synthetic natural gas from brown coal

"According to the Lignite Energy Council, 13.5 percent of lignite coal is gasified into synthetic natural gas and 7.5 percent goes into production of ammonia-based fertilizers. The balance is used to generate electricity. Because of its high weight relative to its heat content, lignite is typically used in pulverized coal or cyclone-fired electric production power plants close to the mine.

Through a process called coal gasification, lignite can be broken down chemically to create synthetic natural gas that delivers more power and is easier to operate in commercial scale electric generations"

http://energy.about.com/od/Coal/a/Lignite.htm

"Science and technology show that we can halve the amount of coal needed to generate the energy we now use, cut CO2 emissions by 75 percent, and do this while delivering energy at a reduced cost:

Dakota Gas owns the Great Plains Synfuels Plant in Beulah, North Dakota that has operated since 1984.
It produces synthetic natural gas from brown coal.
Dakota Gas captures and sells CO2 produced at the plant.
CO2 from other power plants is very wet and diluted with nitrogen and oxygen and requires further processing, but Dakota Gas' process results in a CO2 stream that is very dry and 96 percent pure, so no additional processing is needed."



Environmentalists oppose this technology. This group believes reliance on non-renewable energy resources must be ceased without delay. Note that this rejection of fossil fuels is quite separate from any risk of climate change that may or may not be caused by burning fossil fuels.

The fossil-fuel industry has an obvious lack of enthusiasm for this technology that gives us such a dramatic increase in energy efficiency. It results in demand for coal dropping by 50 per cent.

China on the other hand wishes to reduce its reliance on energy imports and to lower the cost of energy. It is increasingly building synthetic natural gas plants. Some examples (These links open web pages in new tabs):

Synthetic gas from coal: Siemens to supply eight 500 MW coal gasifiers to China
India's coal-to-gas dream takes baby steps (Note: "In comparison, China has some 50 coal gasification plants running and it is ploughing ahead with another 40.")
China Power Investment Corporation has awarded Haldor Topsøe the contract for a 2 billion Nm3 per year Coal to SNG plant in Xinjiang, China
GE Demonstrates Scale and Fuel Flexibility of Its Gasification Technology at Two Major Projects in China
Topsoe awarded the third coke oven gas to SNG plant in China

For examples of savings in energy costs that result from using the technology described above, read more at A Tale of Two Shopping Centres.

Environmentalism has only a vague acquaintance with logic. This distinguishes it from science. For instance, it believes renewable energy technology is "necessary" even though it is clearly incapable of slowing growth in global demand for coal. Faced with this chronic failure, environmentalism still rejects out-of-hand available technology that halves the demand for coal. Logical thinking is not in evidence here. Environmentalism would prefer making no progress at all than get halfway to the "necessary" goal if this involves any use of despised fossil fuels.

http://blog.gerbilnow.com/2012/03/three-sides-to-climate-debate-not-two.html

----

My sentiments align exactly with the blogger, especially the last paragraph.

Mantle is now drilling up to JORC 2.3-3 billion tonnes of suitable lignite for possible processing into synthetic natural gas, in part utilising the Exergen tech which removes the water content prior to processing. This means that the energy content of the coal is far more important than any impurities.

This is a very exciting oppoortunity Mantle, and I think this proven tech is one of the options being considered by Ian and his team. The access to existing infrastructure and the efforts by the State Government to develop a fledgling industry are both going to help Mantle in progressing the project quickly.