Search The Oil Drum with Google
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Local
- Streets: Utilitarian Corridors or Livable Public Space
- Summer Streets a Success!
- Plan for Hydro-Fracture Drilling for Unconventional Natural Gas in Upstate New York
TOD:Europe
- Oilwatch Monthly - November 2008
- The 2008 IEA WEO - Production Decline Rates
- The EU Strategic Energy Review: maybe not so depressing after all
TOD:Canada
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
- Oil Megaproject Update (July 2008)
TOD:ANZ
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- Calculated Risk
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.”
—James Madison, FEDERALIST #57 (1787)
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Prof. Goose, Heading Out, Stuart Staniford, Nate Hagens
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Gail the Actuary, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Khebab, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Local: Glenn
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Here's some closer scrutiny:
According to Robert Rapier and others the F-T process is about 50% efficient, meaning that half of the coal used is consumed in the process. Today about 40% of the energy consumed in the US is petroleum based, 23% is coal based (EIA 2005). So to replace the petroleum we are consuming by liquified coal we would have to increase our coal consumption to about 4.5 times what we are using today. That increase would include a proportional increase in greenhouse gas emissions, bulk transport needs, etc. Even assuming only the replacement of our imported petroleum the increase in coal usage would be a 350% increase.
Coal to liquids is a good way to speedup the end of fossil fuel consumption.
Coal-to-liquid, and biofuels, along with PHEVs and possibly (I still hold out hope) flywheel cars. What we will see in the US, if oil stays at $60 a barrel or above, is a radical reduction in fossil crude oil demand in the next 10 to 15 years. Sheesh, we likely will see typical commuters get 200 mpg, as their daily commute will be bettery powered. What will this do to crude demand, especially when replicated worldwide? PHEVs hitting showrooms in three years. Big problem: US fleet of 220 million cars/trucks cannot be retrofitted. One might want to enter scrap metal business now (steel prices high too).
China? Planting millions of hectares of jatropha, and just struck gas, like enough for 60 years.
The great boom in crude demand from India and China? What if they mandate PHEVs as national policy, before they build up huge fleets? Makes sense at $60 a barrel.
We may see Peak Demand a good generation before we see Peak Oil, if OPEC, the hedge funds and doomsday hysterics can keep the price of at $60 or above. (Even RR says we may not see PO for 10 years) Most likely the price will crack sometime before that, like it has so many times before.
What a load of bollox
--
When no-one around you understands
start your own revolution
and cut out the middle man
Yeah,
It's Hothgor. What else do you expect?
I called him as Hothgor on his first post.
The obsession continues.
No kidding, He's still obsessed with us.
Who's Hothgar? Sounds like one of the Vandals at the sack of Rome.
Antoinetta III
A III, Where have you been for one year and 32 weeks?
China's Gas find was only mentioned with the words "At present day usage levels" that it'd last 60 years. HYPE. Given their rise year on year averages they will use that stuff faster than you can shake a stick at.
As far as 220 million cars being replaced anytime soon by an all PHEV or other niffty energy saving device, take a long hard look at those last 6 Zeros. That is MILLION not not something smaller. At around a guess of 250,000 new energy sipping cars being built at this time, the whole fleet is not going to get dented soon. If every Car company made energy sippers then you might get 2 million to 4 million new replacements a year, but that is still a big IF.
The only reason OIL will fall is if the demand goes away. And that is not something I see going away any time soon.
T. Boone Pickens launched a chain of natural gas stations for natural gas cars.
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/may2007/pi20070525_526064.h...
Pickens is expecting that oil and gasoline demand will rise, their prices will rise, which will spur further interest in alternative fuels, and then this investment will turn a profit.
As the article points out, the market is currently more interested in ethanol.
They're both interesting investment opportunities, but neither a solution for how to continue business-as-usual.
possibly (I still hold out hope) flywheel cars.
Like the 'lets build big reactors' crowd, your desire ignores the failure modes.
this is new to me have they re-invented the flyWHEEL ?
this is new to me have they re-invented the flyWHEEL
That is what Benji needs to answer. I've put out the question, lets see if he's got something to say to back up his wish.
