We Could Build a Coal-to-Gasoline Conversion Plant

What I READ about it, I read in the British Press! And they are writing about NOW, not the 'good old days'

You can argue with them if you want, but according to the Petroleum Association site it takes nearly four barrels of crude to produce one barrel of gasoline.

mike hunt

According to what I found it's more like 2 of crude to one of gasoline.

Here is the link:

I'll take you world for it, the point of the post was if we used half as much gas the result would be the same, whether it is two or four barrels.

mike hunt

Yes of course. I musth have misse that part. ....?

Old tom says intelectualls are frequent misspelers.

I am not suggesting that you do my work. Rather, that you do your work: be sure of your facts before you post them.

The fasts? That was during lent.

Fast seems an accurate word. Fast as in write whatever you think is true without doing the work of verifying the info you post.

Jeff

In other words, you are unwilling or unable to back your words.

Jeff

What that doesn't figure include was the last half of that 19.9 gallons of gasoline sentence - "as well as other petroleum products."

That's not counting the fractions in the incoming crude oil that are too heavy or too light to efficiently transform into gasoline - and that are still valuable on their own without any more intensive refining. At the lighter elements end of the scale you get various solvents propane and butane, and even those can be combined with a bit of catalyst magic and work into the longer chain molecules needed for gasoline.

And at the other (heavy) end you've got your Crater, Tars and Asphalts. And again, if they want to spend the energy to crack some of these into lighter strings, they can - but the energy input to do it would be higher than the benefit obtained.

We'd be better off building Flex Fuel ready vehicles that will take Ethanol or Methanol either straight or in a Gasoline blend, and building up the infrastructure for fueling them. Use crops to make vehicle fuel, and save the coal for generating power in large plants, where there's enough economy of scale to run the scrubbers and emission controls needed to do it cleanly.

And the Methanol based fuels really need to have a little gasoline (or some other carbon source) added to it for safety - the thing that kills in a pure Methanol fire is you can't see the flames, so you don't know that it's time for you to run like hell in the opposite direction.

The few fires they deal with in the Indy 500 pits look like a chicken dance till you realize what's going on... They should use IR Cameras.

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Price freeze... Anything over the purchased price plus a percentage of profit determide by the governement. Our current crisis calls for it and it includes plently for R&D and building new refinerys.

No tri lateral thing going on here but a bunch of oil exec's that knew what might happen in the future, called forcasting and rather then be a percentage about what could fail, they were a percent below what could fail. 3.09 a gallon here in Wisconsin now. Summer is a couple of months away. We have not hit the peak yet. Something will happen to change things I can tell you that much. Allot of jobs are on the line right now. It is good for the democrates though keeping the gas price high, makes the right look like dummies.

Gerald

I know about this plant, saw it on CNN I think, it is a great idea but they need about 30 maybe 40 or more. Start building them right now and our dependence on crude will start to go away. The coal town will come back, my only hope is that the great amounts will also be spent to take care of the miners. Safety and health and a better way to get this coal out. Our current coal mining ideas are probably very old compared to what they could be if more money was spent on research.

Gerald

This should help....

The United States and Russia, along with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), accounted for 61 percent of the total crude oil produced in the world in 2004. The United States accounted for 7.4 percent of the world's total 2004 crude oil production, and Russia 12 percent. Because uses for crude oil in its natural state are limited, almost all crude oil is processed into finished petroleum products at a refinery. The refining process usually involves (1) distillation, or separation of the hydrocarbons that make up crude oil so that the heavier products, such as asphalt, are separated from the lighter products, like kerosene; (2) conversion, or cracking of the molecules to allow the refiner to squeeze a higher percentage of light products, such as gasoline, from each barrel of oil; and (3) treatment, or enhancement of the quality of the product which could entail removing sulfur from such fuels as kerosene, gasoline, and heating oils. The addition of blending components to gasoline is also a part of this process.

Crude oil is measured in barrels. A barrel of 42-U.S. gallons of crude oil yields slightly more than 44 gallons of petroleum products. This "process gain" of volume is due to a reduction in the density during the refining process. In 2004, one barrel of crude oil, when refined, yielded 19.7 gallons of finished motor gasoline, as well as smaller quantities of many other petroleum products

Gerald

This project really is a good idea but needs to be expanded way past one plant.. It is real and we will all benifet.

Gerald

It won't happen because of the environmental laws. Hell they have a tough time just upgrading the existing facilities.

On 4/20/2006 10:48 PM Jeff spake these words of knowledge:

Jeff, step away from the troll. Just quit replying to him; it's not like he's going to start making sense all of a sudden.

RFT!!! Dave Kelsen

Why not post a source that disputes what was posted before making a personal attack?

mike hunt

That may well be if the price of crude get high enough to make the process competitive. Consumers are not going to buy higher cost alternative fuels just to save the planet. they will only do so when they can save money.

mike hunt

Had you been watching things in the seventies when President Carter tried to regulate the distribution of motor fuels, you would have seen that attempting to control supply or prices, as did President Nixon only led to shortages. In a free economy the best conservator is price. Price is the only way to reduce the INCREASE in the consumption of oil and its products. What is controlling the price today is increased demand and the commodities market speculators making the money off of that growth in demand.

mike hunt

I guess we can assume you did not find a source to support you contention?

mike hunt