Amoco Prices Coal Liquefaction

Recent Progress in the Direct Liquefaction of Coal -- LUMPKIN 239 (4842): 873 -- Science
 
We previously noted the US Department of Energy's inexplicable assignment of oversight for a coal-to-liquid conversion development facility, in Kentucky, to Big Oil's Amoco Corporation, and the fact that the most detailed reportage on the project that we could find, also as we earlier reported, was published in Greece, or Turkey; somewhere "else", in any case.
 
But, we did manage to unearth the enclosed artifact, published directly from Amoco, it seems.
 
Comment follows:
 
"Recent Progress in the Direct Liquefaction of Coal
 
Robert E. Lumpkin, Director of Coal Utilization Projects for Amoco Corporation; P.O. Box 87703; Chicago, IL 60680
 
Science: 19 February 1988; Vol. 239; No. 4842; pp. 873 - 877; DOI: 10.1126/science.239.4842.873
 
Abstract/Summary:
Interest in direct coal liquefaction steadily decreased during the 1980s as the price of crude oil dropped; there is now only one integrated coal liquefaction pilot plant active full time in the United States. The economics derived early in the decade established the price of transportation fuels from coal at $80 per barrel or higher. However, there have been dramatic improvements in the technology since 1983 that have not been widely appreciated. Recent designs and cost estimates show that a 60 percent decrease in the cost of liquid fuels from coal to an equivalent of $35 per barrel for crude oil. Although this cost is not low enough to justify immediate commercialization, additional improvements have been identified that could make direct liquefaction an attractive way to produce gasoline and other conventional fuels."
A few statements bear emphasis:
First: "... there have been dramatic improvements in the technology (for converting coal into liquid fuels) since 1983 that have not been widely appreciated."
And: "Recent designs and cost estimates show that a 60 percent decrease in the cost of liquid fuels from coal to an equivalent of $35 per barrel".
This article was published in 1988. We submit that: "there have been dramatic improvements in the technology" (for converting coal into liquid fuels) since 1988 "that have not been widely appreciated", as our previous, and extensive, documentation of coal liquefaction developments should attest.
Moreover, coal, in 1988, could be converted into liquid petroleum-type products for the "equivalent of  $35 per barrel".
Petroleum, in 1988, according to web-based sources, was selling in the range of $23 to $30 per barrel, so the $35 per-barrel cost for coal-derived oil might not have seemed all that appealing.
However, oil prices, over the past few months of this year, August and September, 2009, hovered around the rough average of $130 per barrel.
Coal prices, in 1988, again according to web-based sources, had a spot market value, in Appalachia, that centered on $30 ton.
Now, in early October, 2009, Appalachian coal is selling at a little over $50 per ton.
And, again: "there have been dramatic improvements in the technology that have not been widely appreciated".
Do the math. Way past time we revisited the subject, a bit more publicly and thoroughly, don't you think? 
 

Spain Improves Coal Liquefaction

ScienceDirect - Fuel : Comparison of the effect of catalysts in coal liquefaction with tetralin and coal tar distillates 
 
In further support of our earlier documentation that coal processing by-products, such as coal tars, can be beneficial additives that enhance the efficiency of some direct coal liquefaction processes, we submit this research from Spain, where, as we've elsewhere documented, coal was converted into liquid fuels in at least one facility, using WWII-era German indirect coal liquefaction technology, until the 1960's.
 
As follows:
 
"Comparison of the effect of catalysts in coal liquefaction with tetralin and coal tar distillates 
J. Andres Legarreta, Blanca M. Caballero, Isabel de Marco, M. Jesus Chomón and Pedro M. Uría
Departamento de Ingeniería Química y del Medio Ambiente, Escuela de Ingenieros de Bilbao, Universidad del País Vasco, Alda, Urquijo s/n, 48013, Bilbao, Spain; 1996
Abstract
Special CoMo/Al2O3 catalysts were prepared for testing in coal liquefaction: a conventional CoMo/Al2O3 catalyst, one containing Zn as a second promoter and one having the alumina acidified with fluorine. Their activities were compared with that of red mud. The experiments were conducted in a stirred autoclave with a subbituminous coal and solvent (tetralin, anthracene oil or creosote oil) at 425°C and 17 MPa. The liquefaction products were fractioned into oils, asphaltenes and preasphaltenes with pentane, toluene and THF. The Co(Zn)Mo/Al2O3 catalysts have far higher activities than red mud. Zn and fluorine have beneficial effects on the catalyst activity. Coal tar distillates give higher conversions and oil + gas yields than tetralin when the prepared catalysts are used."
"Tetralin" is the hydrogen-donor solvent we have documented many times, from many sources, as being extremely useful in some direct coal liquefaction technologies, most especially WVU's "West Virginia Process".
But, note: "Coal tar distillates (which would include "anthracene oil or creosote oil")  give higher conversions and oil + gas yields than tetralin when the prepared catalysts are used." As we've elsewhere documented, coal products and by-products, the various coal tars and coal tar chemicals, can be beneficial, productive additives for a direct coal conversion process, perhaps by contributing more hydrogen.
Further, "Co(Zn)Mo/Al2O3 catalysts", though formulaically vague, might indicate these Spanish researchers were also working with zeolite catalysts, like the one specified by ExxonMobil in their "MTG"(r), methanol-to-gasoline, Process; wherein the methanol is posited to be made from coal. However, other research we've documented for you also indicates that Iron Group metals, i.e., "Co", Cobalt, as above, are useful coal conversion catalysts. And, both Zinc (Zn) and Molybdenum (Mo), as coal conversion catalysts, have also been elsewhere noted.
As we've earlier explained, the "red mud", named in the Abstract, is an iron-rich waste product of at least one commercial process for refining aluminum from bauxite ore. It is not an exotic material, but the mention of it again emphasizes the value of Iron-group metals in some coal-to-liquid conversion processes.

