Previous  1  2  3  Next

Can the process produce the heavier oils too? I don't know what porportion of total production the lubricants and greases occupy.

   

Oops, I was way off on the size of a barrel, AND the cost of a tar-sand barrel as well, I figured it was higher. I rescind my last statement, and encourage Canada to process both.

   

Lube oils and hydraulic oils aren't so much refined as engineered--almost at the molecular level. They are a very low percentage of teh total petroleum market.

Basically coal is made of the same stuff as oil (carbon and hydrogen) except the carbon chains are much longer (thus it is in solid form) and their are a lot more impurities (notbaly sulphur).

   

THe article does not make it really clear. Does that 28 dollar price tag include the cost of the coal.

Assuming it does and even if it did not, the cost of lignite probably would not increase it all that much.


Jess wondering.

   

Lots of coal in Germany, Russia and the US as well - so who would we sell to? But it certainly sounds cheaper than the tar sands. I can just see it, we'll get the Saskatchewhiners taking over from Alberta, while Albertans make common cause with Quebec about getting a raw deal and fiscal imbalance. What will all this do to the reformacons?

   

South Africa's been doing coal-to-liquid successfully for years (since 1955 actually).

http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/uses-of-c ... o-liquids/

It isn't just coal that's an available fossil fuel we don't use as much as we could. Last year Shell oil announced they have a process to produce oil from shale at $35 a barrel.

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political ... liticians/

   

So much for peak oil...we've got 400 years of coal alone in Canada.

   

You've gotta wonder why the US or Germany haven't pursued this until now? Or even Canada. I wonder how accurate the report is - ie can we really compare that $28 cost/bbl with current oil prices?

   

S'ok. I had a typo too. 36 gallons of beer is 119 litres, not 191.

Never make that mistake at a kegger.

   

Peak oil is still an issue. But you have to look at it in the thermodynamic, as opposed to the economic, context. The economics focuses on the cost of a barrle of oil, but the cost is influenced by many factors--as Infidel pointed out a few posts ago.

The real issue is what is the amount of energy that you put in compared to the amount of energy you get out of it (well, exergy not energy, to be perfectly correct, but we'll skip that for now). The problem is that, after you pick the low-hanging fruit (easily-accessed sweet Arabian crude), it takes more and more energy to get your barrel of oil. And you've reached your thermdynamical-economical limit when it takes more than a barrelful of energy to get a barrelful of oil.

   

But it's not an issue if we are able to replace oil with coal - at least not for a long time forward. Even if this process is only useful for producing gasoline, that will take a lot of pressure off the oils stocks. If we find cost effective ways of producing oil for other uses from plants, that would further reduce the need for crude oil, so it would last even longer.

But, all that does is push the reckoning further into the future. Especially if we keep breeding like we are now.

   

It's not as simple as "replacing oil with coal." There's different types of processing each has to go through. Regardless of what oil staocks are worth, if takes more than barrel full of energy (actualyl exergy) of oil to get a barrel full of oil, then you've got yourself a losing proposition.

   

Of course. That's been demonstrated since the 1950's. But, if all of a sudden it's cheaper to produce gasoline from coal, as this article suggests, then we'll be using way less crude oil, so we'll reach that point much later. In fact the article says they're producing oil, not gas, from the coal, so it would likely be able to be used for most of the things that crude is used for.

If we substitute coal for oil, at some point we'll hit peak coal too. But, that's a few hundred years in the future. Theoretically it would give us time to find alternate sources of energy, tho no doubt in 2410 they'll be anguishing about running out of coal, or how they have to go to war with Canada to get it.

But it's like fertilizer - add one nutrient, and another becomes the limiting factor to crop yield. So if we solve our hydrocarbon shortage, it doesn't mean we won't get to peak water, or peak cropland, or who knows what, instead, if we keep expanding our population. Or we'll be dealing with the effects our waste products have on the planet - even if AGW turns out to be bs.

   

I know EXACTLY why the US hasn't pursued this.

   

I don't man to be a downer or anything and I'm just speculating after scanning the article and everyone's responses, but isn't this just a stop-gap measure? I mean "fossil fuel" implies that it's limited, yes? So again, just wondering, why isn't the focus on introducing other sources of power or improving on the technologies out there that are not created through fossil fuels. Though I assume most things -- even the "green" ones -- are created in some form through the use of fossil fuels. I'm just wondering if it's not a little foolish to focus on something with a limited supply when a better solution is, or could be, out there.

   

Previous  1  2  3  Next