1) Introduction: Restoring America's Oil Independence   

At the right, you can get an idea of how much carbon there is available on Planet Earth.  A relative tiny amount of carbon is available in the form of Oil, Gas, Tars, and Shales.  They are extensions of coal, the big Kahuna of easily burned carbon.

We have enough carbon to make many Global Warmings.

In about a 150 years, man has burned a trillion barrels of oil. At first, oil was so easy to find and pump there were "Oil Wars" between oil companies and oil prices plunged to as low as 10 cents a barrel.

The world may be able to find and pump another trillion barrels over the next 300 years. The scarcer, more difficult to recover deposits of oil will become much more expensive to find and pump. Our leaders are hoping pumped oil will stay below $200 a barrel for the next 20 years.

Converting coal into oil is, in many ways, completing what nature has been doing for 150 million years - taking coal and cooking it into oil. 

So it's not too surprising that oil chemists figured out ways to duplicate the coal-to-oil conversion process on an industrial scale about 100 years ago.  Over the years, these processes have been improved to the point where synthetic vehicle fuels can compete with pumped oil whenever pumped oil costs more than about $50 per barrel.

The author is suggesting that "Restoring America's Oil Independence" be a synthetic oil made from blends of coal, tars, natural gas, and shales + cellulosic biomass in a process that does not harm the environment in any way.  From this synthetic biocrude oil, we can make as much BioGasoline, BioDiesel, and BioJet Fuel as we want forever.

While the feedstocks are extremely cheap, this process will consume very large amounts of electricity and heat.  If we use the 1,000 times cheaper energy metal, thorium, instead of coal, to make electricity and heat, the costs and environmental impacts appear to remain attractive.

The "Clean Coal" to Oil Refinery Idea:

In May of 2008, Bonne Posma proposed a nuclear-powered "Clean Coal-to-Oil" mine-mouth refinery. ( http://www.liquidcoal.com/pdf/reality%20energy_revised_050908.pdf )

Bonne suggested using a very high temperature helium cooled pebble bed nuclear reactor then under development by PBMR of South Africa.

Since that time, PBMR went out of business with most of the technology being transferred to China.  A descendent of PBMR's reactor lives on in the form of China's 100 mW(e) Pebble Bed reactor. About 20 of them are to be built at a electricity generating complex at Rongcheng Shidaowan Nuclear Power Plant, China.

The author adapted Bonne's idea for a nuclear powered clean coal-to-oil refinery to the thorium powered molten salt reactor currently under development in China.

In the author's conceptual sketch below, the Oak Ridge National Laboratories EBASCO molten salt reactor and its confinement cell are being suggested.

Both concepts are "Dry" in the sense that no water is used to cool the reactors.  Also, the "Carbon Capture" and sequestration component is explicit in the author's sketch.

(The United States shelved thorium as a heat source along with the molten salt reactor in favor of the uranium + plutonium fast breeder reactor, which showed much better weapons material production potential, in 1972, at the height of the Cold War.)

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Part 1  The Issues   
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2) PEAK OIL, Our Gathering Energy Storm.    $20 a gallon?

In the late 1960's, United States' oil production (red line) was peaking, and oil imports (blue line) began to shoot up.  By 2005, oil imports were twice domestic oil production.  (Click to enlarge this Wikipedia graph.) 

Despite having some of the world's largest reserves of fossil fuels, coal (US #1), natural gas (US #5), oil sands (US #4), and shale oil (US #1), we are importing almost 300 billion dollars worth of oil every year, 1/3 of our entire trade deficit.  The U.S. is 14th in pumpable oil reserves, 3rd in oil pumping.   

We are pumping hard and will run out soon.  Despite all the oil company "Happy Talk" we are getting on TV about America's oil abundance, U.S. oil wells have been steadily running down for over 40 years.  A simple projection of the red line says the United States' oil reserves will be almost bone dry by about 2045.

The United States is now consuming 243 barrels of oil per second. 

American geophysicist  M. King Hubbert accurately predicted the 1970 U.S. oil peak in 1956.  Others are saying Global Peak oil is probably happening now.  Chart:  Unconventional oil such as oil sands are picking up the shortfall.  Chart:   OIL - Peak oil debate losing relevance due to new upstream technology .pdf 
Here is what the oil companies don't want you to pick up on:    (Thank you, Kurt Cobb )

Losing control of your energy sources means losing control of your economy.  We know that oil price spikes have been associated with 10 of the last 11 economic recessions.  Worse, war has already mixed the blood of many Americans with our imported oil.

