Is it possible to turn coal into oil?

As the demand for dwindling oil supplies rises, scientists across the world search for new ways to generate energy. In this episode, Marshall looks at a new attempt to stave off the looming fossil fuel crisis: Turning coal into oil. Tune in to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to brain Stuff from house Stuff Works dot com
where smart happens. I am Marshall Brain with today's question,
is it possible to turn coal into oil? And is
this a good idea? Oil is currently at a hundred

(00:22):
dollars or so per barrel. The current reason for the
high price is instability in the Middle East in countries
like Libya. In addition, demand for oil is increasing at
a time when new oil discoveries are declining. This is
the whole idea behind peak oil and everything that's discussed
about that. The idea that human beings are growing in number,

(00:43):
and countries like India and China are growing economically, so
there's more and more demand for oil, despite the fact
that oil discoveries have pretty much leveled off or even
have started to decline. In the United States and in
many other parts of the world, coal is abundant, while oil,
as we just discussed, is not. The United States currently

(01:05):
burns hundreds of millions of tons of coal and its
power plants every year, and there's thought to be a
supply of coal that will last for hundreds of years.
There's coal everywhere in the United States, well not everywhere,
but in parts of the United States, there is so
much coal that the amount is virtually unimaginable. What if coal,

(01:26):
which is abundant, could be turned into oil at a
cost of perhaps thirty dollars per barrel. That's incredibly inexpensive
compared to a hundred dollars per barrel, and it would
have a huge economic impact. That's the idea, This thirty
dollar a barrel idea behind an invention from the University

(01:46):
of Texas. It's a micro refinery that has the ability
to transform solid coal into oil, a liquid hydrocarbon. But
this invention can do that transformation extremely efficiently, pushing the
cost of the oil from coal down to thirty dollars
or so per barrel. How is this possible? Recognize that

(02:08):
oil consists of hydrocarbons chains of carbon atoms with hydrogen
atoms attached. So does coal. Coal is made of carbon
and hydrogen. Except with coal, the carbon molecules form a
solid because normally there's more carbon than hydrogen available in
a lump of coal. In anthracite coal, the material is

(02:29):
almost all carbon. The Germans were able to convert cold
oil during World War Two using something called the Fisser
Trops process, which takes all of those carbon atoms in
coal and adds hydrogen atoms to them to convert the
coal into a liquid. First, the carbon in the coal

(02:50):
is reacted with oxygen to form a carbon monoxide gas.
This is an easy way to move carbon from a
solid to a gaseous form, and that makes it easier
to do chemical reactions with it. Hydrogen atoms are made
from water molecules, The carbon atoms are chained together, and
the hydrogen atoms are added through a series of catalyzed

(03:11):
chemical reactions. The University of Texas technology improves the process
by speeding up the reactions and reducing the amount of
equipment needed. The result is roughly one and a half
barrels of oil from one ton of coal, and coal
costs only eighteen dollars per ton right now in Texas.

(03:31):
And one advantage of the process is that it can
be done in small refineries rather than having to build
billion dollar facilities. This makes it a lot easier to
deploy the technology and grow it incrementally, rather than needing
huge investments to get the thing going. The question then
becomes is this a good idea from an economic standpoint? Clearly,

(03:53):
it is a good idea. With coal, the United States
could create its own oil for hundreds of years or
more and free itself from its dependence on foreign oil.
But environmentally, many people have grave concerns about cold oil technology,
also known as liquid coal technology. One reason is the

(04:14):
amount of water needed, since fresh water is becoming more
and more scarce as populations of human beings rise and
as climate changes. The other concern is the amount of
carbon dioxide created while turning coal into oil. This is
the same concern that arises when producing oil from tar
sands and oil shale. What might be a better way

(04:36):
to address the problem. One proposed solution is oil from algae,
which we've discussed in several previous podcasts. Algae cells naturally
contain oil, both as a method of flotation and as
a way of storing energy. High oiled strains of algae
can be bred, and those strains of algae are very

(04:58):
easy to grow. You may have noticed that algae will
grow in a bucket of water that you leave out
on your back porch. Then it's relatively easy to extract
the oil from algae. One way is to simply press
it out with a big hydraulic press. The advantage of
oil from algae is that it's a very green process,
it's sustainable, and it's also something that can be done

(05:20):
anywhere in the United States. Be sure to check out
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