CONFERENCE

ON
CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
PROCEEDINGS
Any opinions, findings, conclusions
or recommendations expressed in this
publication are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the National Science Foundation.
This conference, sponsored by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the
National Science Foundation, was held from October 2 to 5, 1977, in Houston, Texas.
American Institute of Chemical Engineers
345 East 47 Street New York, New York 10017
NTIS is authoriZ81rto reproduce andsellthis
report. Permission tor further reproduction
must be obtainedfrom the copyright proprietor.
Copyright 1978
American Institute of Chemical Engineers
345 East 47 Street, New York, N.Y. 10017
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Conference on Chemical Feedstock Alternatives,
Houston, Tex., 1977.
Conference on Chemical Feedstock Alternatives.
1. Feedstock-Congresses. 2. Chemical industries-
Congresses. I. Van Antwerpen, Franklin John,
1912- II. American Institute of Chemical
Engineers. III. United States. National Science
Foundation.
TP319.C55 1977 664'.6 78-3720
Printed in the United States of America by
Lew A. Cummings Co., Inc.
II
FOREWORD
The idea behind this conference belongs to Harold A.
SpuWer. As Director of Resource Systems, Advanced Energy
and Resources Research and Technology of the National Sci-
ence Foundation, Dr. SpuWer could but be concerned about
the threat to the chemical process industries and to the eco-
nomic welfare of the United States posed by the anticipated
unavailability of natural gas. Whether caused by government
fiat (insistence, for instance, that natural gas be used only for
home heating), by complete exhaustion of the United States'
supplies, or by the gas's being priced out of the market, the
shortage prompted questions. Would biomass be an acceptable
alternative chemical feedstock? Would coal substitute? What
was the potential in shale oil?
Dr. SpuWer approached the AIChE about holding a con-
ference to explore answers to these questions. The challenge
was such and the implications to the chemical process indus-
tries so overwhelming that AIChE promptly agreed. Conse-
quently, I formed an advisory committee ofH. P. Brokaw of
the Council on Environmental Quality; K. E. Coulter,
Manager, Gulf Coast Olefin Project, Dow Chemical Company;
I. Falkehag, Section Leader, Westvaco Research; M. G.
Fryback, Manager, Synthetic Fuels, Sunoco Energy Develop-
ment Company; J. E. Johnson, Associate Manager, Energy
and Feedstock Policy Office, Union Carbide Corporation;
L. W. Leggett, Synthetic Fuels Adviser, Carter Oil Company
(affiliate of Exxon Corporation); and James Wei, then A.P.
Colburn Professor at the University of Delaware and now
Warren K. Lewis Professor of Chemical Engineering and
Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering, Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology.
The Committee met several times to layout a program and
to help name speakers and other experts in the areas which
we decided on: (1) oil and shale oil, (2) coal, and (3) biomass.
None of the theoretical alternatives for natural gas proved to
be a simple, straightforward substitution. Consequently, it
was decided that each had to be explored from three direc-
tions-first, the potential chemicals from alternative raw
materials; second, the economics of producing those chemi-
cals; and, fmally, the research still needed to make the surro-
gate for natural gas possible and economical.
The conference was held in Houston at the Shamrock
Hilton Hotel, from October 3 to 5, 1977. After a day of
prepared presentations and open discussion the attendees
were divided into three workshops, each concentrating on
one of the potential feedstocks.
The oil and shale oil workshop called for the commitment
of the remaining petroleum, natural gas, and natural gas
liquid exclusively to end uses where the physical and chem-
ical properties are essential and to the moving of the large-
B.t.u. consumers of energy towards coal and nuclear sources.
It also recommended a national objective of producing at
least 2 million barrels a day of shale oil by the year 2000.
As a feedstock, however, shale oil is a substance with which
iii
the group was uncomfortable because it "simply does not
have the information base necessary to make the use of shale
oil feasible." It concluded that the first utilization of shale
oil would be as a fuel, which would free regular petroleum
and natural gas for use in petrochemical production. Al-
though, according to the experts at the workshop, severe
hydrotreating of shale oil might make it an adequate and
possibly superior petrochemical feedstock, research will be
necessary to evaluate the potential.
One defensive posture recommended by the participants in
another workshop was that the U.S. promptly gain experience
with coal combustion. (We appear to remember little about
how to do it.) They also believed that producing low- and
intermediate-B.t.u. gas for process heat would delay the pro-
duction of liquid fuel from coal. The techniques to be ex-
plored, in their opinion, were the fluidized combustion of
coal and the use of coal-derived methyl fuel for gas turbines
in the power industry. The workshop view was that the
chemical industry would not be able to retain natural gas
for feedstock purposes; anything saved would enter a large
pool of gas subject to political allocation with no special
privileges to the chemical industry.
