Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Environmentalists are celebrating that China appears to be embracing gas, and rejecting coal. But look under the green gloss, and things are not quite what they seem.
According to the BBC;
COP21: Carbon emissions ‘to stall or even decline’ this year
Global emissions of carbon dioxide are likely to stall and even decline slightly this year, new data suggests.
Researchers say it is the first time this has happened while the global economy has continued to grow.
The fall-off is due to reduced coal use in China, as well as faster uptake of renewables, the scientists involved in the assessment add.
But they expect the stall to be temporary and for emissions to grow again as emerging economies develop.
According to the study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change and presented here at COP21 in Paris, emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and industry are likely to have fallen 0.6% in 2015.
…
“The main cause is from decreased coal use in China. It’s restructuring its economy, but there is also a contribution from the very fast growth in renewable energy worldwide, and this is the most interesting part: can we actually grow renewable energy enough to offset the coal use elsewhere?”
Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35029962
So far so good – but where is China getting all that gas from? Scientific American, October 2014 has an explanation;
Can China’s Bid to Turn Coal to Gas Be Stopped?
The effort is an attempt to improve China’s air and increase energy security but would be a disaster for efforts to combat climate change.
BEIJING—It was first criticized by environmentalists. Then it was reined in by government officials. Now, China’s coal-fueled synthetic natural gas industry faces another blow as a group of energy experts raise doubt over its economic viability.
In a meeting recently hosted in Beijing, researchers from Chinese and Western think tanks opened fire on a long list of business risks in China’s synthetic natural gas industry, including reliance on immature technologies and their rising environmental costs and dim market prospects. If more projects are launched, the researchers asserted, it could put a dent in the nation’s financial projections.
Coal-based synthetic natural gas—a product of converting coal to natural gas through a gasification process barely existed in China until 2013. However, as the country’s demand for cleaner fuels soared last year, in line with mounting pressure to clean up air, the development of Chinese coal-to-natural-gas projects accelerated.
According to a 2014 study from Greenpeace, China currently operates two coal-to-natural-gas demonstration projects, but there are 48 other plants under construction or in planning. Once completed by 2020, those plants will produce 225 billion cubic meters of coal-fueled synthetic natural gas annually.
…
Read more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-china-s-bid-to-turn-coal-to-gas-be-stopped/
The concern about reliance on immature technologies sounds like a serious impediment – except that it is not true. Coal to gas was perfected back in the 1940s by the NAZIs, after their access to oil supplies was curtailed.
The NAZIs fought the entire world to a standstill for 5 years using hydrocarbons synthesised from coal, so it seems a fair assumption that they perfected the process. All their production notes are still available in national archives.
But you don’t have to go through old archives. The process still used extensively. There are technical experts available who have current experience with synthetic hydrocarbons.
Developed by German scientists Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in the 1920s, FT synthesis converts carbon from coal, natural gas, or wood into hydrocarbons, including propane-like gas and diesel fuel.
Nazi Germany used the technique during World War II to manufacture synthetic fuel from coal, churning out 124,000 barrels a day by 1944.
Today oil-poor South Africa uses FT synthesis to distill most of the nation’s diesel from its extensive coal deposits.
One downside to the process, however, is the output of so-called mid-size hydrocarbons—molecules with 4 to 8 carbon atoms—which can’t be used as fuel.
Read more: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0418_060418_coal_energy_2.html
Why would a Chinese think tank mistakenly believe that synthesising hydrocarbons from coal is an immature technology? I haven’t got an explanation for this, though it is amusing to speculate about what really happened in those think tanks. Its not like Fischer Tropsch is an obscure process – Fischer Tropsch and its variants are amongst the most widely used processes in modern industrial chemistry. Anyone who learns Chemistry at university level, is taught about the Fischer Tropsch reaction.
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Each think tank members wallet tells the think tankers what to ” think “
Marcuso8
And each government-paid “self-called scientist” is paid BY their government to produce results that satisfy their government owners – the ones who pay their next year’s food, clothing and rent, next year’s travel, next year’s research grant, next year’s promotion, next year’s computer and next year’s programmers ….
If a single $25,000.00 grant from one conservative think tank utterly and forever corrupts one knowledgeable free-thinking scientist, how many already biased – if not completely corrupted already by money, power, and fame – government scientists will $92 billion dollars buy in three years?
How many government-paid “scientists” and “editors” will 200 billion dollars in 25 years of government grants and government-directed research to bring in 1.3 trillion in carbon taxes?
How many government-paid “scientists” and government bureaucrats can the banking industry buy for $31 trillion in ENRON-invented carbon futures trading every year?
I remember the big coal gas ‘tank’ in York, where I grew up. It had its circumference ‘floating’ in water, and as the gas volume dropped, the tank settled lower to keep the pressure inside high. When more gas was added, the tank rose higher out of the ground. The Germans had it as one of their targets when they did a run over York, aiming at the railway, the gas works and everything industrial.
“I remember the big coal gas ‘tank’ in York, where I grew up.”
Like that?
http://artdesigntendance.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Bernd-and-Hilla-Becher-Gazom%C3%A8tre-Londres-Finchlay-1966.jpg
http://www.edumedia-share.com/uploaded/300/360.jpg
“One downside to the process, however, is the output of so-called mid-size hydrocarbons—molecules with 4 to 8 carbon atoms—which can’t be used as fuel.”
Maybe not equal to liquid diesel or gasoline fuels, but as good as gaseous methane, ethane, butane.
