Tuesday, Jun 03, 2008 at 13:57
The technology to turn coal into oil is not new at all. The Germans developed it during the Second World War, when they didn’t get access to the Middle East oil fields, and lost the oil fields in Checkoslavakia.
They converted brown and black coal to oil, diesel and aviation spirit. Aviation spirit was so costly to produce that it spurred the development of the jet engine as it used an easier to produce liquid fuel, IE kerosene.
Also I believe that South Africa used and expanded this technology during the boycott of their county by the western nations when they had no access to outside crude oil supplies. The technology is there, but it is still “dirty” and expensive.
Maybe that the jump in crude oil prices will spur the development of a cleaner coal to oil procedure and we can try and limit the CO2 generation as that is where I think that this will get us by the short and curlies.
There is also a big push to convert Natural Gas to liquids.
This will put Australia in a leading position in the worlds energy stakes as we have some of the largest coal (black and brown)
reserves’, major natural gas
reserves and about 1/3 of the worlds uranium
reserves
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