From ESI website www.cleancoal.com.auSecret to cheap oil is...

From ESI website www.cleancoal.com.au

Secret to cheap oil is dewatered coal”

Environmental Solutions International Limited (ESI) chairman, Murray D’Almeida, welcomed today the Bracks Government announcement that it will support a Monash Energy coal-to-oil initiative in Victoria to produce 60,000 barrels a day from brown coal.

Mr D’Almeida said the announcement gave the strongest possible signal from the Victorian Government that it is now closely examining the full economic potential of the state’s most abundant mineral resource - beyond burning it for electricity generation.

“ESI is taking a strong interest in the development of a Victorian coal-to-oil industry as our company offers a highly cost-efficient process for de-watering brown coal for liquefaction,” Mr D’Almeida said.

“Our clean coal technology, currently the subject of a commercial scalability upgrade of a demonstration plant at Bacchus Marsh, gives ESI a major competitive commercial advantage over other known dewatering processes,” he said.

“Dewatered brown coal pellets formed from our process provide a perfect high quality feedstock for coal-to-oil technologies, eliminating the need for coal slurrying and other costly front-end processes.

“With the present lack of stability in the Middle-East, dwindling oil resources, higher prices and the supply and demand pressures coming from the emergence of China and India as global economic players, we expect national and international interest in oil derived from brown coal to rise significantly in the next few years.

The current price of crude oil, the existence of proven coal-to-oil technologies combined with the availability of an efficient brown coal drying technology makes coal-to-oil from brown coal a highly attractive economic proposition.

“Since April 2006, ESI has received substantial interest from global resource companies in our unique brown coal dewatering technology.

In contrast with Monash Energy, which will focus on the Fischer-Tropsch indirect coal liquefaction process, which first gasifies brown coal and converts resulting syngas into fuels and petrochemicals, ESI is investigating a different methodology developed by NEDOL Japan called “direct hydrogenation”.

Direct Hydrogenation breaks brown coal down into small component molecules that can be refined into high demand liquid fuel products such as petrol and aviation fuel. Studies show the ‘direct’ method achieves a significantly higher oil yield per tonne of brown coal in a simpler way and at lower cost than other process, with less environmental impacts.

“As an Environmental Solutions company, ESI is particularly keen to examine, develop and introduce technologies that achieve greater economic and environmental outcomes from Australian resources.

“We are pleased to see the Victorian Government support the introduction of coal-to-oil processes,” he said.


Media Contact:

Doug Townsend 0422 002 359
Spokesperson
Environmental Solutions International Ltd