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67 comments on Coal Mining Reserves - a cautious note

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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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