Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Biggest Chinese coal mining company plans huge coal to liquids programme
John Chadwick, Mineweb
..[China Shenhua Energy Co] started developing its CTL programme at a pilot plant in Shanghai, which now has successfully achieved sustainable output of diesel oil and gasoline from a feed of 6 t/d of coal. This facility has allowed CSEC to become comfortable with the technology and to accumulate know-how on cost control and operations management.
CSEC subsidiary Shendong is currently developing the first commercial project in Inner Mongolia. Project construction was 50% complete at the beginning of 2007, with the coal liquefaction reactors (each weighing 2,250 t) successfully installed. Full production is expected by the end of this year, some 20,000 barrels per day of oil from coal. However, the plans go far beyond this one plant. CSEC plans to operate eight liquefaction plants by 2020. Together they will yield in excess of 30 million tons a year of CTL oil, which is estimated to be sufficient to replace over 10% of China’s projected oil imports.
These CTL plans are not only fascinating in their sheer size; they also involve very interesting technology. Up to now, all the world’s CTL has involved the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process, which requires coal to be turned into synthetic gas, and then to be liquefied. CSEC is using a process developed by Friedrich Bergius, a decade before the FT process, which takes the coal directly to liquids.
It is certainly not unproven technology as it was well used in wartime Germany. The China Coal Research Institute in Beijing estimates that the Bergius process yields significantly more fuel from each tonne of coal. It expects the process to capture more than 55% of the coal’s energy, compared to just 45% for FT. ..
(24 Jan 2007)
Pennsylvania Governor Urges President to Restore Funding to Nation’s First Coal-to-Liquid-Fuel Plant
Kate Philips, Office of Governor of Pen. Press Release
Governor Edward G. Rendell today called on
President Bush to restore critical funding in the federal budget for development of the nation’s first plant designed to convert waste coal into clean-burning diesel fuel in Schuylkill County.
A promised, $100 million, no-interest loan to help with construction and startup costs for the $800 million plant was removed from the proposed federal budget that was released on Monday. The loan was promised by the
Department of Energy in 2003. ..
The proposed plant would convert 1.7 million tons of waste coal per year into 60 million gallons of non-petroleum based liquid fuel, of which 40 million gallons will become zero-sulfur diesel fuel and 20 million gallons will become naptha, a gasoline production feedstock. ..
In addition to creating liquid fuels to reduce imports of foreign oil, the proposed plant would – at no cost to the taxpayers – reclaim dangerous abandoned mine sites and remove waste coal piles that pollute waterways. Pennsylvania has over two billion tons of waste coal, and more than 180,000 acres of abandoned mine lands left over by the unregulated mining practices of the past.
Governor Rendell recently unveiled his Energy Independence Strategy, an initiative that will invest $850 million to significantly expand Pennsylvania’s alternative-fuel and clean-energy industries, stabilize electricity rates for businesses, reduce dependence on foreign oil and cut consumer energy costs by $10 billion over the next 10 years. The Governor’s proposal calls for replacing all imported fuel with homegrown renewable fuel sources such as ethanol and biofuels and offers incentives for electricity generators to invest in conservation measures. ..
(7 Feb 2007)
Minister meets Anglo on venture
Mark Hawthorne, The Age
Monash Energy [a joint venture of Royal Dutch Shell and Anglo American] is developing the coal-to-diesel technology in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. New Victorian Energy Minister Peter Batchelor has met Monash Energy executives twice this week to discuss the coal-to-liquids project.
Yesterday Mr Batchelor met Anglo American’s incoming chief executive, Cynthia Carroll, who was here this week inspecting Anglo’s Australian assets as part of a global tour before she starts her new job in mid-March.
The Age has been told that talks between Ms Carroll and Mr Batchelor focused on Monash Energy and the potential of Victoria’s carbon dioxide geosequestration project near Warrnambool, which is trying to store carbon dioxide safely underground. The trial geosequestration project has received $4 million in State Government money. The project is expected to begin depositing carbon dioxide underground by the end of the year. ..
The potential exists to produce 60,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day from Victorian coal — Bass Strait now produces 100,000 barrels of oil a day — worth more than $15 billion a year. This is enough diesel to cover nearly 9 per cent of Australia’s transport fuel needs.
The Monash Energy project will build a coal mine, drying and gasification plant, carbon dioxide capture and storage facility and a gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant. The project is expected to cost $5 billion and Monash Energy plans to produce commercial quantities of diesel fuel by 2016.
As part of its geosequestration plan, the Victorian Government plans to build a pipeline from the Latrobe Valley to a carbon dioxide storage facility. Access to this pipeline, which the Government has dubbed a “CO2 hub”, would be open to energy producers and industry to dispose of carbon dioxide emissions. ..
(9 Feb 2007)