What I take from all this is that coal is a REAL USEFUL commodity. How come we don’t utilise it more? /sarc
As already noted, there are three ways to gasify coal. I don’t think steam + coke (water gas) has been mentioned: H2O + C -> H2 + CO
The reason for all of these was convenience: a gas range in the kitchen instead of wood or coal; and gas lamps instead of candles and coal oil lamps (no soot). However, blowing out these lamps killed you slowly.
Eric Gisin:
It seems that you did not read my above post in this thread and may want to.
Richard
“The main cause is from decreased coal use in China. It’s restructuring its economy …”
“Climate Scientists, Media Get Science, Data Wrong” December 8, 2015
http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2015/12/climate-scientists-media-get-science.html
“In our series of original analyses, what we quickly find is that evidence from international trade data directly contradicts the claims of the study’s authors that the recent decline in the rate at which the concentration of carbon dioxide is increasing in the Earth’s atmosphere occurred in an environment of economic growth.
“Instead, it occurred, as virtually every similar decline in the the rate at which the concentration of global atmospheric CO2 has occurred, as economic activity has likewise declined globally as Earth’s economy has experienced recessionary conditions.
“That’s not our opinion – that fact is plainly evident in international trade data.
But that’s not all that’s wrong. The story of a reduction in atmospheric CO2 emissions presented by the climate scientists is already well out of date, as the Chinese government’s actions to stimulate its economy in its efforts to pull the nation out of its recessionary funk early in the first half of 2015 have gained some traction, the effects of which we may directly observe in the trailing year average of the change in global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, where the rate at which CO2 has resumed increasing after having bottomed in June 2015.”
It was the Victorians who started to produce “coal gas” to heat and light London and later the rest of the UK. Coal gas is a mixture of H2 and CO. The gas was a by-product of the coking process that produced coke for steel making.
johnmarshall:
It seems that you did not read my above post in this thread and may want to.
Richard
In the early part of WW2, Germany got its oil from Romania. They were able to get all of Romania’s production in return for weapons and military protection beginning around March 1940. By June 1940 Britain was no longer getting any Romanian oil; the Germans had it all. The logic behind the invasion of the USSR was to capture the oil fields of the Caucasus as only this (and not synthetic supplies which were too expensive) could provide enough fuel to fight the British in the air war. Despite synthetic fuel being so expensive, Germany made vast quantities of it. Wikipedia says that Fischer-Tropsch provided 9% of German war production of fuels and 25% of automobile fuel production. Also see now classic text on German wartime economy, The Wages of Destruction, see index for “oil”.
As far as the time when Germany was fighting “the entire world to a standstill”, that time certainly could not have started before the moment they attacked the USSR (June 22, 1941), but every month of the war after that, the military of the USSR increased in size. In other words, in terms of reducing the USSR’s military, Germany failed in that from the beginning of the invasion. One could argue that Germany was able to fight the entire world to a standstill for perhaps one month; anything longer fails to take into account the resilience of the countries she was fighting. Germany reached Leningrad in early September 1941 but were unable to capture it. One might say that the “entire world to a standstill” lasted at most 3 months and was not, in fact, supported much by coal to fuel production.
Carl Brannen:
You say of Germany in WW2
In WW2, following capture of France, Germany intended to capture Britain (Operation Sealion) before invading Russia. But in 1940 the RAF beat back the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain so Sealion was abandoned and the Germans abandoned intention to invade Britain.
Oil supplies played no part in that defeat of the Luftwaffe.
You make a mistaken assertion when you say
The Germans were losing aircraft at too great a rate to sustain their attack of Britain and fuel supplies played no part in that. Indeed, as you say
The Battle of Britain was from July to October 1940.
The existence of Britain as a nearby enemy for Germany had significant effect on the war. Bombing of German productive facilities was conducted from Britain: notably, Ruhr coal mines and syncrude manufacturing plants were constantly attacked. Resources for Russian defence against Germany could be staged through Britain and the ‘Murmansk Run’. Invasion of France (D-Day) was possible from Britain. etc.
Having lost their attempt to invade Britain, the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa to invade the USSR on I June 1941.
Meanwhile, German efforts against Britain concentrated in North Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. Both were attempts at blockade.
The Africa War intended to obtain dominance of the Mediterranean and – most importantly – capture of Egypt and the Suez Canal which Britain was using to assist its non-Atlantic import route. The Atlantic War was mostly conducted with U-boats and mines: it continued until German bases in France were captured after the D-Day invasion of France from Britain in 1944. The German campaign in Africa ended when Britain and its Empire forces won the Second Battle of El Alemein in November 1942 and Churchill called that battle “the beginning of the end” {of the war}). Subsequently, in July 1943, the Germans were defeated by the Russians at the battle of Kursk (i.e. the largest tank battle the world has ever known) and from then it was inevitable that Germany would suffer defeat in WW2.
Blockade of Germany had become important by the time of the Battle of Kursk.
When ‘Britain stood alone’ the Germans had blockaded Britain. But Germany had become surrounded by the British, Soviet and American allies operating in regions they occupied. Fuel, notably oil, was an essential commodity for conduct of the war effort. And the Germans had become reliant on the Romanian supplies and their syncrude from coal. Russian activity in the East threatened the Romanian supplies.
Mein Kampf had described the plan for conduct of Operation Barbarossa but the Germans departed from that plan by putting resources into capturing the Caucasian oil fields instead of concentrating on capturing Moscow. This would not have happened if oil supplies were not important to the German war effort. Indeed, struggle for oil supplies is why as you say
All of this is interesting but it is only relevant to this thread as illustration of historical importance of syncrude.
Richard