Flywheels, in theory, are absolutely wonderful. Back 25 years ago, during another "energy crisis" that was to plunge us into eternal darkness, flywheel research was ramped up, though the dollar numbers were still small (colleges making test buses etc). New composite materials, use of vacuums and magnetic bearings made flywheels seems so tantalizingly close. If you can get a flywheel to work, it stores more energy than a battery of equal weight, and can be charged quickly.
Evidently, the technical or commercialization problems beat the engineers back then. I have long rued that fact that we did not then 27 years ago, and have not, launched a Manhattan Project for flywheels, with a few billion behind it. Several teams got darn close to something good. All teams felt there was real promise.
I see nothing wrong with cars that tap into an electric grid, which itself is being increasingly fed by solar, wind, nukes and other renewables. Who doesn't want cleaner cars which run more cheaply, while reducing a crippling dependence on foreign oil (mostly owned by despots)? If this is the Peak Oiler's view of a bad thing, I want this bad thing. (By the way, is there anything on which the Peak Oil crowd is positive, or likes? Is every positive effort appears regarded with fear and loathing, apologies to Hunter.
By the way, you guys should check out CERA's website from time to time, to balance your viewpoints. I am not saying CERA is right and the PO crowd is wrong. But I advise everyone to read up broadly.
I agree that, unfortunately, the huge fleet of US autos and trucks stands in the way of radical reductions in fossil oil demand quickly. But, at $60 a barrel, we will see radical reductions in the five to 15 year period. Given that such similar radical reductions will be going on all over the world, I think it is very fair to ponder whether we have hit Peak Demand long before we hit Peak Oil, if this price regime can hold. The more I read broadly, the more I suspect oil is going to crack. Too bad, a lot of alternatives are going to be stuffed back into the back closets again.
There might be something useful at the CERA site, but considering the pandering corporatized drivel that their ongoing string of predictions seems to represent, I can't be bothered. I did peek in about 6 months ago for some reason, but found little that kept me there.
To put my refusal in context.. If I wanted to broaden my perspective on spiritual matters (as I often do), I don't feel as if I'd need to read up on Pat Roberson or the Branch Davidians 'To get the whole picture' There are better voices out there to challenge your assumptions against. Vested Interests aren't usually that interesting.
Flywheels, in theory, are absolutely wonderful. Back 25 years ago, during another "energy crisis" that was to plunge us into eternal darkness, flywheel research was ramped up, though the dollar numbers were still small (colleges making test buses etc). New composite materials, use of vacuums and magnetic bearings made flywheels seems so tantalizingly close.
And this addresses the failure modes exactly how?
If you can get a flywheel to work, it stores more energy than a battery of equal weight, and can be charged quickly.
Not a failure mode - but exactly where is the electrical grid going to come from to do this 'fast recharge'?
And this address the failure mode how?
The original question was addressing the failure modes. You have not done this.
If you don't know an answer, say so. Right now, you are avoiding the issue of failure modes.
People continue to try to equate re-filling their gas tanks with storing energy, when in fact the two things are not similar. When you refill your tank with gasoline, you are not recharging anything or storing energy in anything, you are simply moving material - the energy is already stored in it. When you look at trying to actually store an equivalent amount of energy in a similar amount of time, especially from an electrical source, you soon realize the problems. It does not matter WHAT you try to store the energy in, it takes a hell of a lot of power to store energy of such quantity that fast.
It's hard enough trying to just transmit the amount of energy needed to move several thousand pounds a couple of hundred miles at speed without issues (i.e. what is done with a conventional engine and drivetrain), let alone coming up with a media that can repeatably charge and discharge that energy.
The operating words in this fantasy about flywheels are "in theory".
As Mr. Cole can't be bothered to respond - I want to make sure that the archives have info as to why his dreams are a bad idea.
Energy in a flywheel are a function of mass and speed. More mass, more speed more energy storage.
1) Flywheels will act like gyroscopes - so in a moving application they will resist turning.
Not a deal killer, but a problem.
2) Cars get in accidents. If the flywheel is damaged it can come apart (and the energy that was in the motion will still exist and now be in the shards of material) or come loose from its bearings (thus a large spinning mass will be free to hit other things)
This is the deal killer.
