Coal Gasoline

Hi aqua_doc

One of the reasons why Sasol can produce cheaply is because the refine the products "next" to the coal source and thereby reduce transport costs to a minimum.

China may not have enough coal reserves available (They are also importing as far as I know).

They may however get coal-oil interest elsewhere but it would firstly be for own consumption. Their main aim seems to be to supply as much work as possible to their own population.

But China is very resourceful. By supplying arms to Zim the will have personnel in the country to protect their interest. Because Zim may never be able to repay they might claim some reserves as compensation and sell petroleum products at a nice profit. At more than a 1000% inflation per month Zim will just have to give and give.

The Chinese coal I've seen has a pretty low fuel value. Would it be worth doing or do they have high grade supplies (huge country)?

you are quite percveptive there! In australia the Victorians use crappy brown coal however Queensland and New South Wales both have high grade black coal which is good for steel making. Why make Octane or Heptane when Toluene (racing car fuel - Auto paint thinner) is a natural byproduct of coal? even given the need to adjust fuel systems for the different chemistry, modern gasoline often contains Toluene anyway as a knock preventative and because it is cheaper to produce than petrol.

Bravo, also.

If we all could find a means to make best use of what's available locally, much of the supply pressure would abate.

Problem is what is best for who?????

I guess what what i was hinting at was: in Nitro, WVa anthracite to deiselfuel makes best sense; in NyC, decomposed trash to alcohol; in DC, maybe hotair in a sterling plant?

Dead right - as the man in the sewerage plant said " I don't care what you call it but it is bread and butter to me"

Suggest Washington's hot air be used in the balloon about to go up - that hot air is too wet for a sterling engine.

The Sasol process uses (or at least used to use) low grade coals as SA had huge amounts of low grade coals available with very high ash levels. So if China has low grade coals that would be a fit.

If we need to use coal at all this is the sensible way to go. Extracting all the coaltar volatiles and using them as base chemicals and leaving the carbon/coke as a fuel is a far better environmental way to go. The pollution caused by the direct burning (destructive distillation) of coal is well proven - London Fogs and Soweto(South Africa) prime examples. Maybe the economic impact of rising oil prices is a good thing in some ways - but why do I feel that I am being ripped off by OPEC??

As someone stated coal is a source of aromatic hydrocarbons. Aliphatics can be got from petroleum.

In all this talk about ethanol and use of grains for its production causing food problems - the source of aliphatics could be assisted by the destructive distillation of cellulose (also renewable) this was the original process for producing methanol !

Should we not be looking at propanol rather than ethanol as a bio-petrol?? ? how to produce it ?

"Should we not be looking at propanol rather than ethanol as a bio-petrol?? ? how to produce it ?"

Am still beating-the-drum for methanol; seems easiest to synthesise from CO + WaterVapor. Trash seem an excellent source of CO.

Methanol has best 'octane' of alcohols; 16:1 C.R. is easy, will help w/ efficiency. Has most energy/ mole carbon.

Couldn't Fischer Tropsch technology be used to make large quantities of methanol?

It is - Ask Sasol - they cannot sell it fast enough!

The oil companies already have bought up much of the coal available in the US market using windfall profits generated during the last "go round" on this subject area in the 1970's. So the Saudi princes will ave to deal with them.

Have you been in outer space ??? - The OPEC countries, who's sympathies are not with Mr Bush and Co., in cahoots with the Venezuelan president (Pseudo Communist - Castro-ite) have decided to pull a capitalist trick and have restricted supply. Nothing to do with cost of production. All the other companies not wishing to deplete their reserves and happy to climb on the band waggon just ride on the windfall profits.

They have probably done the right thing for the wrong reason and now effort and brains will be diverted to using other energy sources or stop squandering the current ones. Hydroelectricity, Solar Cells, wind farms, Tidal generators and biomass are all powered by solar energy and are the least contaminating. The problem with biomass is that using best available technology means that veg oils, starches and sugars, all food sources, are immediately to hand to make bio-petrol and bio-diesel and the well heeled will not too be worried about the less advantaged, under-developed countries if it keeps the Cadillac on the road.

I have wondered for years why the hybrid car took so long (probably cost of batteries) and felt that a small generator running at high efficiency on a golf cart could make a good in-town, suburban car. They spend most of the time in town consuming gas while idling at the traffic lights when they could be charging a battery or inefficiently chugging along in low gear.

Coal Gasoline is not a good answer unless done the Fischer-Tropsch way. The primary product of destructive distillation of coal is highly toxic - benzene (C₆H_6), other nasty hydrocarbons, creosote and tar all have been and can be used for IC engines but at what price to the community. It can however be treated to remove the toxicity (most of it anyway) by converting it into other useful products (which is what SASOL did - maybe the only benefit that was obtained from apartheid).

We are still contributing to the global warming unless we reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. The sooner we do this the sooner oil prices will drop!

The Sasol process in SA is a result of their not so friendly previous government in SA that forced them to develop an internal fuel source. The capital investment of this technology is sizeable and depends on favorable government assistance to get off the ground, if I remember correctly. I don't see why the US at least would buy syn gas from China when it has plenty of coal to do the same thing.

Being in industrial gases, we would love to see some of these plants come along. The Sasol plant has ~15 air separation plants that jointly can produce something like 40,000 tonnes of O2 per day. That is a mind-boggling number and the electrical power required to make that much oxygen is equally mind-boggling.

Sasol was as you say created by the old goverment to get around embargoes and in case of isolation. It was never considered as viable as long as cheap oil was around. In the latter years there was some co-operation with US based companies.

It is probably now a viable source but Sasol seem to be more into the petrochemical business than the fuel business these days.

There are two similar themes running now see "coal liquid". - My comment there.

Coal is a complex mixtures and, unless burnt under controlled conditions, a lot of toxic rubbish is produced - such things as coal tar and creosote and variable amounts of ash. Coal can be subjected to destructive distillartion heating in closed retorts and collecting all the volatiles (Coal Gas production) carbon, or rather coke, is also produced which, depending upon is quality, is used for steel (& other) production. Because of the high dirt content low grade coal is more easily dried and pulverised to a fine dust when it can be burnt efficiently at a nozzle. In this way all the combustible matter is used and the fly ash discarded.

We need to get away from coal and use renewable resources so back to the concept of using veg waste (very young coal) and being of the same origin we should have similar chemistry. Increase in food crops will also mean an increase in cellulosic waste and we have established technology to convert this to carbon compounds. Production of methanol is one of them - carbon can by the water gas/producer gas process produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide which can be used in the same way as coal gas.

Probably the one good thing about this petroleum shortage is that it can make other technologies viable just as it did in South Africa with Sasol. You never know it could prove to be OPEC's downfall or at least ensure that oil reseves last much longer besides reducing the CO₂ problem. Using vegetables means that we are using solar power.

When I was growing up we were two miles off the COOP line and they would not run a line to our house for the money we could afford.

We burned coal oil in our lamps as well as our Servel 'ice box' (refrigerator).

For many years kerosene was called coal oil. I thought they were saying cool oil! for a long time.

Coal oil is a old process that may again become the new magical process!

Some might be interested:

http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=311

methane conversion