Talk:Karrick process

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LOW Importance???????? That's a laugh.

Contents

[edit] Disputed neutrality

Who keeps sticking these templates on this page and what is their specific dispute? Shouldn't there be a time restriction on a blank protest template? I.E., no specified contest, no template?

I realize that a number of greenies (thanks for another energy crisis) or merely garden-variety contrarians, can't cope with any reference to fossil fuels, but shouldn't they, out of common courtesy alone, be limited as to how long they can simply be pests for pestilence sake? Jfcj1 (talk) 00:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

(I added the heading here to improve readability, kick me if you feel I was in error. --Alf 09:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC))

This page is very informative, but it states, directly, that the Karrick process is superior to alternatives. This is a violation of the WP:NPOV policy, which states that opinions should be attributed. This has the potential to be an excellent article, but it needs the advocacy taken out.--Robert Merkel 04:03, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, it doesn't say in so many words "the Karrick process is better than the Bergius process", but that doesn't mean it's acceptable. The problems lie mostly in the last section on the Congressional funding decisions.
  • The section heading "Misallocated funding".
    • It is an opinion that the funding was misallocated. You may feel strongly that it is a correct one, but that is clearly not universally held, given that most CTL proposals still center around other methods.
  • "Regrettably, the DOE placed great emphasis on the Bergius process of direct liquefaction of coal by hydrogenation to produce synfuel."
    • The use of "regrettably" in this context is an opinion. It's ok for the article to say, for example, "in what Fred Bloggs, synfuel expert, describesd as a regrettable decision, the DOE places....". It doesn't even have to be attributed to a specific person. But the Wikipedia shouldn't express an opinion one way or the other.
  • The Bergius process has been rightfully criticized both economically and ecologically as untenable. Given the obvious shortcomings of the Bergius process, the Congressional funding allocation remains puzzling to say the least.
    • Again, you're using the Wikipedia to express opinions as fact.

Furthermore, if you can, it would improve the article if you could find out why other processes have seen more attention paid to it in recent years; there must be some reason why (even if that reason is something simple like having a better PR company behind it). --Robert Merkel 14:33, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

  • The overwhelming advantage of the other techniques, is that they are so horrendously inefficient, that are not really economically viable i.e. they do not threaten the oil cartel. Timharwoodx 23:01, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
The current version is much, much better - I agree with the removal of the NPOV template. My remaining quibble that the article should, identify a specific person of note, or group of people, who have criticised the congressional allocation of funding, and if possible attribute this criticism to a source.
Finally, as a stylistic point, I'd say the article uses point form a little too much. Yes, I know I can fix it, but there's only so many hours in a day...--Robert Merkel 01:28, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disputed

It's better without the "misallocation" part, but it still looks like a poster ad. --Sinus 14:54, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Please read NPOV. NPOV is one of the few rules here that is non-negotiable. -- The Anome 18:36, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Karrick process, including conversion of the oil to motor fuel, destroys only 25% of the thermal value, or one-half that of the Bergius process.

The Bergius process is vastly inferior to the karrick process, as stated in the main article. This is a repeatable, and established, scientific fact. The criticism of the congressional decision to throw vast amounts of taxpayer's money, at a technology that is known to be so inefficient as to be largely impracticable, follows from this verifiable fact. NPOV is something that can not be backed up, fully evidenced, or justified, by reference to reputable information outside of the WIKIPEDIA. Since, the higher efficiency of the Karrrick process is externally verifiable, I can not see any NPOV point here. The posters seem to think whether Bergius or Karrick is better, is some kind of NPOV point of view / opinion, whereas its an area of fact and hard physics / science. Timharwoodx 13:58, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Indisputable

I just think people have a problem with the idea all you have to do to get oil, is crunch up coal, and superheat with steam. Yeah, it really is about that simple. Any emotional problems people have with the Karrick process, should not be part of an NPOV dispute. Timharwoodx 12:38, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the Karrick process doesn't produce much oil directly. It's just the front end distillation and reduction process. An additional cracking step is required to break down those long-chain hydrocarbons, usually some variant on the Fischer-Tropsch process. Sasol in South Africa is running about 30 million tons of coal per year through such a process to create oil, and they've been doing that for decades. They use the Lurgi process at the front end, rather than the Karrick process. The technology works fine, but they got clobbered around 1999 when the price of oil was below $20/bbl. Now, they're cashing in: "Operating profit increased by R4.6 billion (71%) to R11.1 billion. Higher average international oil prices ... boosted operating profit by about R2.9 billion". And that's for the second half of 2005. 2006 looks to be a really good year for Sasol. --John Nagle 07:21, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the WIKI probably does need a couple more pages on this subject. Go ahead. It never ceases to amaze me how many folks think one of the following:

  • 1) The world is running out of oil
  • 2) Middle east oil is in some way strategically important

I put it down to technological ignorance. As you said, in South Africa they grind out oil from coal. Have been doing so for decades. The Germans did in WW2 on a large scale also. Yet you mention the idea in conversation, and I find most people think I'm talking about warp drive or something i.e. wacko stuff that would never work. I'm convinced this whole war-for-oil in Iraq was misconceived. Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al bought into the 'peak oil' myth, and acted thinking middle East oil was in some way important - which it is clearly NOT.

