's told us?
 
About time someone did tell us, isn't it?

U of ND Patents CoalTL Process

 
The enclosed, fairly recent, US CoalTL patent is interesting for several reasons.
 
Additional comment follows the excerpt:
 
"Direct coal liquefaction process
United States Patent 5256278
 
Abstract:
An improved multistep liquefaction process for organic carbonaceous matter which produces a virtually completely solvent-soluble carbonaceous liquid product. The solubilized product may be more amenable to further processing than liquid products produced by current methods. In the initial processing step, the finely divided organic carbonaceous material is treated with a hydrocarbonaceous pasting solvent containing from 10% and 100% by weight process-derived phenolic species at a temperature within the range of 300° C. to 400° C. for typically from 2 minutes to 120 minutes in the presence of a carbon monoxide reductant and an optional hydrogen sulfide reaction promoter in an amount ranging from 0 to 10% by weight of the moisture- and ash-free organic carbonaceous material fed to the system. As a result, hydrogen is generated via the water/gas shift reaction at a rate necessary to prevent condensation reactions. In a second step, the reaction product of the first step is hydrogenated.
 
Inventors:
Rindt, John R. (Grand Forks, ND)
Hetland, Melanie D. (Grand Forks, ND)
Application Number:
07/843909
Publication Date:
10/26/1993
Filing Date:
02/27/1992
Assignee:
Energy and Environmental Research Center Foundation (EERC Foundation) (Grand Forks, ND)"
 
First, the EERC is an organ of the University of North Dakota.
 
Second, although the patent is named "Direct Coal Liquefaction Process", coal isn't mentioned in the Abstract.
 
Instead, as we have been documenting to be possible, the "Process" of "Liquefaction" can be applied to, apparently, any "organic carbonaceous matter"; a somewhat redundant phrase which would include crop wastes (which they have plenty of in North Dakota), sewer sludge, cellulose, scrapped auto tires and at least some waste plastics. The process would have to be so accommodating in order to take advantage of North Dakota's coal deposits. Though generally close to the surface and easy to mine, they are composed primarily of high-ash, lower-Btu lignite, against which some older WV coal mine refuse piles, accumlated prior to the advent of more efficient raw coal cleaning and sorting technologies, might favorably compare in terms of their content of "organic carbonaceous matter".
 
Third, this technology was developed in the High Plains, also home to the Many Stars CoalTL project we've documented for you numerous times, and the proposed coal conversion project at Malstrom AFB, which might, or might not, still be in the works.
 
Fourth, finally, and importantly, note that: "In the initial processing step, the finely divided organic carbonaceous material is treated with a hydrocarbonaceous pasting solvent containing from 10% and 100% by weight process-derived phenolic species". As we have in earlier posts documented, "phenols" are a common, most often thought to be objectionable, by-product of some coal use processes, including coke ovens. Coal tar plants make a lot of them in their distillation processes, and some old tar plants, as we have reported, have been classified as toxic waste clean-up sites because of phenols that were "dumped". We have also documented research in other countries suggesting that phenols could be an effective hydrogen donor in coal liquefaction processes.
 
Once again: Even the wastes arising from our coal use are valuable.

More Great Plains Coal Conversion

 
We're presuming the enclosed article is reporting the results of research conducted for the US Air Force as a part of their extensive coal-to-liquid development effort, which we have extensively documented for you, and, which might, or might not, be moving forward. News reports on that effort are, we'll assume deliberately, for whatever reason, somewhat contradictory and confusing.
 
In any case, this entry validates some of what we earlier reported to you: The art of converting coal into useful hydrocarbon liquids is so far advanced that considerable effort is being applied, very quietly applied, to improve the technologies for refining those coal liquids into direct replacements for the range of liquid fuels traditionally derived from petroleum.
 
It seems gratuitous to note, yet again, that SASOL has, according to extensive documentation, already done much of this work in South Africa, where they have been operating their vehicles, and refueling airliners from around the world at the Johannesburg Airport, for many decades, with liquid fuels made from coal.
 
Excerpt as follows:
 
"The catalytic hydrocracking of coal derived oils"
Berg, L.; Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana
 
In: Symposium on Alternate Fuel Resources, Santa Maria, Calif., March 25-27, 1976, Proceedings. (A76-47287 24-44) North Hollywood, Calif., Western Periodicals Co.; Vandenberg, Calif., American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., 1976, p. 339-342.
 