Reality Check:  Altona energy (UK) believes it can supply vehicle-ready diesel at $53 a barrel ($1.26 per gallon) from coal, by burning coal with carbon capture, at Arckaringa, Australia.
Reality Check:  Natural Gas can also be used as Gas-to-Oil feedstock but gas does not promise the same vehicle fuel cost reductions as coal.  Shell's Pearl

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3) COAL-TO-LIQUIDS (CTL) Synthetic Oil: Making Our Own Oil From Our Own Coal

Eventually, the United States will begin the job of replacing its imported oil with oil made from our own coal, natural gas, oil sands, and oil shale.

We are not alone.  The South Africans have been burning coal to convert coal to oil and other liquids (Coal To Liquids or CTL) - mostly diesel - for over 30 years, South Africa now has the capacity of producing over 160,000 barrels per day (BPD).  South Africa's SASOL company alone has produced over 1.5 billion barrels of oil this way.  Oil poor China is also investing heavily in CTL (Their first plant, Shenhua, will be 60,000 BPD). 

Australia is considering a 10 million barrels per year project called Arckaringa.  Germany had more than 50 coal-to-oil refineries during WWll. US, UK, and South Korea have small pilot plants and a global total of 600,000 BPD capacity are expected to be on line by the end of 2011.   CTL - US Synthetic Fuel From Coal - DOE .pdf 

In addition to Coal-to-Liquids, a larger volume of crude oil is being produced from unconventional sources such as oil sands (Canada, 1.4 million BPD) and oil sludge (Venezuela, 500,000 BPD).  Like synthetic crude oil from coal, current manufacturing methods for unconventional crude oil produce a crude oil that causes at least twice the Global Warming emissions as pumped crude oil.

Interested in coal-to-liquids?  Here is an excellent free downloadable pdf book made available as a public service from the RAND Corporation: 
Summary Only:  http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG754.sum.pdf 
Book + Summary:  http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG754.pdf
Quick Coal-to-Liquids Overview:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel

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4) SYNTHETIC BioGasoline from Blends of U.S. Coal + Biomass

"Carbon-Neutral" means burning the biogasoline neither hurts nor helps Global Warming.

There are several general approaches:  Biomass only; Blended coal or natural gas + biomass; Completely synthetic.

1) Biomass Only
Ethanol, Algae, BioDiesel, Cooking Oils, Plant Oils, etc., processed by fermentation and distillation, by using fossil fuel energy.

2) Blended Coal or Natural Gas + Biomass Synthetic

Coal + Biomass refining technologies for cheap, environmentally friendly transportation fuels, processed by clean nuclear energy (in this web site).

"Indirect" conversion of coal into synthetic oil opens the door to environmentally friendly gasolines, diesels, and jet fuels.  By using Liquid Thorium nuclear energy to power the "Coal and Biomass to Liquid" (CBTL) process, a substantial additional Global Warming benefit can be achieved. Chart:

"Carbon-neutral" synthetic gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel may be possible when coal feedstock + certain biofuel feedstocks + carbon capture + nuclear heat are combined.  Results from some blends using coal heat + carbon capture technology are very promising. Chart:  From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel  
CTL - Affordable, Low-Carbon Diesel Fuel from Domestic Coal and Biomass - CBTL Final Report .pdf

If the coal + biofuel blend folks are correct, it may be possible to come up with identical or better (and cheaper) gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels having net zero lifecycle CO2 emissions with surprisingly small percentages of biofuel in the blend if liquid thorium instead of coal burning is used to power the CTL conversion and if carbon capture technology is used to prevent the CO2 emissions normally associated with the CTL process from being vented to the air.

In addition to cellulosic biomass feedstock (grasses, woods), municipal solid wastes (MSW) and sewage are potential sources of carbon-neutral carbon.  Plasma arc waste disposal, which gasifies municipal solid wastes using a device called a plasma converter, are a practical source of carbon-neutral feedstock producer gas.   The useable syngas is drawn off the top off the gassifier, the slag and metals from the bottom.  The non-metal solid wastes can be added to the wastes from the coal gassifier and placed in played-out mine shafts. 