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20060504-112948-6189r Iraq, Afghan war costs: $439 billion, and counting

If they'd only spent the war money on coal liquifaction plants, America would by now be 100% oil / energy self sufficient. Bone headed policy making from the Washington set. Timharwoodx 09:46, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, the argument I have read, is that at $5bn for an industrial scale Karrick plant, it would be *TOO EXPENSIVE* and not affordable. The fact there are half a trillion dollars worth of funds to fight wars for oil, suggest to me that $5bn COULD be found from federal budgets, if there was any political desire. Honestly, telling folks you can get oil from coal, its like saying you can turn lead into gold. Sounds nice, but no-one really believes you - except the South Africans have been doing this exact thing for decades, so it clearly does work. I can fly out to South Africa, and fill up on coal-oil. For real. Timharwoodx 16:09, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

This is probably not the place for this, but the scepticism you meet when mentioning coal liquefaction is probably down to two things: 1) economics, coal liquefaction plants are extremely capital intensive and investors need to be sure the oil price will stay high for decades to come in order to ensure they will not make a loss on their investment, and understandably people are not sure that the oil price will do that, given past events, and 2) from an environmental point of view coal liquefaction emits a huge amount of greenhouse gases and pollution.

Also, have you actually done the sums? e.g how much liquid fuel does the US consume in a year, how much coal would this require, how much coal is there, would this compete with coal requirements for power generation, how long would the coal last if all US transportation fuel needs were met from coal etc. Also coal liquefaction as a technology for producing unconventional oil has to compete with oil from the tar sands, which IIRC is economically viable at a much lower price per barrel. User:Jaganath 06/06/2006 17:18 UTC

Tar sands oil extraction and refining costs are comparable to coal to liquids ($35-50/bbl), for that matter building a new conventional oil refinery is going to be many billions, any new construction with lots of dedicated infrastructure, custom designed and fabricated components, vast sites, massive inputs of treated water and 8-150 Megawatts of base load electricity (50,000 bbl/day takes 8-15mw while new oil refineries are more likely to be in the 300,000-500,000bbl/day scale), raillines, highways, pipelines for crude and refined products... most of the discussion tends to focus on building something brand new versus a facility built in the 1930's-1950's. When the majority of the oil infrastructure and refining capacity in the U.S. was built, the largest tax subsidy to any industry ever was in place, the Oil Depletion Allowance, which for vertically integrated oil companies provided enormous amounts of capital for this that otherwise would have gone to the U.S....notice they quit building refineries about the time Congress finally repealed the Oil Depletion Allowance. Much of the refining, pipelines, and port capacity was built with federal funds during World War II and then sold for pennies on the dollar to the oil companies... so if you know the history, discussions of relative costs and subsidies is far from as straightforward as it would appear. Higman and Van der Burgt's summary of worldwide research and progress in their recent book "Gassification" is very helpful on this complex topic too...the authors are long-time researchers and it's lucid enough for a lay audience (i.e. me.)

[edit] Units

At least in parentheses, yes. Go ahead and do it. --John Nagle 05:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
The edit impersonating user Jfcj1 (talk · contribs) came from 194.109.198.99. Just checked the page history. I thought you needed an account to edit the WIKI these days? Is user impersonation a banable offence these days? Timharwoodx 15:35, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, error on my part. The "units" comment was unsigned, so I stuck a signature on it before replying, and copied the wrong entry from the page history. This is entirely my error. --John Nagle 17:23, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Carbon Dioxide

Were one able to produce chemically pure carbon from coal and even burned it at low temperatures, he still gets a pollutant : carbon dioxide, which we can no longer tolerate. Same comment for some hydrocarbon liquid product of equivalent purity.

Shut up Global Warming scam artist.98.165.6.225 (talk) 04:26, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

So, what is the point of the entire discussion in this article and in this talk section ? We MUST get off fossil fuels, not just find some new ones. True, we could use a temporary scheme such as this to get out of Middle East dependence -- but the same money and effort spent on truly renewable fuels would produce a permanent rather than a temporary solution.

Of course, the same pockets might not get filled ???

