Talk:Coal gasification/Archive 1

Archive 1

Unbalanced equation

In the "Process" section, this chemical equation

(Coal) + O₂ + H₂O → H₂ + CO

does not balance. Is there a missing CO₂ or some more CO on the right hand side? Dark Formal (talk) 16:24, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, I fixed that, while also clarifying that it's the carbon in coal that is the primary reactant (I think people may have otherwise been confused as to where the carbon on the product side of the equation was coming from). I also slightly rewrote the introduction by specifying that carbon monoxide is a combustible gas (which a lot of people don't know); the article throughout failed to actually specify this, which I suspect was probably somewhat confusing to people who may have mistakenly thought that it's the hydrogen that was formerly used to light street lamps and heat stoves, etc., which would be a dangerous mistake to make. I also mentioned that most contemporary focus on coal gasification is really for the purpose of additional treatment via the Fischer-Tropsch reaction to make liquid fuels for the purpose of reducing one's dependence on foreign petroleum. I've spoken with people who think that coal gasification is meant to be some kind of carbon remediation effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, when in fact it has nothing to do with that.--Kglogauer (talk) 18:52, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to merge content under coal gasification with synthetic fuels commercialization page

Commercial coal gasification is mainly for production of: 1) electricity (IGCC), examples being Wabash River, Polk Power, Edwardsport in U.S.; Puertollano in Spain, Buggenum (Netherlands), etc. 2) ammonia and other chemicals, examples being Eastman Chemical Company Kingsport Plant in U.S., and a very large capacity for ammonia/fertilizer production from coal gasification in China 3) synthetic natural gas (Great Plains Synfuels Plant, which is increasingly not even making SNG now, because it is more profitable to make ammonia given market conditions) 4) synthetic liquid fuels (Sasol plants in South Africa being the prime example; China also has considerable liquid fuels from coal capacity underway or planned). Synthetic liquid fuels production is merely one subset of what commercial coal gasification is used for, and therefore the proposal to merge all commercial coal gasification content with synthetic fuels commercialization is not appropriate. Ehrucyll (talk) 13:57, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

That is true that these are not synonyms; however, there is a significant overlapping of these projects. The main issue is that both—Coal gasification and Synthetic fuel articles—are general articles about the subject which should gover all aspects about the suject in general, and therefore they are not suitable for lists and detailed descriptions about the proposed/developed commercial projects. The best solutions would be creation of separate list/article, e.g. Coal gasification commercialization, List of the coal gasification projects or something similar. Beagel (talk) 14:32, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

The commercial projects content was just one part of a lot of information I hope to add to this page that would begin to cover all aspects of the subject. Commercial projects are unquestionably an important part of the subject of coal gasification. Ehrucyll (talk) 15:53, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Scope of existing coal gasification section

The content currently located in the Coal Gasification page under these headings: {1 History

   1.1 Early history of coal gas production by carbonization
   1.2 Early history of coal gas production by gasification
   1.3 Development of the coal gas industry in the UK

3 By-products 4 Environmental impact/} applies quite specifically to the historical coal gas or town gas industry and legacy. While interesting in its own right, it is of essentially no importance in the context of modern coal gasification technology and industry. Ideally this content belongs on its own, and why not use the placeholder now present called "History of Manufactured Coal Gas." (or possibly History/Legacy of Manufactured Coal Gas). You see, having this content under the general-sounding title "Coal Gasification" as it is now, is something of a misappropriation of that term, which is an important modern field of industry worth multi-billions. This would free up the Coal Gasification page for the important subject of modern coal gasification. Coal Gasification could easily be a much more extensive page giving a nice overall view of the subject, and filling in the gaps of related pages i.e. Gasification. I am particularly interested in Beagel's thoughts on this... Ehrucyll (talk) 15:09, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

This article is about the coal gasification process. Therefore, both—historical and modern methods/uses—should be described in this article. If there are different methods of gasification, they all should be mentioned. However, this is not the same as listing different commercial projects as it was done in the current text. I disagree that the current article should be renamed. What it needs is a proper summary of the commercialization of the process while the current list of different commercial projects' descriptions should be split off (for notable projects, also project articles could be created). Beagel (talk) 16:27, 19 July 2013 (UTC)