Author Topic: Syntroleum  (Read 7493 times)

rgroves

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Syntroleum
« on: May 13, 2006, 05:47:38 PM »
"Syntroleum can produce 42 gallons of synthetic fuel from 10,000 cubic feet of natural gas. The raw materials cost about $70.
If the military moves ahead with using the synthetic fuels, the Syntroleum technology could be used by factories elsewhere to produce the same 42 gallons of fuel from just $10 worth of coal"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/us/14fuel.html?ei=5094&en=f8857655ffb8a285&hp=&ex=1147579200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
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solarguy

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Re: Syntroleum
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2006, 06:51:35 PM »
You can make any petro substance out of coal, it's just harder and more expensive than getting it straight from petro, at least until recently.

The germans got real good at it during ww2.  A google search for Fischer Trope process will tell you all about it.

This fact is the single greatest hope I have for avoiding a societal melt down through Peak Oil because we do have some coal left!

Finest regards,

troy

rgroves

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Re: Syntroleum
« Reply #2 on: May 13, 2006, 08:11:16 PM »

This fact is the single greatest hope I have for avoiding a societal melt down through Peak Oil because we do have some coal left!


And if in the process we could starve the XXXX into absolute submission  -- hey, BONUS!

Go ahead, call me a hopeless romantic.   ;D

Russell

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« Last Edit: July 18, 2006, 01:25:55 AM by t19 »
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Doug

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Re: Syntroleum
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2006, 03:10:48 AM »
Russel:

Years ago I went to school with a bunch of Iranians. Not knowing our national holiday, on Canada day one of them asked me where the shelling was. My wife drives a bus full of special needs kids one of them is Iranian and he's going home " If Bush doesn't bomb " as he says to my wife ( Nice boy she says, came here for medical treatment, now he has a good prosthetic leg and walks ).

Remeber there are a lot of harmless people over there, many good people and significant amount of pricks too to be sure.

Doug

phaedrus

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Re: Syntroleum
« Reply #4 on: July 30, 2007, 06:50:28 PM »
Google "LS9"

http://www.ls9.com/

synthethic petro from crap - problem's gunna be not enough crap. Mankind will have, after peakoil, peakcrap...
if ya don't ask permission they can't deny it...

Doug

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Re: Syntroleum
« Reply #5 on: July 31, 2007, 06:20:02 AM »
You forget fisher troppe also works with Biomass.....

Nearly anything organic mixed with water and baked can be into oil along with crap.....

All this is expensive and energy intensive, to that end direct gasification of coal and biomass to make gas to fuel engines not only works in the lab but powered a million cars and trucks durring the war 2.

Link to Gasification archive where a lot of smart people and hobiests are trying to crack the problems of building small practical gas plants and gensets...

Of special interest is Doug Williams discribing laying out a faily simple charcoal system....

http://listserv.repp.org/pipermail/gasification_listserv.repp.org/2007-July/date.html
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phaedrus

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Re: Syntroleum
« Reply #6 on: July 31, 2007, 02:59:13 PM »
Yes, FT process, and variants of it, work. They however also use considerably more energy than the biological method to propel the reaction. They tend to work better with homogeneous feedstocks, and coal is the obvious one.

This leads me to speculate that the LS9 process - which is biologically driven, is essentially the FT process moved down to the level of enzymes inside microbes and operating at normal temperatures and pressures, as biological chemistry tends to do. And this leads me to speculate that the obvious logical evolution of the LS9 approach is to move to coal as the feedstock. If they can get there!

(one also is inclined to speculate on the notion of insitu coal liquefaction by a variant of LS9, and what might happen if these engineered life-forms became ubiquitous in the environment.)

If so, peak oil (which is really a plateau), in the overarching sense may last not about 10 years, but perhaps 30 years - something like that. It's often said that the coal will last 2 or 3 hundred years - but that's not true if you examine the usage in term of the derivative rates of change, ie increasing rates. Looked at honestly the coal can't last more than a few decades at most.

And that leads to some realistic hope that we'll have a chance to dodge the bullet, in the sense that western 'Tao" may have time to evolve into a stable and solar-powered social structure. The evolution of the LS9 biotech seems to be to move toward the microbes being fueled by solar input - a symbiosis of plant and animal microbes, hydrogen+carbon+photons in and oil out.

Meantime one wonders - if the LS9 methods are so great won't the microbes be stolen or nationalized or duplicated - or all three? And if so is there somewhere in the future of our listeroid centered universe a possibility that we'll have clandestine bio-synthesis brew-labs using illegal (they'll surely pass some law!) bugs to make fuel that bypasses the taxman and the corporate greed-collectors? Makes a Si Fi story line!
if ya don't ask permission they can't deny it...

Doug

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Re: Syntroleum
« Reply #7 on: August 01, 2007, 03:31:37 AM »
I still like the idea of gasification, it already works for cars and best of all its such a pain in the ass it makes people carefuly consider where they are going and why.

This doesn;t mean that I expect to drive a wood powered car in the near future just that I don't fear the starvation and roving bands of city people looking for 5 acres of freedom.

We don't use energy wisely because it so cheap.

Now that much said why bread bugs to make liquid fuel when we already have bugs that makle methane and can produce liquid fuel from that fairly easily?
Methane is actualy a more productve way to use biomass than corn ethanol path.

But gasification can turn any carboniferous fuel into gas ( fluid bed roater method ). Consider a district heating/distributed grid system.

How about a Gasifier plug in hibred car. Well actualy more of an electric suplimented gengas car but you see my point.

Then we get into all the oil seeds, and pond scum ideas for liquid fuels.

Last but not to be least are the solar systems and the speed things are moving in solar cells.

Non of these will ever be too cheap to meter or even cheap as oil but life will go on no matter how or when oil peaks.

All the technology is there for a saft cussioned fall.

Then there is the promiss of taht lab in France trying to smash atoms together after 55 years of trying things are actualy starting to produce as much energy as they consume to run a test.

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phaedrus

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Re: Syntroleum
« Reply #8 on: August 02, 2007, 12:22:08 AM »
Right you are! The problems are not really technical at all, they're political.
if ya don't ask permission they can't deny it...

Doug

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Re: Syntroleum
« Reply #9 on: August 03, 2007, 03:57:22 AM »
Ya maybe....

Turn a cob of corn into a thimble of ethanol.
Thats a crime some people think will save the world
 
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