ANYONE speaking here who has financial interests in the subject beyond that of a consumer needs to identify himself as such !
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.42.87.58 (talk • contribs) 18:03, 16 September 2006

AL GORE’S Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truth”. Gore’s home uses more than 20 times the national average. -'nuff said. Jfcj1 17:56, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Newsweek: "Al Gore Now Worth More Than $100 Million" Jfcj1 (talk) 18:18, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

There is no renewable fuel as of October 2007 which can completely replace fossil fuels. While I can't overemphasize our need to invest in them we should also be looking towards oil alternatives to reduce our dependence on foreign nations (Venezuela and most of the middle east don't share our interests). Carbon sequestering is just as important for research as renewable fuels.

[edit] Removed ref

User:JzG removed the following

J. D. Redding 22:51, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] China commercializes Karrick process?

Towering above the sweeping grasslands of Erdos, in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, two 60-meter-high cylindrical structures stand out against the skyline....."Unlike South Africa's Sasol which produces transport fuel from coal in several stages, our project in Erdos will produce liquids from coal directly," said Wang

Looks like China has now gone commercial with the Karrick process. Some high efficiency direct coal liquefaction process, based upon the classic cyclinrical karrick process tower shape.

So while America continues to ruin itself in the sands of Iraq, trying to steal oil by using military force, the Chinese just got on with it, copied American technology from the 1930s, and solved their oil supply problem, without firing a single shot. Is there a lesson here, somewhere? What other suppressed American technologies might the Chinese also be moving forward in secret? Timharwoodx 23:53, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

There is now a glimmer of hope. How do you deal with a 3,000 year old Secret Society Satanic cult? Well, find another 3,000 year old Secret Society. You think all these wars are some kind of stupid accident, and not planned? Timharwoodx 20:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Fulford says, if you listen to the mp3, the original Rockefeller / Illuminati plan was to stage a massive false flag incident to justify the occupation of Iraq (hint in New York), then hold the world to hostage, by controlling all the major remaining oil reserves, in Iraq and around the Caspian sea oil basin. China is not (yet) Rockefeller / Illuminati controlled, and with this apparent large scale commercialization of the Karrick process, they appear to have utterly defeated the major underlying principals of the Rockefeller / Illuminati plan for world domination i.e. a wholly artificial and deliberately engined peak oil energy crisis. Since the Illuminati own all the major media, don't expect to see this on any of the networks. People need to wake up and see whats really going on. Timharwoodx 11:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

The People's Daily article merely says that the Shenhua plant does not use Sasol's F-T process. Is it certain that it uses the Karrick (vs. the Bergius) process? IntlRisk 20:02, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I've even posted the relevant part above, and you've clearly not read it! QUOTE: 60-meter-high cylindrical structures. So lets recap:

  • Karrick is a direct conversion - so is Chinese process
  • Karrick uses very tall cylindrical structures - so does the Chinese process

Now.... there is a saying... if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck... well... then its probably a duck. Yes?

To recap: David Rockefeller runs America with his 11 trillion dollars of hidden wealth from behind the scenes, they are trying to create a fake peak oil crisis, to hold the world to ransom. The Chinese are not controlled by the Rockefeller clan, therefore are free to develop technology without restriction. In America anything that threatens oil gets suppressed by the state 'terror' apparatus. The enemy is domestic, not foreign. The Karrick process has been suppressed by the Rockefellers since the 1930s. Its perfectly solid, hard science, that works. We're all being screwed. The Chinese re-created it from the old 1930s patents without any problem, pretty quickly by the looks of it. If the Rockefellers were removed, you'd find lots of suppressed technologies that suddenly got rediscovered. This is just one example. China is likely to leave America in the technological stone age soon, unless something changes, because they're a freer society. Timharwoodx 15:56, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Reply: The Shenhua plant uses the Bergius process. quote:

"Shenhua's plant, in contrast, chose Fischer-Tropsch's lesser-known rival, invented by Friedrich Bergius a decade earlier. Though used extensively by the Nazis, Bergius's process was subsequently abandoned. The process has come to be known as direct liquefaction, because it bypasses the syngas step. In direct liquefaction, the bulk of the coal is pulverized and blended with some of the plant's synthetic oil, then treated with hydrogen and heated to 450 °C in the presence of an iron catalyst, which breaks the hydrocarbon chains into the shorter chains suitable for refining into liquid fuels." http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/17963/page3/

Agmart 06:57, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 07:55, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Editor EKennel - clearly confused

He claims this device is a '60-meter-high cylindrical structure.'

Anyone agree with him? Yet more broken / confused English from foreign WIKI editors?

We do get a lot of that these days...........sigh.

Timharwoodx (talk) 22:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)