Triumphrat

Major Kong

I'm reading a book now by Ron Miller titled Masters of the Air. It's about the U.S. bomber offensive against Nazi Germany. He talks about the German war machine getting about 70% of its Petroleum needs from brown coal synthesized into aviation gas, oil, and tires ("tyres" if you prefer).

Now, I'm no scientist or industrialist, but I know there is a huge ("an 'uge" if you prefer) coal reserve in the Appalachian U.S. and in Wales and Germany and many other non-oil producing areas. It's almost 70 years from the Nazi defeat; certainly we can do the same with existing resources. We can probably do it much cleaner. I run full synthetic in my Speed Triple, why not full synthetic gas?

Is anyone in here "in the know" as to why some entrepreneurial type hasn't done this?

Kong

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scgstuff

I'm no scientist (man I thought we had an einstein smiley) but from more of a business background, I would suggest cost. My thought is they had the manpower, so even if it was labor intensive to produce the synthetic fuel, it didn't matter to them. In an actual economic scenario, it may be cost prohibitive to do this. If the cost of synthetic fuel is $8.00 per gallon at the pump after everything is said and done (just a guess), there will be no demand for it since petroleum based fuel is $2.99/US gal. Also, people oppose the coal plants enough already because of the pollutants, so the industry would probably have so many regulations that it may be much more expensive then that. Would you pay $15-20 / gal if you didn't have to? Would you "pollute the environment and cause global warming" to get the fuel out of coal?

etc. etc.

Shawn

The views expressed in the message above are not representative of my own, but merley theoritical assumptions of what may in fact be thought about in the brain of a scientist or a tree hugger :

Lee

Recently I read an article on a guy who has come up with a way to extract about a gallon of diesel out of one tire. He uses micro waves in a vaccumed sealed compartment to avoid problems with the wire in the tires. It would be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.

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Tbirdnz

Problem is the energy needed to create the energy in all these synthetics. Now that new big 1700cc twin looks like it could be coal-fired !


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Ride on !

stanegoli

South Africa has been producing petroleum from coal for over 50 years coomercially using the process the perfected by the Germans. The company doing this is called Sasol. The gas is sold all over the country.

Problem with this technology is that it is highly inefficient and requires a lot of energy itself. It is also a process that creates a lot of pollution.

One of the main reasons South Africa went with this was not only because they had lots of coal and no oil but also due to the embargo imposed upon the country by most of the world during the Apartheid years. They needed a plan B in the event that oil supplies were cut off.

MA0458

http://www.appvoices.org/index.php?/site/mtr_overview/

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trypcil

This could become utterly hilarious!

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scgstuff

Here are some of the environmental concerns I said could probably be raised. I guess they have already started being raised.

Shawn

doodledog

think the thing is we are trying to reduce carbon emmisions and extacting fuel from coal is really bad in that respect, seen an article however on a guy who has stipped down a bacteria and made new life, this bacteria can in the near future be engineered to make bio fuel from photo synthsis and cut out the need for growing crops for the purpose.

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Major Kong

I've flown over parts of West Virginia where there had been strip mining. It's not pretty. It's not healthy for the inhabitants. I'm not really advocating that kind of extraction. However, I'm sure a company involved in mining would do what was most expedient and cost effective.

"Would you pay $15-20 / gal if you didn't have to? Would you "pollute the environment and cause global warming" to get the fuel out of coal? "

To the first question, no, but that may not be a choice we can make in the near future. To answer the second question: we "pollute" the environment from our very existence. The question, in my mind, is not if but rather by how much. I was speculating that the resource could be used cleanly, given enough technological attention.

Here in Ohio, there was an inventor who had a process to get butane from vegetable waste. What I understand of the process is that it would only be economically feasible if oil was above $85/barrel. We are there. As far as I know, he has not been able to get investors in the process.

I have an acquaintance that lives in Scotland. He says that oil platforms in the North Sea are still producing oil and that the oil companies are shutting them down. Is there anyone from the area who could shed some light on this?

Kong

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"Only by challenging and questioning our beliefs can we come to the point of ownership of those beliefs."