Steel Guru: Construction Starts on Coal to Methanol Plant in Inner Mongolia


 
 
"Interfax-China reported that Inner Mongolia Yidong Coal Group Co Ltd., a large coal producer in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, started building a coal-to-methanol plant on May 11th (2009)."
 
Presuming you to have followed our dispatches, you'll know that methanol can be used directly as a liquid fuel for internal combustion engines; and, that it can, as in Exxon-Mobil's "MTG" process, with the help of available zeolite catalysts, be converted into gasoline.

Company Eyes Alternative Energy - Baton Rouge, LA


An excerpt:
 
"Commercial technologies to gasify coal, to make chemicals from the synthetic natural gas that results, and to isolate and sell carbon dioxide for oil recovery without letting it reach the atmosphere represent a more sustainable economic and environmental model, Cole (Sharon Cole - Dow Louisiana Site Leader) said, and the company would license the available technologies."
 
Dow, as we have reported, is active internationally in the conversion of coal to chemical manufacturing feed stocks. We have previously noted their efforts in Louisiana, where such enterprise is supported by Governor Bobby Jindal, and where they would be using lignite coal that is far "dirtier", and has less organic content, that high-quality WV bituminous.

Turning Coal into Liquid Fuel

 
From the "National Center for Policy Analysis" (NCPA), headquartered in DC.
 
An excerpt:

"First developed by Germany during World War II, the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process offers America a chance to utilize its vast domestic coal supply, increase refining capacity, and produce a cost-efficient and clean fuel.

The process can be used to transform natural gas, biomass or coal into liquid fuels..."

Technology Review: Making Gasoline from Carbon Dioxide

 

The article discusses several ways to efficiently make Carbon Monoxide out of Carbon Dioxide.
 
Then:
 
"To make a fuel, the carbon monoxide can be combined with hydrogen to create syngas in a well-known technology called the Fischer-Tropsch process, which has been widely used to make gasoline from coal."
 
As we've been saying: Carbon Dioxide is, or could be, a valuable by-product of coal use.
 

Transforming Carbon Waste into Fuel


An excerpt:
 
"...one audacious concept is to recycle the carbon by turning it into liquid hydrocarbon fuels.

Chemical plants, in this vision, could generate liquid hydrocarbons by taking hydrogen from natural gas or even water and combining it with CO2 to make fuels that would cut the demand for crude oil."

We have several times already reported on this potential. There are a number of ways to go about recovering CO2 from the flue gasses of coal-fired power plants and coal-to-liquid fuel refineries - and then converting it into useful products, such as more liquid fuel.