America's sewage alone can supply almost 10% worth of gasifiable carbon-neutral feedstock for America's vehicles.  In these feedstock blends, coal is used as the sequestered (plant root) carbon component (See "Comparing Fuels.") 

http://www.corebiofuel.com/  Core Biofuel produces a 100% cellulosic biogasoline that is "greener" than carbon-neutral but burns to provide the energy to drive the process, thus reducing the "green-ness" of the final product.

http://www.sundropfuels.com/  Sundrop fuels are building a cellulosic biomass + natural gas synthesis plant that should be able to make exactly carbon-neutral biogasoline at a better than natural crude gasoline price. 

What is being suggested by Restoring America's Oil Independence is far "Greener," than Core's or Sundrop's technology since the energy needed to make its biogasoline will come from extremely cheap CO2-free nuclear.  It can blend coal + biomass for a variety of "green" or cheap biogasolines.   (See "Comparing Fuels," right.) 

3) Completely Synthetic

Beyond Coal-to-Oil: The "Green Freedom" papers:  Green Freedom .pdf    Green Freedom - Martin_AEC_2008_revised.pdf

This approach has zero fossil fuel components, relies on extremely large amounts of energy from nuclear.

5) A Zero-Emissions Coal + Biomass Synthetic Oil Refinery

A Zero-Emissions Synthetic Oil Refinery for Making Net-Zero Emissions Transportation Fuels

This is the difficult part.  By using high temperature nuclear heat instead of coal heat to make coal-to-oil, you are painting with a different palette. 

The RAND Corporation studies indicate that complete capture and disposal of CO2 emissions would add less than $5 to a barrel of CTL oil, burning coal to make oil.

Co-generation of electricity by burning unusable process gas is the major source of CTL's Global Warming emissions.  Since this is no longer acceptable, this gas must be kept inside the product stream or become part of the CCS disposal stream.

If coal-to-oil is to be done squeaky-clean, we will have to use high temperature nuclear heat and capture the inevitable streams of CO2 and H2S.  This will take more processing, more expensive heating equipment such as 10,000°F Westinghouse plasma electric torches with 1,000 hour electrode life to vaporize the coal feedstock.     ( About (pdf)  Applications (pdf) )  But it can be done.  The author has a 2002 Westinghouse Plasma Corporation paper about a "next-generation" Plasma Gasification Reactor study with a capacity of 360 tons/day. 

The biggest downside will be the additional energy needed to make "clean" happen.  But, heat from thorium is so cheap it is almost free.  That's the trade-off.

And nuclear promises even cleaner, more energetic synthetic fuels (higher miles-per-gallon) than today's fuels if we can manage to cleanly obtain the hydrogen available from water to upgrade the oil molecule further.  "A nuclear source of hydrogen coupled with nuclear process heat would more than double the amount of liquid hydrocarbons from the coal and eliminate most CO2 emissions from the process." -  http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf116_processheat.html

The coal-to-oil conversion process produces ultra-clean clean fuels with all of coal's solid pollutants being trapped in the coal's solid waste char and gas pollutants captured during refining.  Coal-to-oil conversion is a well-known process, and its environmental aspects are well-documented by many sources.   (Click to enlarge.)

Environmental impact.  Converting our 286 largest power plants from coal to nuclear to make both electricity and synthetic oil would end about 40% of ALL U.S. Global Warming emissions.  If the solid waste, CO2, and H2S (sulfur) from the coal refining process is sequestered, then there should be no objections about use of ultra-clean synfuels produced from coal.

Replacing all of America's imported oil would consume a little more than ALL the coal the U.S. is currently burning to make electricity.

To make this all environmentally sane, the EPA should make the allowable combined power plant and coal-to-oil refinery emissions equal to or lower than had the power plant alone converted to "Carbon Capture and Sequestration" emissions control instead, i.e., an 80% or more reduction in ALL emissions, including CO2 (carbon dioxide).  CCS backgrounder:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage 

More on the zero-emissions synthetic oil refinery page >

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6) A Water-Splitting Hydrogen Generator to Upgrade BioCrude to Vehicle Fuels 

Upgrading and refining synthetic crude oil made from coal and biomass. Crude oil made from coal + biomass from all sorts of sources will be very pure but composed of a wide variety of different molecule weights that will have to be broken down (cracked) into vehicle-ready fuels. The 1,300°F heat from the reactor will hit the spot for hydrocracking of some synthetic oil molecules which, in a conventional oil refinery, uses hydrogen from natural gas, a process that produces large amounts of carbon dioxide.