The economics of a free-standing plant for chemicals from
coal was not good, it was concluded, and the future would
see joint ventures whereby chemical companies would use
materials developed by the syngas or coal-liqUids plants of
their partner power companies.
The proponents of biomass had no immediate solution for
the CPI, not because biomass cannot produce the necessary
materials in the quantities needed, but because of economics.
As with coal, there seemed to be a consensus that biomass
chemicals would be dependent on an economy in which
biomass was used for primary products, with the chemicals
as byproducts. Then, too, the discussion on biomass tended
to consider its use as a power source because it, like coal and
oil, is both a fuel and a potential feedstock. The golden age
of biomass might come when oil gets to be $25 a barrel,
predicted to occur sometime in the late 1980's or early 90's.
Perhaps one exception might be the production of phenol
from biomass instead of coal. Biomass economics are so hazy
that the most that can be done now is to continue with R&D
work.
As brought out by those at the meeting, the biggest problem
facing the chemical process industries, was not fmding new
sources of feedstocks, but determining the Government's
intentions for the process industries. When the meeting was
held, it was still uncertain whether feedstocks would carry
a use tax and whether the Government was going to place
limitations on the amount of natural gas the petrochemical
industry might use. Despite that, not one of the experts in
attendance foresaw the quick elimination of natural gas as
the prime feedstock whether by government fiat, cost, or
source depletion.
Panelists and audience alike found it difficult to ignore the
importance of the proposed alternatives as potential energy
sources. In some cases consideration of a material as a chem-
ical source was seen as contingent on its use for power. The
economic problem did not seem to be the development of
chemical sources, but rather the switching of industry from
natural gas and oil to substitute energy materials.
All agreed that the conference was timely. If the chemical
process industries for one reason or another could not use
natural gas, it was agreed that the way was going to be rough
indeed, not only for those who produce chemicals but for the
nation as a whole. The positive trade balance generated by
the U.S. petrochemical industry would be in trouble-, en-
vironmental problems would exacerbate, and there was little
hope of a speedy transition that would be free and easy. But
there 'was no doubt in anyone's mind that if they had to
switch to a source other than natural gas, the chemical pro-
cess industries would meet the challenge.
I wish to thank the advisory committee, all of the panelists,
and the workshop chairmen who cooperated in this study.
They are identified in the volume, and I hope that they feel
rewarded for their participation by the quality of the inter-
change. In this rather unique conference, where proponents
of multifarious materials came together to speak their minds
as they explored the arguments for and the feasibility of each
raw material, the conclusions reached will form the basis for
future congresses and, we hope, for more closely oriented
research. The economic problems that face the American
chemical process industries are illumined and made plainer
by the efforts of everyone who participated.
F. J. Van Antwerpen
Executive Director, AIChE
Program Chairman, Conference on
Chemical Feedstock Alternatives
This conference was supported in part by the National
Science Foundation under Grant No. AER77-15727.
A n ~ opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommen-
dations expressed in this pUblication are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
National Science Foundation.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Foreword F. J. Van Antwerpen iii
Introduction A. S. West 1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . H. A. Spuhler 1
K. D. Timmerhaus 2
Oil and Oil Shale
Presentation J. W. Hand 3
.................................................. F.A.M.Buck 5
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E. J. Higgins 9
Discussors Bruce Me1aas 14
R. G. Keister 14
C. J. Roth 16
G. J. Butkovitch 16
Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Workshop E. J. Higgins, Chainnan 20
Coal
Presentation H. G. Davis 25
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. R. Dosher 29
A. M. SqUires 35
Discussors W. H. Bowman, III 41
H. F. Feldmann 42
N. E. Jentz 44
Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Workshop A. 'M. Squires, Chainnan 45
Biomass
Presentation I. S. Goldstein 61
Raphael Katzen 66
K. V. Sarkanen 74
Discussors W. M. Hearon 78
D. W. Goheen 81
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R. H. Bogan 83
Discussion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Workshop K. V. Sarkanen, Chairman 96
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 102
Index of Participants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 125
v
INTRODUCTION
A. S. West, President of the American Institute of Chemical
Engineers in 1977, is closely involved with the energy re-
sources problem through his work as Manager of the Petro-
leum Chemicals Research Department of Rohm and Haas
Company.
