Erdos CTL (aka Shenhua CTL) is a coal liquefaction plant in Mongolia producing 20,000 barrels per day of gasoline from local coal. It has been fully operational for 3 years. It is State owned and operated and poised to expand rapidly.
With a yearly output of 7 million barrels, at the OPEC price of $100 barrel, and with coal at $40 ton, this single plant saves the Chinese economy half a billion US dollars equivalent per year in imports, while making a large net return on investment (40% gross margin). Many Oil experts in the USA said this would never work, since it was State owned for one thing and since the "ancient" Bergius process (not Fischer-Tropsch) was being used. However, those same Big Oil experts had a hand in closing the one successful CTL plant which was operated in the USA. During WWII we conducted secret research on converting coal to gasoline. An operational plant was producing high octane gasoline by 1948. The "Louisiana process" was also the Bergius method, and it produced premium gasoline at a cost only slightly higher than pre-OPEC gasoline, which was 26 cents per gallon at the pump. The facility was shut down in 1953 by the Eisenhower administration after intense lobbying by the Texas oil industry. Since that time, the cost of gasoline has gone up by a factor of 15:1 but the price of coal has gone up by only 4:1. Now, in China at least 4 more CTL plants but larger are under construction or nearing operational status, since China has lots of coal. All are Bergius process. China looks at this technology as a great success of State sponsorship, where an efficient enterprise is doing something that no capitalist in the USA has accomplished and is making both a huge profit and saving the economy billions by reduced reliance on OPEC oil. OTHO - It is fair to suspect that the Erdos CTL plant is a big air polluter, and that the economics would not be as favorable in say - Montana as they are in Mongolia. But anyway, the only reason this story came up in the first place - was in the context of LENR and the Bergius catalysts. Primarily these catalyst are hexavalent. That would only matter in LENR if Rydberg levels of ionization are seen in the deeper levels. Andrea Rossi was said to be an expert on Bergius catalysts back in the Petrodragon days. Nickel is a Bergius catalyst, yet it is not normally hexavalent. To achieve hexavalency Ni chemistry usually demands an alkali, such as potassium. Notably the Rydberg levels in nickel are at IP5 and IP6. The bottom line seems to be that if deep Rydberg ionization levels are related to LENR in a causative way, and many who have followed the field believe that they are ... then with nickel, possibly the easiest way to achieve hexavalency is the NiO4 anion (2-) ... which seems to "like" potassium as the cation. That's a long way from Mongolia ... but it makes one wonder if LERN is somehow involved in a thermal boost in a successful CTL operation. That is probably the kind of information that will not be shared, but it could be a contributory reason that IH/Cherokee had no trouble convincing their Chinese partner- Technology Capital Co. of the "nickel power" claim.
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