Small amounts of hydrogen can be obtained without Global Warming emissions from electrolyzers.  If large amounts of hydrogen are needed, the extremely high temperature water-splitting sulfur-iodine process will have to be used.  The reactor's 1,300°F heat isn't quite hot enough to drive the water-splitting process, but when another 350°F is added via electrical heat booster elements, the FLiBe heat transfer salt should be hot enough to get the job done.  Both electrolyzers and calrod heat boosters consume a lot of electricity.  Being located at the power plant, they avoid costly electricity transmission costs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_refinery    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocracking#Hydrocracking 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel#Biogasoline 

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7) Endless Heat Is Necessary To Make Endless Oil

The US has virtually endless feedstock for making oil, but we also need endless, clean, very hot heat to make endless clean oil.   While we do have 27% of all the world's coal, we can't burn coal or natural gas because they are our feedstocks, it is becoming obvious coal is so valuable we simply can't afford to burn coal to make the necessary heat for producing electricity or synthetic oil. Coal reserves expectancies chart:    Windmills are clean and endless but don't make heat.  That leaves only nuclear heat.  (Click to enlarge image at right.) 

THE BAD NEWS: The nuclear reactors we are using today are simply not hot enough at 550°F to do anything much beyond boiling water to make electricity.

THE GOOD NEWS:  Another type of reactor, the air cooled 1,300°F high temperature Molten Salt Reactor is hot enough to replace the coal being burned in power plants and also to convert that coal into crude oil.  This much safer reactor has little in common with today's reactor. 

Reality Check:  At the present time, there are no molten salt reactors in operation.  The US government abandoned molten salt reactors about 1972 when it was understood that thorium had near-zero nuclear weapons value.  That was then, this is now.  You wouldn't be reading this if liquid thorium were not being "taken back off the shelf" in many places for many reasons.

For the purposes of showcasing a Molten Salt Reactor on this web site, the author has chosen the 1 gigaWatt (electrical) [2.5 gigaWatt (thermal) reactor and confinement cell combination designed by EBASCO.

Molten salt reactors have little in common in physical size, cost, or the way they work when compared to the solid uranium reactors in worldwide use today.  The most commonly suggested nuclear fuel for this type of reactor is thorium.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor 

Top U.S. molten salt web site:  http://energyfromthorium.com/ 

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8) What About Stripper and Dirty Oil (Brine and Bromine) Wells?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripper_well    http://stripperwells.com/ 

9) Adding a Coal + Biomass Oil Refinery to a Large Converted Coal Burning Power Plant

Taking advantage of already-existing coal handling facilities.

By taking advantage of molten salt's heat transfer properties, (molten salt vs. water), we could transfer the other half of the molten salt reactor's heat to the adjacent coal-to-oil refinery to convert the coal that is no longer being burned to make electricity into 50,000 barrels of diesel fuel or biocrude per day.

The coal-to-oil facility would be about the same size as the power plant when you subtract the heating and coal handling equipment.  The molten salt reactor would be located between the electricity plant and the coal yard, with the coal-to-oil plant located further out, between the reactor and the far side of the coal yard for fire isolation.  A pipeline would carry the oil away from the CTL plant to either a nearby crude oil pipeline or a rail car filling station located adjacent to the coal train dump loop.

The coal-to-oil refinery would make use of the power plant's coal handling facilities and cooling water but not the coal equipment inside the power plant.  15,000 tons of coal per day would come in (150 100-ton railroad cars).  Going out would be 12,000 tons of oils to market, 3,000 tons of solid waste back to the coal mine.  Being nuclear powered, the refinery would make no air pollution or Global Warming emissions.  The CO2 and H2S made by the CTL process would be piped away for disposal.  A railroad tank car holds a maximum of 34,500 gallons or 820 barrels, so 50,000 barrels of oil would make a 70 tank-car long train plus another 30 coal-car train to remove the coal ash.

Reality Check:  There are many papers for nuclear heat assisted coal-to-liquids processes but nothing definite at this time.  Most are centered around the small "Pebble Bed" high temperature reactor.  China is making a number of 100 mWe pebble bed reactor units for their Rongcheng electricity generation complex.

(Refinery numbers thanks to http://www.liquidcoal.com/ .)   See also World Coal Association  Coal-to-Liquids. 