Abstract:
 
Preliminary results are presented for a program designed to take the product from the most advanced coal liquefaction processes and convert it catalytically to a clean distillate fuel, where the term distillate is understood to mean anything that has been vaporized and recondensed leaving the nonvaporizable material behind. Chemical characteristics of coal are outlined in order to gain a better insight into the problems of making acceptable liquid fuels from coal. Advanced liquefaction processes are described which furnish the raw material for catalytic upgrading studies. Particular attention is given to the catalytic treatment of liquefied coals to further upgrade them. The reactors designed consist of a 1-in. steel tube inserted in an aluminum cylinder, where an electric winding around the aluminum cylinder provides heat. An analysis of candidate catalysts revealed that nickel-tungsten is a proper approach."
 
Once again, what we find most interesting about this report is that the emphasis seems to be on the upgrading of liquid fuels made from coal, as in:
 
"Advanced liquefaction processes are described which furnish the raw material for catalytic upgrading studies."
 
Implied, treated as a given, is that liquid fuels can, almost of course, be efficiently made from coal.
 
And, as in some of our earlier posts, we're compelled to make note the venue in which this information, about coal liquefaction, was presented: An Aeronautics and Astronautics Institute Symposium, held, one is led to conclude, at the Vandenberg AFB in California. Of course, the aeronautics connection is something of a tradition: As we've thoroughly, even tediously, documented, Germany kept her Luftwaffe airborne for years, during WWII, on liquid aviation fuels refined from coal.
 
We're still playing catch-up ball, sixty years later. And, South Africa has been way ahead of us all this time. China is pulling ahead.

Coal Liquefaction Cost Improvements

  
  
We present the enclosed "Improvements In The Cost Of Liquid Fuels From Direct Coal Liquefaction", a report made by oil company researchers more than a decade ago, as more affirmation that the technologies do exist to convert our abundant coal into the liquid fuels we need. The research was performed at the nearly-unknown Alabama coal liquefaction facility, whose existence we revealed to you in a dispatch made many months ago.
 
We offer a few comments we think to be pertinent following the excerpt:
 
"Improvements in the Cost of Liquid Fuels from Direct Coal Liquefaction 
 
Authors: A. Basu, J.G. Masin, N.C. Stewart
 
Affiliations: Amoco Oil Company; Electric Power Research Institute
 
Published in: Petroleum Science and Technology, Volume 10, Issue 10, 1992

Abstract

This paper presents an assessment of recent improvements in the technology for direct coal liquefaction on the estimated commercial economics. The basis for the design and cost estimates is a series of studies sponsored by Amoco Corporation and Electric Power Research Institute, which were derived from the highly detailed Breckinridge Project, completed in the early 1980s under DOE sponsorship. The technology, design, and cost estimates reflect the current two-stage liquefaction technology practiced at the Advanced Coal Liquefaction Research facility in Wilsonville, Alabama.

Details of the design bases and cost estimates and how they compare with the original Breckinridge study are described. Also examined are effects of feed coal rank, product slate, and the source of hydrogen (natural gas or coal) on the costs. Finally, the ways that projected future improvements in the technology will change the design and lead to lower costs are discussed."
 
First, of course, our old farmer, the DOE, put the fox, Big Oil's Amoco, in charge of this particular hen house. So, it's little wonder that no eggs made their way to our public market.
 
Second, the testing appears to have been done in Alabama, but was based on research performed by an earlier "Breckinridge Project, completed in the early 1980s under DOE sponsorship". We'll attempt to find our more about "Breckinridge" and make report to you.
 
Third, and finally,  we're told: "future improvements in the technology will change the design and lead to lower costs". Fine. Where are the results of those "future improvements"?
 
As with several other government and industry-sponsored reports we've brought to your attention, though, the true import of this submission is, simply:
 
We know how to make the liquid fuels we need, cleanly and efficiently, from our abundant coal, just as the South Africans, for many decades, have been doing; and just as the Chinese are making ready, in a big way, to do..  
 
And, again as with other of our reports, that knowledge forces the question: