Jones - Not sure if stone-age is appropriate; don't know if stone-age people justified what they did with pretensions to holiness... Don't get me started...
I'm a great fan of minimalism, and to me the methanol conversion process, which includes energy-sucking distillation processes, is no doubt a tad less efficient than the direct-to-gas process. I had some experience of an interesting fluidized-bed gasification process that used gasified waste wood (bark, sawdust, etc.) to power the enormous dryers in a particular wood processing plant. Very impressive; highly effective. >From what I gather - and my knowledge is somewhat peripheral - huge >technological leaps have been made in fluidized-bed processing of coal, so >it's not a stretch to use what apparently is enormous resources. Then there's >the miners. A few years ago I visited Nova Scotia and sat at a table next to >a bunch of ex-miners (the company had closed the mine down creating an giant >employment wasteland). Even the oldest one at the table - a white-haired old >gentleman - told me he wouldn't hesitate to go down the mine with "the guys" >if they reopened the mine. Said he loved it - all the camaraderie... So win-win is on another basis: we make the Saudis et al (and their North American political associates) less wealthy and thus less powerful, and we give lots of jobs to local men who need the work. The other thing is, of course, that we keep the money we pay for the coal and the associated processes, inside the country. (I also drive a North American car!) One of the problems is that we rely far too much on government blessings and money before undertaking technical projects. This should be a simple business investment decision; their are enough government regulations regarding pollution and safety that will no doubt take care of those things, so people don't have to fret about them. It's just a matter of DOING it, as some already have, to their credit, not endlessly talking about it. P. ----- Original Message ---- From: Jones Beene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2007 12:42:16 PM Subject: Re: [VO]: Economic models PHILIP WINESTONE wrote: > You don't even have to convert coal to methanol... When you consider how > much energy is used by many manufacturing processes, to name but one > major energy using sector, converting them from, say natural gas or oil > would make a huge dent in overall energy usage. > I don't know about North America, but where I came from - the UK - > everyone, domestic and industrial - used coal gas. This is also done in the USA but to a lesser extent. A major grid powerplant in Tampa, Florida, converts coal to syn-gas on a very large scale. This process does not release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere until the gas is utilized as fuel for gas turbine electric generators and then the exhaust is as clean as natural gas. ... which, as you say, will not please everyone. But the green movement needs a big dose of reality therapy, on occasion. Of course the same process can be taken a step further, to produce methanol on a large scale. Not only are the emissions of this syn-gas plant on Florida well below regulatory limits - it is one of the cleanest coal-based power plants in the world - since the sulfur content of the coal is easily removed and then used as raw material for fertilizer - that is WIN-WIN folks. In Kingsport, Tennessee, a plant participating in the Department of Energy's Clean Coal Technology Program combines both processes, for clean mass production of methanol from coal at under $0.50 a gallon. However, that price is well below most estimates I have seen for new coal-to-methanol facilities. But it indicates that all this scheme requires - is "political willpower" (and the cooperation of the green movement). That is why it is surprising that it is a non-issue so far in the USA. Biomass and Ag waste and sawdust can be converted to syn-gas by a similar process (partial oxidation) which is later converted to methanol. In fact the original name "wood alcohol" derives from the sawdust conversion method. Fred Sparber has often mentioned his work on a manure to syn-gas plant, which would be very cost effective today, even if ten years ago it was marginal. The U.S. DoE estimates 2.45 billion tons a year of biomass Ag and municipal waste are available for alternative fuel production, counting saw dust. One ton can be converted to 185 gallons of methanol, so that about 500 billion gallons and at $2 gallon ... ... whoa... could that be correct? A trillion $$ economic bonanza to the American farmer and small businessman (hopefully we can keep most of big oil OUT of this party), instead of arming our enemies! Move over Saudi thugs ... the American entrepreneur is about ready to eat your lunch... Jones ... and talk about the disgusting, even sickening "stone age" culture over there - i.e. which we find in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and all our other fine Mid-East oil suppliers ... just read this horrific News story.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/saudi/story/0,,2212583,00.html Such reports as this will have normally non-violent Americans calling for us to turn that disgusting culture into the world's biggest parking lot some day ... ... as soon as we get into the upcoming self-sufficient "biofuel age" of post-oil dependence ...