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Part 2       The Economics
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10) ECONOMICS: Cheaper Electricity, Crude Oil, Coal Mine Mouth Oil

ECONOMICS, Part 1: Electricity At 1/66th Today's Production Cost?

The economics of using thorium-fueled molten salt heat instead of coal heat to make electricity.  (About 40% of the "Energy Charge" on your electricity bill.)

Cost of thorium vs. coal for a power plant to make 1 gigaWatt-year of electricity:          Thorium: $50,000;    Coal: $200,000,000.

It takes about 3 million tons of coal (costing 200 million dollars at $68/ton, delivered) to make one gigaWatt-year of electricity.

"Once up and running, 800 kg of thorium [1,760 pounds] - costing about 50,000 dollars [US$28.40/lb] - would produce one gigaWatt-year of electricity." (Stated by Dr. David LeBlanc, Physics Department, Carleton University, Ottawa, in a Google lecture on Feb 19, 2009.)  d_leblanc@rogers.com   His Google lecture:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So 

So, using June 10, 2011 coal prices, heat from simple thorium would be about 4,000 times cheaper than heat from coal. 

Reality Check:  The author is suggesting using the Denatured (pdf) thorium fueled molten salt reactor protocol rather than pure thorium, so the actual annual fuel costs (with uranium ore at $100/kg, $45/lb) for the reactor being discussed on this web site would increase to about $3 million per gigaWatt-year or about 66 times cheaper than coal.  The denatured fuel protocol is used to zero-out as much as is possible the fuel's potential for proliferation and terrorist uses.

With a margin that large, using a denatured thorium fuel protocol instead of coal to make electricity is highly attractive.

Natural gas is about twice as expensive as coal.

ECONOMICS, Part 2: Synthetic Oil Forever At 1/8 Of Today's Natural Oil Cost?

The economics of converting coal to oil to replace imported oil.

At about $2 per million British Thermal Units (30.8 million BTU per ton at $68 per ton), the energy content in US coal is priced at the equivalent of about $13 per barrel of oil (5.8 million BTU), meaning that coal is about 1/8 of the cost of internationally traded crude oil, such as Brent ($104 on 10/1/2011).     (Natural gas is about $4 per million BTU.)

With a margin that large, using coal instead of oil to make vehicle fuel is highly attractive.

Reality Check:  Altona energy (UK) believes it can supply vehicle-ready diesel at $53 a barrel ($1.26 per gallon) from coal, by burning coal, at Arckaringa, Australia.

ECONOMICS, Part 3: Mine Mouth or Power Plant Coal Yard?

The cost of transporting coal from the mine to the power plant in the United States is roughly 25% the cost of the delivered coal.  This would make "Mine-Mouth" coal about $50 per ton or about $100 million cheaper per year than delivered at the power plant for a 50,000 bbl/d CTL plant.  Mine-mouth coal refining also makes disposing of the solid waste (about 1/5 the volume of the coal removed from the mine) back into the mine extremely cheap.   (Click on image to enlarge.) 

Summary

Repowered Power Plants Can Produce BOTH Electricity and CTL Oil

We have to import about 11 million barrels of oil every day.  This drains America of about 250 billion dollars every year.  Coal burning power plants should be modified to make their electricity from thorium nuclear and to use their coal and biomass as feedstock for cheap, environmentally friendly synthetic gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

Thorium-fueled molten salt reactors are technology's unharvested low-hanging fruit.

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Part 3       Recycling Power Plants and Adding Refineries
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12) Recycling our largest coal burning power plants into nuclear power plants.

To replace the 11 million barrels of oil per day we are importing,
 it will take 220  50-thousand barrels per day coal-to-liquids refineries.

If you look at the RAND CTL paper, 220 power plants seems like an outrageous concept.  But they are thinking inside the coal box.

America's electricity:  Out of 4 trillion kiloWatt-hours produced in America in 2009
Coal produced              1.800 trillion kiloWatt-hours of electricity;
natural gas                   0.920 trillion kiloWatt-hours;
nuclear                         0.806 trillion kiloWatt-hours; and
oil                                0.040 trillion kiloWatt-hours of electricity.

Plant Selection:  According to CARMA (a carbon emissions monitoring web site, 2007 data), the United States has a total of 5,211 CO2 emitting power plants.  The author divided them into four groups: "Mega," "Midi," "Mini," and "Micro."  Their CO2 emissions distribution is shown below.  Most of the "Mega" plants are coal burners.  

