Oil Shale Plant Powered By "Clean Coal"--and Cooled By Colorado River Water?
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 06.24.08
Bullion Monarch Mining Co. has developed, with modeling assistance by Federal energy lab researchers, an oil production technology which uses the dirtiest solid fuel available (coal) to extract oil from the filthiest possible source (shale)--no doubt with drought-threatened Colorado or Green River water as a process cooling input. A climate "Trifecta!" It will be interesting to see which financial institution chooses to back this scheme.
The plant is anticipated to demonstrate a scale feasibility of producing oil from oil shale at a target cost of below $30 USD per barrel...EnShale [the subsidiary company] has a patent pending extraction process that uses coal gasification, a clean coal technology, as a heat source and horizontal kilns. The oil shale is heated to approximately 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which releases the oil from the shale in a gaseous form and then is cooled to become liquid oil. The pilot plant is expected to be completed by late 2008.See also:: A Return To Colorado Oil Shale? Via:: Yahoo Business News/Business Wire, Bullion Monarch Mining Has Begun Construction on a Demonstration Plant for the Extraction of Oil from Oil Shale Image credit::Energy Frontiers International, Image Library, Colorado USA, Paraho Retort.
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Nothing there about carbon dioxide sequesteration. The coal gasification is a possible part of "clean coal", but not the clean part. Need to sequester to get the clean. Carbon tax and rebate looks better and better. DB
carbon dioxide sequestration = mining carbon and attaching it to atmospheric oxygen and then putting it back in a mine. I know CO2 is measured in PPM's and O2 in percentages, but we don't plan to stop mining carbon any time soon. Will we eventually remove enough oxygen from the atmosphere that we cause other problems?
Scraping off the top of a mountain to get coal, scraping off the top of another mountain to get shale, burning the coal to turn the shale into oil, then burning the oil so one guy can drive 50 miles to work in his H2. Is that the best solution to $4/gallon gas we can come up with?
They're not looking for a solution to $4 a gallon gasoline . . . .
They're looking for a way to get on the gravy train . . . .
No, we aren't having any significant effect on O2 concentrations. O2 is, in air, 21% or ~210000 ppm. CO2 concentrations are rising at about 2 ppm/year, so even if we keep burning fossil fuels for a very long time and get CO2 levels from the current ~380 ppm (that number might be totally wrong but it is the number I remember) to 1000ppm, O2 would still be at 208760 ppm, or 20.8%. It is the difference between living at sea level and living at a few hundred feet above- completely unnoticable unless you are an olympic athlete.
"They're not looking for a solution to $4 a gallon gasoline . . . ."
Indirectly they are. When oil was $50 a barrel, there was zero serious talk of shale development.
Look, you have to applaud ANY effort to obtain energy in something approaching an environmentally responsible way. Yes it releases CO2, but has anyone thought about the sulphur, NO2, and other gases that are reduced by using a cleaner burning coal. As for getting away from 4$ gas, from all appearances, the marketplace will take care of the increased cost of utilizing yet another under utilized energy resource. Compared with other ways of getting the petroleum, this sounds relatively clean. It doesn't pollute the water that is already in the ground, although I can't say what the effect of all the shale waste will be. But compared to insitu extraction techniques, it's relatively benign.
superbad: You need to do your homework. The original big oil shale project in Colorado (Exxon's Colony project near the town of Parachute) was started when oil prices skyrocketed to the astronomical post-OPEC embargo price of $40 a barrel, on the assumption that prices might just continue to go on up to as much as $70 a barrel. It wasn't until the price of oil dropped back down to $30 a barrel that Colony was canceled. Ah, those were the days.
So, I would disagree with your statement. In fact, there WAS serious talk of oil shale when oil was $50 a barrel. And it wasn't just talk. They built a whole city to house the people the project was going to employ.