CHAPTER 1 TECHNICAL AND ECONOMIC STATUS OF COAL AND OIL SHALE CONVERSION
| Jurisdiction | United States |
(Mar 1978)
TECHNICAL AND ECONOMIC STATUS OF COAL AND OIL SHALE CONVERSION
Department of Chemical Engineering University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
The production of oil and gas from both coal and oil shale is not new. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, oil was produced from oil shale in Scotland using a Pumpherston retort. Small-scale production of shale oil also occurred in south-central Utah and in Carlin, Nevada.
Through the turn of the century, oil and gas were produced in relatively large amounts by the distillation of coal. The gas was variously known as water gas, blue-water gas, producer gas, and town gas. The discovery and the development of natural gas, which had a consistent heating value of about 1000 Btu/ft3 and very low cost, rendered the conversion of coal to gas uneconomic. Oil from coal had replaced whale oil in lamps; kerosene, in turn, replaced it. As late as the 1930's, kerosene was sold in rural communities as "coal oil." Many of our parents used coal-oil lamps and stoves without realizing they were using a less expensive petroleum distillate fraction.
In western Europe, commercial-scale coal gasifiers continued to be popular through the 1930's and early 1940's. Commercial types still in use include — Lurgi, Koppers-Totzek, Winkler and Wellman-Galusha gasifiers. These are being used for the production of hydrogen-carbon monoxide mixtures for the synthesis of ammonia and of petrochemicals where natural gas is too expensive.
During World War II, to supplement interruptible petroleum supplies, the German army utilized gasoline produced from the Bergius coal-liquefaction process. In addition, the Pott-Broche process was used to make high-melting coal liquids. Gasification of coal followed by the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis produced gasoline and waxes as well as critically needed petrochemicals.
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Immediately following World War II, Bergius and Fischer-Tropsch plants were brought to Louisiana, Missouri for the Bureau of Mines to continue development of the technology.
Simultaneously with the Louisiana, Missouri effort on coal conversion, activities were reinstituted for production of shale oil at Rifle, Colorado. The Bureau of Mines produced a great deal of shale oil, utilizing an NTU (batch) retort. They also developed and tested a continuous combustion retort which had higher oil-production rates. At the same time as this effort, the Union Oil Company developed its Rock-Pump retort. The Oil Shale Corporation (TOSCO) also developed a process using heated alumina balls as heat-exchange solids to convert kerogen in the oil shale to oil. More recently, pilot testing of in-situ, shale-oil production has been undertaken.
At the present time, several groups have technology in hand which would allow the commercial-scale production of shale oil. Among those are the Arco consortium, Union Oil Company and the Paraho group. All of these have surface retorting processes. Occidental Petroleum has demonstrated, on a small scale, an in-situ combustion process for producing shale oil, and the Equity Oil Company is testing, with Department of Energy support, an in-situ, high-temperature steam flood to convert the kerogen to oil.
Current Outlook for Expanded Coal Utilization
The major market for coal is for electric power generation. It is anticipated that the quantity of coal required for power generation will more than double in the United States by 1985. Most of the new coal-fired plants will utilize existing boiler technology; virtually all of the plants will be pulverized-fuel (PF) fired. They will differ from present plants in having flue-gas desulfurization units to reduce the quantity of SO2 emitted. They will also have more effective electrostatic precipitators (and in some instances, bag-filters) to reduce particulate emission to environmentally suitable levels.
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The electric utility industry organized in 1973 the Electric Power Research Institute. The funds used are contributed by about 80 percent of the public and private electricity producers for the research and...
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