Status and obstacles to commercialization of coal liquefaction and gasification

Technical Report · Wed May 05 04:00:00 EDT 1976

OSTI ID:7339790

In his 1975 State of the Union message, the President called for accelerated development of the Nation's energy technology and resources and proposed a set of energy supply and conservation measures to reduce the United States dependence on foreign oil by 1985. As part of these measures, he proposed that the Government provide financial and other incentives to stimulate investment in a number of commercial-scale synthetic fuel plants. In addition, he set a goal to produce the equivalent in synthetic fuels of 1 million barrels of oil a day by 1985. In June, 1975, US ERDA projected 2/sup 1///sub 2/ million barrels of oil a day and /sup 1///sub 2/ to 1/sup 1///sub 2/ million barrels of oil equivalent from first-generation coal liquefaction and gasification plants, respectively, by 1985. These estimates are now being revised to 250,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil a day from coal gasification processes by 1985. ERDA is supporting several second-generation coal gasification processes for high-Btu gas, low-Btu gas and also several second-generation coal liquefaction processes. It is anticipated that some of these processes will be developed successfully and that plants could then be built that would reduce the cost of synthetic oil and gas by 15 percent or more. The status and financial funding of the individual projects are given. Finally, constraints to commercialization are discussed, including: recent Federal Power Commission rulings, capital requirements, cost escalation, product competitiveness, technical risk, coal availability, water availability, and equipment and materials. (LTN)

• Research Organization: General Accounting Office, Washington, D.C. (USA)
• OSTI ID: 7339790
• Report Number(s): RED-76-81
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
010404 -- Coal
Lignite
& Peat-- Gasification
010405 -- Coal
Lignite
& Peat-- Hydrogenation & Liquefaction
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
294001* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Coal
AVAILABILITY
BUILDING MATERIALS
CARBONACEOUS MATERIALS
COAL
COAL GASIFICATION
COAL LIQUEFACTION
ENERGY POLICY
ENERGY SOURCES
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
FINANCING
FLUIDS
FOSSIL FUELS
FUEL GAS
FUELS
GAS FUELS
GASES
GASIFICATION
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
HIGH BTU GAS
HYDROGEN COMPOUNDS
INDUSTRY
LIQUEFACTION
LOW BTU GAS
MATERIALS
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
NORTH AMERICA
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
SYNTHETIC FUELS INDUSTRY
US ERDA
US ORGANIZATIONS
USA
WATER