Feel free to offer why these are not concerns BenjaminCole
In a bit more detail:
According to this report:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/942445/coaltoliquids_plant_is_consi...
the latest CTL demonstration project will yield just over 1bbl of diesel per ton of coal (and it also could produce 1 bbl of naptha for other products.)
The weekly US distillate demand for this time of year is around 29 million barrels.... so at just under one ton per barrel that would consume around 27 million tons of coal, per the Illinois study figures.
Weekly US coal production is a bit over 22 million tons:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/weekly/weekly_html/wcpweek.htm
Therefore, to replace all of the US weekly distillate production with CTL would require more than doubling US coal production (according to the design of the Illinois plant.) And we haven't even gotten to gasoline yet...
Perhaps Alan could chime in here about US rail capacity for coal, but it seems to me to be a big challenge to just double coal production just for distillate.
There have been all sorts of rumors of big money players doing deep investments into coal and rail - it would make sense to me. The CTL drumbeat is getting louder and louder. I notice there is a big coal industry powwow coming up:
http://www.clean-coal.info/mcclosky_coal_usa_2007
which will probably discuss some interesting topics. Unfortunately the entrance price is rather steep so I suspect the TOD folk in NYC will be unlikely to attend.
Of course the sensible thing would be to do CTL at the mine. No reason to drag all that tonnage across the Great Plains. Then ship the liquid products by pipeline.
AFAIK, BN-SF and Union Pacific share a 3 track rail line out from the Powder River Basin and they are adding a 4th line. I think 6 tracks can be built on a 100' ROW but more than 4 are rare.
The current 3 track line is near capacity. They are trying to run longer trains to destinations where this strategy works (some routes & customers cannot accept longer trains).
http://www.uprr.com/newsinfo/releases/capital_investment/2006/0508_sprb....
Warren Buffett is buying shares in both railroads, plus Norfolk-Southern.
Other routes exist from the Montana & Wyoming coal beds (some outside Powder River) and they still have surplus capacity.
A small railroad is trying to build new sections of rail going from Montana to Minnesota. Problematic. The Mayo Clinic is a major railroad block.
Hope this helps,
Alan
Alan, what would the Mayo Clinic have to do with railriads?
Antoinetta III
The proposed route goes through Rochester MN, home of the Mayo Clinic, a bit over a mile away (per memory).
The Mayo Clinic objects to frequent coal trains (vs, infrequent mixed freight ones now) because they will 1) disturb patients and 2) block access of staff to work with at grade crossings.
Alan
Coal to liquids is a good way to speedup the end of fossil fuel consumption.
Really? And why does nobody mention that we need to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere?
A recent model from Jim Hansen's group says that just burning the rest of the world’s recoverable oil and gas would raise the CO2 concentration almost to the point where the earth will have warmed dangerously, leaving almost no room for emissions from other fuels such as coal and unconventional hydrocarbons. The only scenarios in which atmospheric CO2 could be stabilized around 450 ppm had zero emissions from coal after 2050. Zero, as in full carbon sequestration. We're not going to get that from mobile sources based on CTL.
I wish someone would provide details of these magical models which somehow predict the future. What assumptions do they use, and what do they leave out? How far back can they run the model before it become random - 2 years, 20 years or 200? (Unless they can do 200 back I wouldn't trust it to predict 43 years forwards, let alone 93.)
How can a model be much more than pure guesswork when we have no agreement when Peak Oil, Gas, and Coal will be.
Since Global Warming has been going on since the little Ice Age, and massive CO2 emissions since only since 1950, there must be some other factors at play and which MUST used in the model.
The truth is that no one can really predict the future. Yet I am as certain as I reasonably can be that energy prices will be trending upwards in the future. This certainty is based upon the fact that the cheap and easy stuff is gone, what is left will be increasingly difficult and expensive to find and extract, and will not be economical to extract except at higher prices. This is the hard truth that even the most optimistic cornucopians cannot deny unless totally deluded.
How much, and how quickly, and with what impact on the economy and society -- those are more speculative questions.
