The People of the United States could build a people-owned coal-to-oil conversion plant and extract as much gasoline, from domestic coal, as we need, independently of foreign nations. We could just about balance our budget just on that one item alone. Just call it Manhattan Project II and get started.
Gasoline would be cheap and stay that way, once foreigners, greedy oil companies, and profits are taken out of the picture. And even if it wasn't cheap, its still cheap enough compared to losing our manhood to the Arab sheiks, Venezuelan strongman, Nigerian Mau-mau, and so on down the line.
That is, if we wanted to. Call the troops home today and we will have collectively, $1,500,000,000.00 a month to invest in Manhattan Project II until its done. Put it to the vote of the people: Do they want gasoline-a-plenty at low cost for ourselves and generations to come, or do they want to see our beloved country go bankcrupt...to Hell in a handbasket with empty tanked SUV cars and Pickups littering the landscape and cemetaries full of their dead soldier-children?
I'm waiting, Mr. President. Please answer before the impeachment proceedings begin to put you out of the warmongering business (or the Generals do a coup d'etat).
Better yet, you we could build fuel-efficient motor vehicles, develop alternative sources of energy that don't cause global warming, improve the efficiency of our houses, and use buses, subways, bikes and our feet to get around more.
The problem is that no town or city wants any type of power plant to be built in their back yard. I live in a county that has a Nuclear Power Plant. The liberals in this state have been trying to close down that Nuclear Power Plant for the past 20 years. There has not been a new Nuclear Power Plant built in the past 20 years. The reason is because no person in America wants a Nuclear Power plant or a Coal to Oil Conversion Plant to be built in their back yard. There is even a name for it---NIMBY--. Jason
Exactly what South Africa did when the UN sanctions were on them in the sixties/seventies. Made all their own gasoline from coal, and their gas cost less in 1973 than real gas dis in Zambia, who could buy wherever they wanted.
No need to wait, the President has already provided 100 million in federal money to do almost exactly that, as part of his plan to reduce our dependency on imported crude. It is not gasoline from coal but clean burning, low sulfur, diesel fuel.
A plant is being built as we speak in Schuylkill County Pennsylvania that will convert coal calm (waste coal) into fuel to be used by the state of Pennsylvania. Eastern Pennsylvania has the world largest reserves of clean burning low sulfur anthracite coal. Using new coal would be more costly than using culm. Even producing diesel fuel from waste coal cost much more the conventional fuel oil and much more than it would coat to produce gasoline. The only thing that is making that plant cost effective is the Company has been given a ten year tax exemption, under Pennsylvania's Keystone development plan that is designed to return "brown fields," polluted areas, into tax producing lands. In addition the diesel fuel will not be taxed by the state of federal government. The current federal tax is .185c per gallon and the Pa state tax is .26C The sad part is even at $70 a barrel gasoline is still so cheap as a motor fuel that crude will need to go over $100 a barrel before ANY of the alternate fuel will cost less and can be sold at a profit.
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mike hunt
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In New Orleans--the Fed's should not allow anything to be built in those areas that were destroyed during the last hurricane. Someone stated, "Let's rebuild New Orleans in a different part of the state that is ABOVE sea level." I agree with the person that made that statement. However, they will not follow this advice. The end result will be that New Orleans will be destroyed again within the next 10 years by another hurricane. It's kind of like rebuilding a house located next to a large river everytime there is a flood. New Orleans should be declared "Wetlands". The Fed's protect the Wetlands in some areas but they don't seem to care about the fact that New Orleans is a Wetland. Jason
That is a good idea, the only problem is it will not solve the problem. It will reduce the INCREASE in the amount of oil we import but not our need for the fast amounts of crude we use to fuel the various economies of the world. Gasoline is only a small part of why we need to import crude. The people in every other major industrial country in the world pays a lot more for gasoline than do we, and they are still using more every year. If every vehicle in the US miraculously got twice as many miles per gallon some day we would still need crude for it carbon stocks and the excess gasoline would simply be burned off at the refineries, as it was before it became a motor fuel.
The Germans in WW2 used coal for gasoline extensively - yet we can't seem to get it right after 60+ years.
As long as we have the NIMBY syndrome all fuels are going to keep going up.
Maybe, just maybe, someday the problem will be recognized. In the meantime open your wallets cause we haven't even started to feel the affects of our "green" policies.
Hopefully a little reason will prevail when my Grandkids are grandparents. (I predict 40 more years of thrashing about like we're doing now)
Do you want to go into the business? Here is some of the information you will need along with several bullion dollars in start up finds ;)
The original Fischer-Tropsch process is described by the following chemical equation:
Failed to parse (Can't write to or create math output directory): CH_4 + \begin{matrix} \frac{1}{2} \end{matrix}O_2 \rarr 2 H_2 + CO Failed to parse (Can't write to or create math output directory): (2n+1)H_2 + nCO \rarr C_nH_{2n+2} + nH_2O
The mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen is called synthesis gas or syngas. The resulting hydrocarbon products are refined to produce the desired synthetic fuel.
The carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide is generated by partial oxidation of coal and wood-based fuels. The utility of the process is primarily in its role in producing fluid hydrocarbons or hydrogen from a solid feedstock, such as coal or solid carbon-containing wastes of various types. Non-oxidative pyrolysis of the solid material produces syngas which can be used directly as a fuel without being taken through Fischer-Tropsch transformations. If liquid petroleum-like fuel, lubricant, or wax is required, the Fischer-Tropsch process can be applied. Finally, if hydrogen production is to be maximized, the water gas shift reaction can be performed, generating only carbon dioxide and hydrogen and leaving no hydrocarbons in the product stream. Fortunately shifts from liquid to gaseous fuels are relatively easy to make.
[edit] History Since the invention of the original process by the German researchers Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the
1920s, many refinements and adjustments have been made, and the term "Fischer-Tropsch" now applies to a wide variety of similar processes (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis or Fischer-Tropsch chemistry)
The process was invented in petroleum-poor but coal-rich Germany in the
1920s, to produce liquid fuels. It was used by Germany and Japan during World War II to produce alternative fuels. Germany's yearly synthetic fuel production reached more than 124,000 barrels per day from 25 plants ~ 6.5 million tons in 1944
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((NOTE, it takes four barrels of crude oil to produce one barrel of gasoline today (2005). Currently the US consumes 220,000,000 barrels of gasonle a day. I can not find the number of barrels of diesel fuel consumed daily. IF sombody knows, please post that information)) mike hunt
After the war, captured German scientists recruited in Operation Paperclip continued to work on synthetic fuels in the United States in a United States Bureau of Mines program initiated by the Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act.
[edit] Utilization Currently, two companies have commercialized their FT technology. Shell in Bintulu, Malaysia, uses natural gas as a feedstock, and produces primarily low-sulfur diesel fuels. Sasol in South Africa uses coal and natural gas as a feedstock, and produces a variety of synthetic petroleum products. The process is today used in South Africa to produce most of the country's diesel fuel from coal by the company Sasol. The process was used in South Africa to meet its energy needs during its isolation under Apartheid. This process has received renewed attention in the quest to produce low sulfur diesel fuel in order to minimize the environmental impact from the use of diesel engines. A small US-based company, Rentech, is currently focussing on converting nitrogen-fertiliser plants from using a natural gas feedstock to using coal or coke, and producing liquid hydrocarbons as a by-product.
Also Choren in Germany and CWT (Changing World Technologies) have built FT plants or use similar processes.
The FT process is an established technology and already applied on a large scale, although its popularity is hampered by high capital costs, high operation and maintenance costs, and the relatively low price of crude oil.
thanks for the info Mike. I am like you pretty convinced that until gasoline is in the say 7-10 dollar/gallon range will we suddenly discover that we need to explore alternatives. Then there will be a
10-20 year lag to get anything on line. Long past my need for it.
As long as drivers will go to the station that had the lowest price, evn if it a penny a gallon, alternates will not sell without government incentives. Look at the hybrids, buyers prefer the conventionally powered twins, because they cost thousands less to drive home even with incentives. Smart buyers do not want to reduce the amount of oil we import by prepaying for three years fuel consumption in the purchase price. The ultimate consumer product is the one that suits your personal needs and costs less. When I was in retail the most important question a buyer asked before signing on the bottom line was 'How much is my monthly payment?' LOL
What's wrong with that? No private industry will touch this and energy turns out to be a strategic asset. Free markets are great for allocating resources but do not do strategic planning. Building something as a nation can make a lot of sense.
I noticed a guy at a store the other day. He was wearing a t-shirt commemorating the Rutan project's ascent into space. The usual "Capitalism
1, NASA 0" sort of message.
Except - that's not the score. Getting 100km off the ground is a fairly notable achievement. One that NASA managed in 1962 or so. I remember watching it on a black-and-white TV.
And 100km off the ground and then straight back down is not near as impressive - or dangerous - as re-entry from a 160km orbit at 30K km/sec.
Nor has Rutan made it to the Moon. A small matter of getting up out of TWO gravity wells and completely escaping both.
The score is more like "Capitalism 0.1, NASA 32." Rutan took a baby-step towards useful space travel.
Oh, and the capacity of SpaceShip 1 or whatever it's called is a pilot and three passengers. No luggage. No supplies for a few days in space. The Shuttle can lift tons into orbit and stay there for days. An EDO Shuttle can stay up for a couple of weeks.
So, while I think a coal-to-liquid fuel conversion plant is a bad idea, I don't think a project owned by the people for the people will necessarily be a bad idea.
Hilarious. Say, did you watch "Great Presidential Speeches" on Letterman last week?
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