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| Coal & biomass co-conversion to transportation fuels, Michael E. Reed, DOE NETL Office of Fossil Energy, Oct 17 2007 |
Switchgrass, prairie grass, wood, coal, biomass, gas to liquids or GTL via gasification & FT catalytic fuel production, today more than 240,000 barrels per day of Synthetic Fuels are mass manufactured in South Africa using the Fischer-Tropsch or FT process by Mossgas, Secunda CTL. In Qatar Oryx GTL. In Malaysia (Shell Bintulu) and MTG or methanol to gasoline Mobile plant in New Zealand.
Mass Produced Synthetic Fuels
Synthetic Fuel already about 0.24% of the 100 million barrels of crude oil daily refining output capacity worldwide used to make gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, propane, butane, waxes, lubricants, polymers, coatings, petrochemicals, chemicals, precursors, plastics, insulators, gasket materials, paint, dye, fertilizer, explosives, pharmaceuticals, soaps, cleaning products, films, tape, adhesive & many other products that are ultimately made from chemicals extracted from or made from crude oil or petroleum mined or pumped from the Earth's mantel by oil companies worldwide.
Security of Nations with Low or No Oil Reservers
Nations that have limited or non existent oil reserved can use domestic coal, wood, crop waste, biomass & food waste to as chemical inputs to gasification & gas to liquids. This includes fermentation to make methanol then converted to gasoline via the Mobile MTG process, or gasification to liquids or GTL using the FT processes developed by Fisher & Tropsch in Germany to produce fuels for the war machine during WWII given that Germany did not have oil reservers & needed a way to make chemicals & fuels from coal & biomass available locally. Today Germany mining coal more than ever after phasing out many nuclear reactors which are now offline for decommissioning, with little or no hope of a restart or going critical to make heat & electricity for grid power in the future.
Finite Fossil Fuels Debacle Avoided
As long as there are plants, algae, tree's & other living things growing on Earth, there will be biomass to make liquid transportation fuels to burn in engines, turbines, and other machines for mobile energy, without resorting to the eco-toxic electronics & eco-toxic batteries of BEV or EV's trending today, like the Tesla Model Y or Model 3.
Thousands of Years of Synthetic Fuels
Biomass, oil sands, tar, bitumen, trees, plants, crop waste, human waste, food waster, yard waste, sewer gas, trash dump gas recovery, compost gas recovery, there are literally dozens of long term renewable sources of chemical inputs to make liquid fuels that can be burned in existing engines, synthetic gasoline, synthetic diesel, synthetic jet fuels. Using intelligent chemical engineering applied, many companies today are already mass producing synthetic fuels.
As crude oil or petroleum depleted, it will become more difficult and expensive to produce by oil mining the earth, such that synthetic fuels will become less expensive & more popular & displace fossil fuels as the dominate way that fuel is produced worldwide in the future. It is possible & will likely be done with carbon capture or carbon sequestration, such that novel products can be made from the emissions of synthetic fuel production, while radically reducing or fully eliminating any pollution emissions from synthetic fuel manufacturing.
Cars A Bad Global Transport Standard
Using 3000 lbs or 1400kg of metal, glass & plastic to move 100-200 kg of people, not energy efficient! A bicycle car with a small gasoline engine assist or electric motor & batter assist that weights 200kg, can carry two adult humans & 100kg of groceries or gear, that is 1/2 the size of a typical passenger car, that can travel at up to 100kmph, with crumple zones, roll over protection, air bags, seat belts, roll over protection and crash-worthy protection, these low mass optimized vehicles today known as Bicycle Cars are a much better fit as a long term personal transportation solution, as are enclosed bicycles, motorcycles & scooters with weather avoiding clear plastic full body protection fairing that also reduce drag to enable higher speeds with less energy wasted.
Electric Vehicles are Eco-Toxic Too
Yes, electric cars are eco-toxic! I am going to suggest that cars are not a good transportation model for all 8 billion people worldwide because of the amount of space needed to park that many cars when they are not being driven. If there were 8 billion cars in operation we would see cities with 12 long stop & go traffic jams of unmatched historical precedent. The tailpipe emissions from 8 billion cars would pump toxic fumes where people are breathing & make the air more foul, smelly, poisonous, and increase lung cancer & other health problems caused by breathing more tail pipe emissions from some many more vehicles. Even the carbon released to manufacture 8 billion cars would be astonishing in terms of making climate change worse & more acid rain corroding everything costly & toxic to bodies of water & worse.
Deeper Dive TLDR on Synthetic Fuels via Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel
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