China turns coal into oil using CTL technology

With oil prices soaring to historic heights, China is moving full steam ahead with a process to turn its vast coal reserves into barrels of oil.

Known as coal-to-liquid (CTL), the process is revised by environmentalists say it causes  excessive green house gases.

When the coal-rich countries resort to such methods of converting coal into oil, there is also a debate as to how long the oil reserves would last in this world ?

The US, Australia and India are the other countries looking at CTL technology but are constrained by environmental concerns associated with the process which releases excessive amounts of  carbon gases into the atmosphere and consumes huge amounts of water.

But China, which lacks the powerful environmental lobbyists that might prevent any widescale initiative elsewhere, is building a major complex on the grass lands of inner Mangolia.

‘Those countries with large coal reserves like South Africa, China, or the US, are very keen on CTL as it helps ensure energy security’ said Mr.Yuichiro Shimura, at Mitsubishi Research Institute Inc in Tokyo.   

‘However, the problem is that it creates a lot of carbon-dioxide. Also you need a huge amount of energy for liquefaction, which means you end up wasting quite a lot of energy,’the chief consultant at MRI in charge of energy said.

In Erdos, Inner Mangolia, about 10,000 workers are putting the final touches to a CTL plant that will be run by state-owned Shenhua Group, China’s biggest coal mine.