 Emissions     Tons CO2 per yr             Count             Tons CO2 Total      Tons CO2 Average                                    Comment
"Mega"          Over   2,585,125                286               2,107,121,906           7,393,410            (About 40% of United States' entire 5.4 billion ton annual CO2 total.)
"Midi"            Over       97,426                 983                  670,955,785             682,559            (Average Midi's emit about 11 times less than average Megas.)
"Mini"            Over               0               3,942                   37,587,796                 9,535           (Many rural diesel power plants in this group.)
"Micro"          Unknown or None             4,263                                                                       (Hydro, does not include wind and solar lull "shadowing" by fossil.)

The average "mega" coal burning power plant is emitting about 775 times more CO2 than the average "mini" plant.  There's no way you can say the EPA is being fair - or even intelligent - by treating all of them the same.  If you have a bunch of problems that take similar effort to fix, you get the biggest payback by fixing the worst first. 

From CARMA's data base, the first U.S. plant to fix is Georgia Power Co's Scherer plant.  In 2007, it produced 27,200,000 tons of CO2.  That's 3.7 times as much CO2 as the average "mega" sized plant and 40 times as much CO2 as the average American "midi" power plant.

This way, we would be playing fair with America's thousands of small "midi" and "mini" power plants and their several hundred thousand skilled trade workers.

Recycling the 983 smaller "midi" coal burning power plants. 

(Left) This rural 55 megawatt power plant is typical of the hundreds of small power plants caught in the environmental squeeze created by our "one EPA rule fits all" government.  These regulations could cause 40% of our coal burning power plants to go out of business in the next 10 years taking about 100,000 good-paying skilled trades jobs with them. - - Power Magazine, May 2011

Too small to convert to nuclear, too vital to America's economy to kill, an excellent compromise would be to allow them to repower with "Combined Cycle Natural Gas" (Right).  A 30% efficient coal burning power plant, when converted to combined cycle natural gas can approach 50% overall efficiency using a fuel that produces only 60% of the carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour as coal.  This is a great way to increase power generating capacity while reducing CO2 emissions.

Later, when the Chinese version of our molten salt reactor is being sold here, the natural gas combustor in the turbine can be swapped out with a salt heat exchanger and the power plant can go zero CO2 on thorium, a fuel that can be as much as 7,000 times cheaper than coal.

Thorium liquid reactors have little in common with today's reactors, produce less than 1% of their nuclear waste, are the most energy-dense of all nuclear reactors, and are hot enough to replace coal's red-hot fire - something today's conventional reactors cannot do.  We have reached the performance limits of today's reactors.  They have not brought humanity an era of greatly increased amounts of electricity "too cheap to meter." 

Fortunes will be made converting the world's thousands of coal burning power plant boilers to combined cycle natural gas, and later, liquid thorium boilers.  The two "Fuel Switch" conversion examples (below) show how Liquid Thorium could be efficiently integrated into most fossil fuel power plants, large soon, small later.  The United States has become a very risk-adverse country, not a place where entrepreneurs will want to do new things.  In addition to the almost 300 candidate power plants in the United States, there are at least 1,000 similar coal burning power plants spread around the world.  This link should take you to a list of them elsewhere on this web site.

The "Top Ten" candidates for the first U.S. nuclear Coal + Biomass to Biocrude Oil refinery.

-- About 50,000 tons of coal every day.  Enough for three 50,000 barrels per day coal-to-oil refineries or 150,000 bbl per day (or 6.3 million gallons per day).  The United States is burning about 243 barrels of crude per second (21,000,000 bbl/day), so that would be about 10 minutes of oil per day for the entire United States.  RW Scherer alone would be making about the same amount of coal-to-oil as all the CTL refineries in South Africa (160,000 bbl/day).

A single EBASCO liquid thorium reactor is designed for 1,000 megaWatts (e).  RW Scherer has four 880 MW generators, so would require 4 EBASCO underground reactors because it is not on navigable water.  (See "Mine-Mouth" conceptual sketch below).  The author has no idea at this time how much heat it will take to turn 50,000 tons of coal into 150,000 barrels (21,000 tons) of crude and how much additional heat would be required to make the hydrogen needed to upgrade that crude to vehicle-ready fuel.  Let's plug in one additional EBASCO-size reactor.

