Oil and Gas From Coal
Authors: Cochran Neal 
Published: December 2007

This paper was prepared for the 1974 Eastern Regional Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Washington, D.C., Nov 14–15, 1974. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of the paper is invited. Three copies of the discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in on of the two SPE magazines.

In a recent talk at the Louisville meeting on "Coal and the Environment," I suggested that the conversion of coal to liquids and to gases has been practiced in one form or another since the early days of this century. These early conversions resulted from construction of slot type coke ovens which produced by-product tar and gas. In 1913, Bergius carried out his original coal hydrogenation experiments and the original Fischer Tropsch work was carried out in the early 1920's. As the U.S. love affair with the automobile grew, the interest in producing motor fuel from coal tended to be up or down as a function of the then projected worldwide supplies of crude oil. During World War II, the Axis Powers used coal as a basic raw material to provide fuel for their military aircraft. In the closing days of World War II, our Congress provided for a synthetic fuel program in the United States and demonstration program in the United States and demonstration plants were constructed at Rifle, Colorado, and plants were constructed at Rifle, Colorado, and Louisiana, Missouri. In the early 1960's, work by the Office of Coal Research (OCR) tended to reinforce and augment efforts by the Bureau of Mines in the fields of coal liquefaction and gasification.

More recently, the American Gas Association entered into an agreement with the Office of Coal Research to accelerate the development of processes for converting coal into pipeline quality gas. Subsequent to that, as an energy crisis tended to develop in the United States, both the Bureau's programs and the OCR programs were provided with programs and the OCR programs were provided with additional funds to accelerate development of coal-based processes.

The net result of all of the above work has been to provide the United States with a sound technological base for converting coal to fuel gas, pipeline-quality gas, liquid boiler fuels, refined petroleum products, and various chemical products. The key to a successful synthetic fuel products. The key to a successful synthetic fuel industry, however, involves both process technology and the process economics.

Generally, processes are available that produce clean liquid products from coal at a produce clean liquid products from coal at a price competitive with crude oil ranging from price competitive with crude oil ranging from $8-$10 per barrel. How, you may ask, can this be done?

The conversion of coal can be undertaken in four basic ways:Coal carbonization, or pyrolysis, followed by hydrogenation and carbonization liquid. Gas is produced in both the hydrogenation and carbonization operations.