Montana Gov. Wants to Turn Coal Into Liquid Fuel

The only "against" argument in the entire article is money (and infrastructure, but that is in the end "money"). Of course $75 billion (USD) is not a small amount of money - and that's for the plant only. Hopefully they can find a way to do it - because it's a better alternative to just burning the coal.

There might be some extra savings in there s well. In reading the article again there must be a lot of waste (heat?) generated by the process since it takes 1 ton of coal (2000 pounds) to produce 1.5 barrels of diesel fuel, which is approximately 63 gallons, weighing approx 7.5 lbs per gallon (using the approx weight of crude oil), or 472.5 pounds extracted per ton. I'm not sure how much of the remaining 1500+ lbs would be extractable minerals like sulfur, mercury and arsenic, but if the rest is turned into heat, could that be used as well? Potentially it could be put back into the process since the heat can't be saved due to the remote location of the facility. Would this help with profitabililty once the system is online?