Warning: None of this energy production can take place in a timely manner, unless Obama drops his carbon hysteria. Since that is unlikely to happen, understand that advanced coal gasification can and probably will be stopped the same way that nuclear power in the US was stopped cold by environmental lawyers. Already, the Obama EPA is planning to treat CO2 as a dangerous pollutant. That spells energy and economic decay for the country. The government is not the country, but the government can suppress the natural human energy and productivity of the country. That is the Obamafuture, unless citizens make themselves heard in a non-compliant, non sheep-like manner.
Massachusetts investment firm C Change Investments LLC of Cambridge, Mass, is pairing with an unnamed large utility company to build a $3.5 billion coal to gas plant producing 300 billion cubic feet of gas per year. That is equivalent to 7% of the amount of natural gas shipped to the US from Canada yearly.
In addition to producing synthetic natural gas — a cleaner form of gas created from coal and petroleum coke at extremely higher temperatures — the project would capture carbon dioxide and pipe it to offshore wells in the Gulf to improve extraction of oil and gas.
...The NC12 venture claims to have a game-changing catalytic technology that will convert coal along with petroleum coke from Louisiana refineries into synthetic natural gas at half the cost of other gasification technologies.
Among the company’s principals is John Preston, a senior lecturer at MIT’s Entrepreneurship Center. Preston and other investors bought patents for high-temperature liquid metal catalysts and the assets of Molten Metal Technologies in Fall River, Mass., according to NC12 materials.
It’s that technology that NC12 would employ in Louisiana. Allen said about 1.5 billion cubic feet of synthetic natural gas has been produced in Fall River and transported via pipeline, proving the company’s concept at that scale, he said.
At 2,700 degrees F, 32-foot high reactors with a 10-foot diameter house the gasification process. About 10 would be installed in a first phase in Louisiana and produce 50 billion cubic feet of synthetic natural gas per year, Allen said.
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Such advanced coal to gas, coal to liquid, and coal to electricity plants are an essential part of the foundation for America's energy bridge to sustainability. In a few decades, utility scale storage will allow large scale use of solar and wind without the huge costs for backup energy currently required. In addition, enhanced geothermal energy will have been perfected in a few decades to provide large scale sustainable baseline power.
The combination of the new clean gasification technologies (of coal, biomass, shale, etc) with new modular nuclear reactors, should allow for a transition to cleaner and sustainable energy without the devastating interruption of a decade long depression.
If Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, Gore, and their pals step in to enforce nonsensical carbon hysteric EPA rules on CO2, all bets are off--and a multi-decadal depression starts to look likely. From Bush to Obama? Out of a simmering pan and into the hottest fire imaginable.
Taken from
Al Fin Energy
Sarah Palin's self-appointed enemies in the media and the blogosphere have kept the Alaska Governor's name alive in print, on the air, and over the internet. Some bloggers have practically herniated themselves in their blue-faced effort to portray Palin as being less intelligent than Albert Einstein. How is all of this "bad publicity" affecting Palin's popularity? Well, for one thing, there is no such thing as "bad publicity."
