Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology => Topic started by: Ray hinton on 02/02/2006 00:28:19
-
Oh deep joy,
president bush has said the us must seek alternative sources of energy,does this mean that fossil fuels are running out ?.
apparently not,its because the oil is coming from increasingly volatile areas of the world, pity it takes war to change political minds.[^]
every village has one !
-
Talking about fossil fuels. AT the moment Europe is going through a natural gas Shortage/crisis but there still seems to be large quantities of coal waiting to be dug up. And i remember from somewhere that it is possible to make gas from coal. Couldn't we use coal gas as a way to make up this shortfall, or is the process of making gas from coal to inefficient and environmentally unfriendly
Michael HAPPY NEW YEAR (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi11.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fa186%2Fukmicky%2Fparty-smiley-012.gif&hash=844994fd61764508c533537d6874634d)
-
The process involves heating up the coal to force out the gas, the bye product is coke,the solid one not the elvis killer,
the coke is then given to Hattie Jakes to put in her "bloodin-stove"
every village has one !
-
quote:
Originally posted by ukmicky
Talking about fossil fuels. AT the moment Europe is going through a natural gas Shortage/crisis but there still seems to be large quantities of coal waiting to be dug up. And i remember from somewhere that it is possible to make gas from coal. Couldn't we use coal gas as a way to make up this shortfall, or is the process of making gas from coal to inefficient and environmentally unfriendly
Traditional coal gas was what we used to use in the days before natural gas (i.e. North Sea gas).
Problem is that coal gas is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, whereas natural gas is methane. We went through a phase of having to convert all of our gas appliances when the switch over happened between coal gas and natural gas.
Is it possible to create methane from coal? It certainly is possible to create longer chain hydrocarbons from coal (South Africa used to do this in the days when it suffered an oil embargo due to the political unpopularity of its apartheid policies – but it was very expensive). I imagine it would also be possible to create methane from coal, but I would expect that that too would be considerable more expensive than drilling it out of wells.
-
quote:
Originally posted by Ray hinton
The process involves heating up the coal to force out the gas, the bye product is coke,the solid one not the elvis killer,
the coke is then given to Hattie Jakes to put in her "bloodin-stove"
every village has one !
My recollection, and I may be wrong, is that coal gas is produced by heating coal and steam, thus transferring the oxygen from the water to the carbon, to form carbon monoxide, and leaving free hydrogen.