Plant Scherer to install coal reburn system
GE Power Systems also recently announced several U.S. projects, including a contract to supply coal reburn systems for units 1 and 2 at Plant Scherer near Juliette, GA. To be installed in the spring of 2001 and 2002 respectively, Southern Company subsidiary, Georgia Power—the plant operator—expects the coal reburn system to significantly reduce NOx emissions.

The units at Plant Scherer have an 870 MW capacity with coal burning, tangentially fired boilers and GE steam turbines, possibly "G" Series, (Left).

According to Anthony James, plant manager at Plant Scherer, the coal reburn systems will allow it to meet its NOx reduction goals. "We are excited about this project. It will reinforce Southern Company's position as one of the leaders in the application of new power generation technology."

(Right)  General Electric coal steam turbine.  About 2,470 psi (170 bar) and 1,050°F (565°C).

 

General layout of new underground silo power plant reactors plus the new coal-to-oil refinery and its reactor.

Coal-burning power plant boilers have an equally hot nuclear replacement boiler waiting in the wings, the thorium-fueled molten salt reactor.  Extremely simple and naturally safe, it has been built, tested at full heat, and well-documented by Oak Ridge National Laboratories, and is ready for final user design.  Unlike today's reactors, this reactor's final user design was not "Cast in Concrete" by your grandfather.  Here is the world's chance to make a safer, cleaner, more useful type of reactor incorporating what we have learned from the earlier types.  From a user's standpoint, it would be like going from candles, with all their weaknesses and dangers, to electric light bulbs, far more useful, far less dangerous.

Oak Ridge National Laboratories had final user design studies for this type of reactor made in both 1965 and 1972.  Both were for a 1,000 megaWatt (e) molten salt converter reactor.  The 1965 study was ORNL-TM-1060. 

The 1972 study was by a team of senior technical personnel put together by EBASCO Services, Inc.  The team included personnel from Babcock & Wilcox, Continental Oil Co., Inc., Union Carbide, Cabot Corp., and Byron-Jackson.  It is archived under TID-26156.  Obtaining this document is the best possible initial introduction to the design details of the molten salt converter reactor being suggested here.  The author would be delighted to point out additional such documents to interested individuals.

Simply Google TID-26156 to download and save this free, extremely detailed 234 page pdf document.

There are about 40 three-line per citation pages of free downloadable ORNL reports on molten salt reactor technology available at  http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/  (Kirk Sorensen's web site ORNL collection.)

 

(Left) Overall view of RW Scherer plant site and synthetic coal-to-oil refinery location (rectangle, green). 
Coal-To-Liquids refinery and its reactor is located on other side of coal yard for fire isolation.  Click on images for larger view.

(Left and below)  The liquid thorium reactors (round, blue) and steam generator buildings (square, red) on gray gravel base; plus steam lines (red).  Size reflects the original EBASCO confinement cell design.  The unpressurized reactor tank itself is about 30 feet in diameter; the heavy radiation confinement cell, 70 feet; and the natural air convection cooling jacket brings the overall diameter of the blue reactor symbol to about 90 feet.

 

 

 

(Right) Closer view of RW Scherer plant.

If desired, the original boiler and coal equipment could be left in place and selector valves at the coal boiler discharge could make it a dual-fuel steam power plant.

 

 

 

 

(Left) Conceptual sketch showing how new underground silo reactor would be connected to existing superheated steam turbogenerator.  Click to enlarge, click again to enlarge more.

 

 

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14) The Technology Modules In Greater Detail

A variety of technologies were combined on this web page to assemble the "Making Fossil Fuels Green" concepts. 

Everything used here has been invented, much of it is already in use in other commercial areas or in final commercial development by other countries.

 1) THE NATURALLY SAFE, THORIUM-FUELED, MOLTEN SALT REACTOR  Because of its temperature, and the way it delivers its heat, this is the only device mankind has at his disposal that can provide the unique power needed to halt Global Warming.  Halting Global Warming 

 2) The EBASCO Reactor and its Confinement Cell Assembly

 3) Barge Mounted Air Cooled Liquid Thorium Reactor Assembly

 4) Underground Silo Air Cooled Liquid Thorium Reactor Assembly

 5) Stirling Air Turbine Electricity Generator

 6) CO2-Free Hydrogen from Water, Coal, or Natural Gas for Upgrading Oil  (For wax hydrocracking to make diesel and jet fuel from F-T syncrude.)

