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Synthetic Gasoline and Diesel

Sasol, a South African company, has been commercially producing liquid fuels from coal for over 50 years. Today South Africa produces 30% of its diesel and gasoline by converting coal into liquid fuel.

China has the largest coal to liquid fuel plant in the world.  China’s largest coal producer, the Shenhua Group, is reaping profits from a coal-to-liquids project completed in late 2008 in North China. In the first three months of 2011, their profits reached more than 100 million Yuan or $15.38 million from the production of 216,000 tons of refined oil products. With profits of that magnitude in only two years of operation, China has proven that coal-to-liquids is a lucrative business.  The project is located in Inner Mongolia, and is the world’s largest coal-to-liquids plant. In 2010, it operated for 5,000 hours and produced 450,000 tons of oil products. It is expected to reach one million tons of annual capacity by the end of 2011.   China is expecting to increase their coal to liquid fuels output to 3 million tons per year by 2015.

Coal to liquid fuels has had a difficult time in the US.  Although plants have existed in the past, the advent of cheap petroleum made them uneconomical.  Today, new proposals for coal to liquid fuels meet another obstacle in carbon emissions.  Most scientists, energy experts and environmentalists say that without carbon-dioxide controls, coal-to-liquids plant will emit twice the greenhouse gas emissions of gasoline.  Once when the coal is turned to liquid, and again when the fuel is burned.  If biocarbon were used in place of coal, the process could be carbon neutral.

 



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