Commerical CoalTL Proposed for Kentucky

Energy Citations Database (ECD) - - Document #5299093
 
We had earlier called your attention to the Kentucky "H-Coal", coal-to-liquid fuel conversion, project.
 
Some excerpts, comment following:
 
"Title: The H-Coal Pilot Plant and the Breckinridge Project
Author: Wigglesworth, T.H.
Date: May, 1982
Journal: Proceedings of the American Petroleum Institute; Volume 61; Conference 47; NY, NY. May 1982
Organization: Ashland Synthetic Fuels, Ashland, KY
 
Abstract:
 
A large coal-liquefaction pilot plant is in operation at Catlettsburg, Kentucky, expanding on the H-Coal technology. The pilot plant operated very successfully during 1981, confirming research yield data on eastern bituminous coal, demonstrating operability of the process, and resulting in a significant accumulation of engineering data. Ashland Synthetic Fuels, Inc., and Bechtel Petroleum, Inc., are developing the Breckinridge Project, a commercial coal-liquefaction plant proposed for Breckinridge County, Kentucky, based on the H-Coal technology."
 
So, Ashland and Bechtel operated a coal-to-liquid fuel conversion facility "very successfully during 1981", and the "operability of the process" was demonstrated..
 
Whatever happened, do you suppose, in the ensuing quarter century, to the "commercial coal-liquefaction plant" that was "proposed for Breckinridge County, Kentucky" in 1982, as was reported herein to the American Petroleum Institute?

USAF Progresses on Coal Jet Fuel


As we suspected, and as we suggested to you, some recent reports that the our US Air Force had backed away from it's commitment to develop, through the several university efforts we documented for you, a domestic aviation fuel supply infrastructure based on coal liquefaction are false; perhaps deliberate disinformation.
 
According to this very recent, very credible Aviation Week article, the Air Force is moving ahead, on schedule, to develop a domestic supply base of liquid fuel derived from coal.
 
Better: They are, as we have documented to be feasible and practical, developing complementary fuel conversion technologies that will work in concert with the coal-to-liquid conversion fuel supply base to, through biotechnology applications related, directly or indirectly, to coal conversion efforts, recycle Carbon Dioxide into additional liquid aviation fuel.
 
As follows:

"USAF Progresses On Alternative Fuels

Oct 5, 2009 

By Graham Warwick  

On track to certify its aircraft fleet to use synthetic Fisher-Tropsch (F-T) fuel by 2011, the U.S. Air Force has launched a similar certification effort for hydrotreated renewable jet (HRJ) biofuels and is now becoming interested in fuels from cellulosic feedstocks.
 
Despite the growing interest in biofuels, DESC (Defense Energy Support Center) has several pilot programs under way to produce synthetic JP-8 from coal and natural gas using the F-T process, Huntley (Kim Huntley, DESC commander) says. The Energy Department, meanwhile, has a $700 million program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-to-liquid F-T fuel production though carbon capture and sequestration and the addition of biomass, aiming for demonstration by 2012 and deployment by 2020. 

Under congressional mandate to buy greener fuels, the Air Force is putting the finishing touches to a greenhouse-gas life-cycle analysis model that will allow it to calculate the “well-to-wake” carbon footprint for each batch of fuel. Harrison (Bill Harrison, deputy director of the Air Force’s new Energy Office) says benchmark studies are under way for coal-and-biomass-to-liquid F-T jet fuel and soy to HRJ.

So: "Despite the growing interest in biofuels, DESC has several pilot programs under way to produce synthetic JP-8 from coal and natural gas using the F-T process, Huntley says."

And, note that, although they are working on the profoundly wasteful concept of "carbon capture and sequestration", they are also at work on the much more forward-thinking concept of Carbon Dioxide recycling via "hydrotreated renewable jet ... fuels from cellulosic feedstocks".

As we've documented via more than several authoritative citations, botanical cellulose can be processed, along with coal, in a coal-to-liquid production facility of appropriate design and specification, and thereby provide an inherent, integral route of Carbon Dioxide recycling for a coal-to-liquid conversion industry.

USDOE Converts China Coal

EEP Newsletter - April 15, 2003
 
Just as we have thoroughly documented West Virginia University's intimate involvement in China's very extensive coal-to-liquid conversion, for fuels and chemicals, industrial development program, herein, from China, we learn that our own US Department of Energy has, perhaps indirectly, been assisting our foreign competitors with coal conversion technology, as well.
 
Comment follows the brief excerpt:
 
"Research on the Environment
 
I: Liquid Coal As A Fuel
 
An industrial complex is being built in China in order to perform direct liquefaction of coal, an ancient source of heat and energy.
 
The new complex being built in the Chinese region of Baotou (not far from Mongolia) uses a technique developed in the United States during the 1990s by Hydrocarbon Technology Inc., in conjunction with the USA Energy Department, involving the direct conversion of coal into hydrocarbon distillates."
 
So, technology developed by our own USDOE and a US corporation, for converting abundant coal into liquid fuels and chemicals, is being reduced to commercial practice by one of our most aggressive and adversarial foreign competitors.
 
We know all of that, it seems. What we don't know is why such CoalTL commercialization, with US Government, US educational institution and US corporate assistance, isn't taking place in West Virginia, or Pennsylvania, or anywhere else in this nation where American citizens depend upon coal for their livelihoods; or, where American citizens are embittered and impoverished by sending their wealth and their young soldiers overseas to finance and defend the OPEC powers, whose philosophies and practices are sometimes directly counter to the American ways of life and belief.