 7) Coal Mine-Mouth Waterless Zero-Emissions Synthetic Oil Refinery

 8) Replacing Coal Boilers With Thorium Boilers  An economic alternative to retrofitting carbon capture and sequestration equipment.

 9) Upgrading Existing Coal Burning Power Plants to Nuclear

10) A Zero-Emissions Synthetic Oil Refinery making Net-Zero Emissions Transportation Fuel

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Reality Checks
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15) Reality Checks

Reality Check:  The power plant sketches on this web site show heat transfer salt being used to transmit and divide up the reactor's thermal energy as if it were electrical energy.  This enables reactor modularity where a barge-mounted reactor can be removed from its load and replaced with another reactor.  This feature is missing from today's nuclear power plants.  This is an advanced technology the author has never seen in use in a power plant.  It might not work, and/or heat transfer salt might cost too much to be practical. 

There is a safety advantage in that hot molten salt has no vapor pressure so there is no possibility of steam explosions.  An operational disadvantage is the salt must be drained into heated "drain" tanks (blue in drawings below) any time the salt isn't being used or it will freeze solid in its pipes.  It contracts when it freezes, so it won't burst the pipe as water would.  A typical commercial heat transfer salt would be Costal Chemical's "HITEC."  Heat transfer salts used inside nuclear reactors are Flinak and Flibe salts. 

Heat transfer salt is currently in use to gather heat from industrial size solar heat collectors and then to carry the heat to a central electricity generator. (Right)

Reality Check:  (Below) In 1972, EBASCO designed a 1,000 megaWatt liquid reactor power plant for a consortium of 15 mid-west electricity utilities under Oak Ridge National Laboratories auspices.  EBASCO engineered an improved way to deliver nuclear heat while confining both radiation and the reactor's heat.  It was never built.  The US government abandoned further work on molten salt reactors in favor of the liquid metallic sodium-cooled Integral Fast Breeder Reactor (IFR) which can make large amounts of weapons-grade plutonium (Nixon).  That program was subsequently halted in 1994 (Clinton) because the IFR could make large amounts of weapons-grade plutonium.  The Russians have a successful fast sodium reactor of that general type, the BN-350 / BN-600 / BN-800 series. 

The drawing below shows the 70 foot in diameter, 50 foot high reactor cell EBASCO designed in 1972 as it would look installed in a modern Panamax concrete ocean-going barge with dual 3 foot thick concrete walls to contain the reactor's radiation and heat.  It is surrounded by a modern passive air cooling system that uses the natural "chimney effect" of convection cooling to carry away the cell's heat via an annulus located at the bottom of the reactor cell.

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Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) is being developed as both a retrofit and new plant installation technology to capture up to 80% of the carbon dioxide emissions of a fossil fuel power plant to minimize it's contribution to Global Warming.  It has numerous drawbacks.  As an alternative to CCS, it should be more profitable to convert a large power plant generating unit to the high-temperature heat of a molten salt nuclear reactor module.  If the power plant site is on navigable water, a barge-mounted reactor cell offers many advantages over a fixed underground reactor cell.              
Download  "How the Thorium Reactor and Steam Generator Work" pdf 

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Wyoming legislators approve bill providing $10M for coal or natural gas to liquids FEED study

31 October 2011 - Green Car Congress

Billings Gazette. The Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Interim Committee recently approved a bill providing up to $10 million in matching funds to fund one or more front-end engineering and design (FEED) studies to determine the feasibility of constructing and operating a commercial scale facility which converts coal or natural gas to liquid fuels.

http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/article_c5ea34fb-aac2-5edd-a0d5-9a64ff94e631.html     CTL - FEED - 12LSO-0054.C1.pdf 

A representative of a company seeking to develop one such facility applauded the committee’s decision. Cary Brus of Casper-based Nerd Gas Co., which is planning a $1.7 billion natural gas-to-gasoline facility possibly located by Lake DeSmet, said the proposed funding could help developers make a better pitch to potential partners and financiers. 

The funding is part of a broader state effort to promote new uses for Wyoming's coal and natural gas reserves. On Thursday, the committee approved a move to change the name of the state’s Clean Coal Research Task Force, which funds coal research, to the Advanced Conversion Technologies Task Force. The name change and a shift in the task force’s mission allows the group to fund conversion projects such as the minerals-to-liquids facilities instead of just research into how to use the state’s coal in a more environmentally friendly way.

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