Spuhler 1
A. SUMNER WEST
The American Institute of Chemical Engineers is pleased to
cooperate with the National Science Foundation on this ven-
ture. I don't think we can underestimate the importance of
technical feedstocks in the chemical industry, and obviously
chemical engineers have an interest in the health of the chemi-
cal industry. The chemical industry in the United States, with
about $100 billion a year in sales, is highly dependent on
petrochemical feedstocks. The net value added to these feed-
stocks, after the cost of raw materials and energy, is something
like $25 billion a year, and there is a net positive trade balance
of something like $4 billion a year. With that little economic
perspective, it is obvious that we must consider the future
availability of chemical feedstocks, and that is the purpose of
this conference. We want it to be a highly interactive one. We
look forward to a very lively conference, and we appreciate
very much the work that the authors and discussers have done
in preparing their papers.
HAROLD A. SPUHLER
Dr. H. A. Spuhler is the Director of Resource Systems,
Advanced Energy and Resources Research and Technology,
for the National Science Foundation. For the Foundation
he has been Head of Institutional Planning, Deputy Head of
Oceanographic Facilities, and Program Manager for Solar
Energy, among other positions. Dr. Spuhler is an electrical
engineer, with experience largely in systems, engineering,
process control, and management and decision analysis.
I think I should, at the outset, say a few words about the
National Science Foundation. The National Science Founda-
tion was established in 1950. Its enabling act authorized the
support of basic research, primarily at academic institutions.
In 1968 the enabling act was amended to authorize support
of private research. In 1972, by Executive Order of the Presi-
dent, the NSF was directed to provide support to the industrial
sector. As a consequence, NSF now supports a mix of basic
and applied research.
The interest of the Foundation in natural resources stems
from some rather elementary questions, such as what are the
total resource requirements of the United States? to what ex-
tent are these requirements satisfied by the utilization of de-
pletable resources or the utilization of renewable resources?
are there substitutions that will minimize the depletion of
those resources that become scarce? is there a need to look at
not just supply and demand, but availability? Certainly in the
geopolitical sense, the raw materials may be there-the supply
is there-but they may not be available, sometimes for po-
litical, sometimes for economic, sometimes for technical
reasons. As a consequence, then, my group has the objective
of identifying the critical issues that are associated with the
development, management, and utilization of natural re-
sources.
The principal concern is how do these systems interact?
Obviously, if one looks at anyone resource such as coal or
oil, or now solar energy, it is within the purview of mission-
oriented Federal agencies. The unique character of NSF is
that it cuts across those issues. NSF has no axes to grind, it is
2 Timmerhaus CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
not mission oriented in that sense, and as a consequence it has
access to the expertise of both the public and the private
sector and can bring together conferences such as this to pro-
vide an open forum in which issues are identified and dis-
cussed. NSF does not seek consensus. I would be horrified if
I got consensus out of this. If you want to assume, for ex-
ample, that natural gas will be used in the year 2050 and we
have no problem, state it, but some other people might have
different opinions. We want to air both opinions, and when we
have finished we hope that we shall have identified the gaps,
the current state of technology.
Let me remind you that we are trying to surface issues in
this broad problem. We are not trying to develop consensus.
We want to have different opinions. If you don't agree with
the speakers or discussers, or even with participants, say so.
We want you to participate.
Dr. K. D. Timmerhaus, Associate Dean of Engineering at the
University of Colorado, was President of AIChE in 1976. He
presided over the Conference on Chemical Feedstock
Alternatives.
KLAUS D. TIMMERHAUS
We shall have presentations in three different areas: Oil and
shale oil, coal, and biomass, followed by discussion on each
area. The attendees will then separate into workshops for each
area, and then the fmdings of the workshops will be summar-
ized for the entire conference. Two luncheon speakers will
consider the general problems of fuel and feedstocks. Open
discussion will complete the three-day meeting.
The presentations, workshops, and discussions will be re-
corded and transcribed as the proceedings of the conference.
OIL AND SHALE OIL Hand 3
OIL AND SHALE OIL
J. W. Hand, Managerial Vice President at Cameron Engineer-
ing, Incorporated, Denver, is involved with major project
management and administrative work. He has five patents in
the fields of mineral processing and coal gasification.
J. W.HAND
My education being in chemical engineering and my experi-
ence in industrial minerals and fuels-particularly in oil shale
and coal-my remarks will center on'the potential chemicals
from oil shale. Also, whatever may be said of the use of shale
oil as a feedstock for chemicals will generally apply to crude
petroleum.
