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67 comments on Coal Mining Reserves - a cautious note

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mr f on June 4, 2007 - 2:32am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Educational post on what I'm sure is just a short-list of the quandaries facing us when it comes to the implications of ramping up CTL and further coal fired electricity production...

Coal, of course, is the monster of hydrocarbon energy (when it comes to "reserves")--but it seems this comes at a great environmental cost, not to mention the sheer, physically strenuous effort needed to extract the stuff.

I look forward to more coal posts, keep 'em coming.

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jjhman on June 6, 2007 - 10:26pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

This is a good enough place to remind everyone that coal-to-liquids processes run at about 50% efficiency. That means that the coal only lasts half as long if you turn it all into liquid Hummer fuel and that you get (at least) twice the CO2 for every mile driven. If you try to replace a large fraction of the ENERGY being used in liquid fuel it goes away even faster.

You can't outrun the 2nd law.

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Dezakin on June 7, 2007 - 2:29am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You can still use coal for the carbon feedstock and use an external hydrogen source. Say you have a natural gas source nearby, you can use the excess hydrogen from that, and someday you can even talk about using nuclear or solar thermochemical hydrogen production; Not someday soon unfortunately.

You can't outrun the 2nd law.

You probably mean the first.

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67 comments on Coal Mining Reserves - a cautious note

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