Dollar a gallon gasoline

[hkhenson]

At 12:00 PM 7/22/2008, Alberto Monteiro wrote:

>hkhenson wrote:
> >
> > It's not even a particularly risky project.  If you have electrical
> > energy to burn, making syngas is easy from coal, even from
> > trash.  Sasol knows two ways to turn syngas into oil.
> >
>Hmmmm... And how much do you think _coal_ and _trash_ will cost,
>if they can be turned into any useful thing?

Since we would still be pumping some oil but burning no coal with 
space based solar, the cost of coal is likely to do down some.  It is 
currently selling for between $14 and $140 a ton.  Since in this 
method a ton of coal makes about 6 bbls of oil, at $60 a ton, the 
coal would cost $10 per bbl.  Trash, currently has a -$60 a ton cost 
called "tipping fees."

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/coalnews/coalmar.html

>The only reason coal
>is cheaper than oil is that coal pollutes more, kills more people
>to extract, and generates a hell lot more of CO2 (did I forget
>anything else?).

Made into synthetic oil via syngas, there is no pollution and it 
makes as much CO2 as oil does.  The coal the US burns in power plants 
and 450 GW could be used to make about 21 million barrels of oil a day.

>In places where these things are irrelevant,
>like China, coal is used to the maximum.

They are well aware of the problems from coal and are expected (if 
this goes live) to be the largest customers.  On the other hand, they 
might own the space manufacturing setup and we would be buying power from them.

I am not optimistic that this will be done.  If this or some other 
really huge supply of primary energy is not found, we are going to be 
in for some nasty times.  The other way the energy crisis will be 
solved is for the world population to fall to about a billion.

Keith

Keith