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190 comments on Richard Heinberg: Coal in the United States

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Consumer on May 29, 2008 - 10:22am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

At some point, won't it be more efficient to electrify/liquify the coal at the site of extraction and move the electricity/liquids than to transport the coal?

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Gail the Actuary on May 29, 2008 - 11:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Unfortunately, this still requires infrastructure. Our electric grid needs serious upgrading. We will need to open new mines and expand other ones. This will require additional coal mining equipment and workers trained to do the necessary work. CTL plants seem to be quite big and complex. Adding enough of these to increase our gasoline production by even 5% would be a huge undertaking.

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Heading Out on May 29, 2008 - 12:36pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

(In mischief) Can you spell pipeline? The reason that coal is not shipped by pipeline is more political than technical.

I think it will depend on how fast the oil supply declines as to whether we see much investment in CTL or not, again much of it is political (help the junior Senator from where?), if the crash comes earlier it is a technology that is available, and which works and has been tested at all scales. If the crisis is more drawn out then it is possible that another replacement might provide a significant alternative (but what?)

At the moment I suspect that electric cars will be one of the answers, but that requires power, and that requires power stations, and coal is still the most likely candidate. If solar costs more than 5 times coal costs, and is only realistically available in the Southern states we don't have, as you note, the infrastructure in place to shift it around, nor the economic incentive to put it in place.

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LevinK on May 29, 2008 - 3:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

"The reason that coal is not shipped by pipeline is more political than technical"

Can you expand on this? My guess is that such shipments will require enormous amounts of water. And at 1bln.tonnes annually even dry coal has similar volume than all oil ever piped in this country. Not sure it would be economical to build another pipeline system just for that.

Of course a large scale coal expansion may change this, but I'm not familiar with the technical details to have an opinion.

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Heading Out on May 29, 2008 - 3:25pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Coal has been piped in the past, and there was some work on creating "coal logs" that were made of coal particles and a binder that would sensibly fill most of the volume of the pipe, thereby reducing water needs. The only operating unit at the moment that I am aware of is at Black Mesa. There has been some talk about using air as a conveying fluid, but I am not sure how well that would work at longer distances.

I just did a quick Google, and found this :

Several utilities and consultants are proposing the coal-slurry pipeline as a far cheaper alternate to unit trains.^It has been estimated that a slurry pipeline will be $14 billion cheaper than unit trains for a 1400-mile haul from Wyoming to a 1400-MW generating station in Arkansas.^This estimate of savings is from Larry Grundmann, engineering manager for Middle South Utilities` (MSU) fuel subsidiary.^MSU is building two coal-fired units--scheduled for operation in 1979 and 1981 at a site near White Bluff, Arkansas.^

(Obviously it is quite old, and was not implemented).

There are varying reports on how much water a pipeline would use - and sometimes it is difficult to separate out the facts, since the railways, for some obscure reason, seem to be dead set against them. There is more information on the coal log idea at this site.

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LevinK on May 29, 2008 - 4:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thanks, much appreciated. Makes you wonder why such low-tech transportation technology has not been implemented on the large scale already.

Anyway building pipelines would also take time and face similar constraints as with railroads. I stick to my initial claim that infrastructure coupled with depletion of the best sites will prevent coal from replacing oil and NG. In energy terms this would require more than tripling of coal production in US, and if we account for loss of efficiency if CTL is to replace the oil, this would require further almost doubling of it. Not even remotely possible IMO, not even in 50 years.

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tsakach on May 29, 2008 - 10:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

At some point, won't it be more efficient to electrify/liquify the coal at the site of extraction and move the electricity/liquids than to transport the coal?

This report says it is at least 61% more expensive to transport coal over rail vs. generating electricity at the mine and sending it over HVDC transmission lines:

Economics of Mine Mouth Generation with HVDC transmission relative to Coal Transport

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