IMHO, the IPCC models to not adequately account for the above fact, and the consequent inevitable decline in global demand for energy as prices rise. Thus, I tend to discount the worst case scenarios that their models depict. However, it is true that you cannot dig up and burn geologically sequestered carbon in vast quantities without its having an impact on the global climate. What we have already burned has had an impact, and due to lag times there is more impact to come just from that. Even if the rate of fossil fuel use declines in the future due to price increases, that is still even more carbon released into the atmosphere, and even more climate change resulting.
All this might very well be happening on top of an underlying natural phenomenon. But the scientific evidence is good that there is indeed an anthropogenic basis for climate change above and beyond any possible natural phenomenon.
IMHO, the IPCC models to not adequately account for the above fact, and the consequent inevitable decline in global demand for energy as prices rise.
That's what Hansen and company are saying as well. You can read the linked article for more info.
Go to http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ and sign up for the Climate Prediction project to use your unused computation cycles in donated work.
My current model (they have graphics on demand :-) is on Feb 19, 1936 ATM. It takes several months to complete one model.
Best Hopes for Positive Action instead of just bitching,
Alan
I have only recently started a detailed study of Global Warming and its causes. I have so far found a lot of noise and very little clear information. I inherently distrust models as it is almost impossible to avoid bias in what to bring in and what to leave out, and as they must leave out vast areas as they are not known, or they can not be modeled.
As I have, I trust, enough scientific knowledge to understand a model (I have a M.Sc) I would like to know the parameters used (and unused) in a model before I take it's predictions too seriously. As the only way of testing a model, that I know, is to run it backwards, I will be happy to donate cycles.
Note: I have a new computer with a dual processor and it should have quite a few spare.
I have only briefly perused the parameters of the model that I am running but there is more on the website and associated discussion boards (which I have not read).
http://climateapps2.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/forum_index.php
My understanding is that are running slightly different mixes of equations and the interrelations between factors looking for a best fit.
A dual processor computer can run two models efficiently AFAIK.
Welcome Aboard :-)
Alan
How far back can they run the model before it become random - 2 years, 20 years or 200?
This model shows a good simulation of data for the period 1800 to 2005. You should read the linked article, which is available free and without registration.
"Coal to liquids is a good way to speedup the end of fossil fuel consumption."
It will also speed the end of some of the most biological diverse ecosystem in the world, second in plant, animal, and microbial diversity behind the Amazon rain forests, some of the most beautiful and diverse wilderness in North America, by blasting it to bits with dynamite in "Mountain top removal" mining practices. Estimates are that by the end of the coming decade, only 3 years away, an area the size of Deleware will be blasted out of existance In the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and other souther states. And as the demand for coal speeds up much, much more virgin wilderness will likewise be destroyed, millions of years of biological development shattered in a matter of a decade or two. It makes the destruction of the approximate 18 square miles of Tar sand in a similiar period of time look like small beans.
Ask Southerner Al Gore, the environmental Grand Poobah and Big Kahoona why he does not mention in his speeches an ecological catastrophe that he could drive from Tennessee to visit in only a couple of hours.
yeah, I thought so........
(oh, I could say ask the "it can't be done here" crowd why they laugh in the face of and refuse to support the speedy development of really high quality high output PV systems, and instead smear them so as to help the oil and gas companies create doubt about them, while thousands of varieties of American plants, trees, animals, birds, insects, mammals and microbial life are being blasted to dust with dynamite, and they don't even menition that....
yeah, I thought so.....
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Open pit coal mining is indeed nasty to the environment. I suppose that deep shaft mining is lower impact, but of course it is a terrible and dangerous job. What we really need is to speed up robotics R&D so that we can send robots into the deep shafts to do the dirty and dangerous work.
Of course, however you do it, shaft mining recovers a lower percentage of the total coal available, because you must leave a lot in place to support the overburden. Considering that we really should want to spread our extraction of this resource out and not burn it up as rapidly as possible, I see this as a good thing.
Coal to liquids is a good way to speedup the end of fossil fuel consumption.
Reeading all the replies to this statement gives me the impression that I'm the only one who bothered to read the entire post.
If you read what he wrote before this:
So to replace the petroleum we are consuming by liquified coal we would have to increase our coal consumption to about 4.5 times what we are using today.
Clearly he is stating that coal to liquids will speed up the end of fossil fuels by using them up much fastser.