OIL SHALE RESOURCE
Oil shale is a sedimentary rock containing a solid combustible
organic material called kerogen. This kerogen is largely insol-
uble in petroleum solvents but when heated will decompose
into oil, gas, water, and residual carbon. Some of the other
common names given to various oil shales around the world
are bituminous shale, black shale, carbonaceous shale, cannel
shale, torbanite, kukersite, tasmanite, and kerogen shale.
Oil shale has been produced commercially and used in the
production of liquid fuels for about 140 years, The first pro-
duction was in France. The oil shale industry in Scotland
dates back to 1850 and grew to much larger proportions than
the one in France. It existed for more than 100 years pro-
ducing fuels, waxes, and chemicals. There was a small shale
oil industry in the eastern United States as early as 1860, but
it was shut down after oil was discovered in Pennsylvania. Be-
tween 1850 and 1950 oil shale industries were also established
at various times in Australia, Estonia, Sweden, Spain, Man-
churia, the Republic of South Africa, and Germany. All the
oil shale industries except those in the People's Republic of
China and the U.S.S.R. have since disappeared because of
competition from conventional oil.
The magnitude of the total stored energy in organic-rich
shales in the land areas of the world staggers the imagination.
D. C. Duncan and V. E. Swanson of the U.S. Geological Survey
estimated in 1965 that in the United States alone there could
be as much as 120 trillion tons of oil shale containing from 10
to 65 percent organic matter having an energy-equivalent con-
tent of about 60 trillion barrels of oil. Multiply this by four-
teen, and you have an estimate of the world's resource.
Most of the older oil shale deposits are siliceous black shales
of marine origin which yield relatively small amounts of oil
upon retorting. These will more likely be developed for gas
production rather than oil. The carbonate-rich shales of most
importance to us are the nonmarine, or lacustrine, deposits of
the tertiary age located in the Green River formation in Color-
ado, Utah, and Wyoming and in the Paraiba Valley in Brazil.
The Green River formation is typically a hard, competent,
layered or varved rock which has no significant micropore
structure. A rich oil shale zone which occurs in the Colorado
and Utah portions of the formation is named the "Mahogany
Zone" after its wood-grain surface appearance. The amount of
organic matter in the Green River deposits varies widely from
near 0 to as high as 60 weight percent. Shale containing 14
weight percent organic matter will yield about 25 gallons of
oil per ton as determined by the modified Fischer assay meth-
ods. The amount of organic matter has a pronounced effect
on the chemical and physical properties of shale.
Most of the exposed rock surface of a 25,000-square-mile
area covering portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming com-
prises the Green River formation. The area is undeveloped and
sparsely populated. Duncan and Swanson, previously referred
to, have estimated that the shales, averaging 25 or more gal-
lons of oil per ton, contain the equivalent of 600 billion
barrels of oil in place in this area. This, then, is the size of the
resource which is generally considered to be capable of being
developed with today's technology and in competition with
new petroleum production. In the heartland of the United
States we have a source of feedstocks for the chemical industry
to take care of our needs for centuries to come.
SHALE OIL
The kerogen, or the oil-forming insoluble organic material in
Green River oil shale, is of two types, the major portion being
a yellow material and the minor portion a brownish black sub-
stance, as observed under the microscope. According to W. H.
Bradley of the U.S. Geological Survey, the biological pro-
genitors of the organic substances in Green River shale could
only have been microscopic algae and other microorganisms
that grew and accumulated in the central parts oflarge, shal-
low lakes that existed under a subtropical climate. The only
nonlacustrine organic components were wind-blown or water-
borne pollens and waxy spores. These, however, made up a
large and important part of the organic-rich sediment. Bradley
4 Hand CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
pointed out that pollen grains contain higher percentages of
long-chain hydrocarbons and alcohols than most plant
materials.
A major problem confronting researchers into the nature of
kerogen is to account for the progressive hydrogenation and
subsequent polymerization of the relatively oxygen-rich con-
stituents of algae such as the polysaccharides, amino acids,
amino sugars, and fatty acids into the insoluble pyrobitumens
that constitute the kerogen fraction of the Green River oil
shale.
At a temperature of about 325C. Green River kerogen
softens, swells, and darkens. Water is formed at 300 to
405C., together with ammonia, other volatile nitrogen com-
pounds, and hydrogen sulfide. Heavy oil vapors form at about
390C. and continue up to 500 or 600. At 350 Green
River kerogen degrades to 10 to 15 percent straight-chain
alkanes, 20 to 25 percent cycloalkanes, 10 to 15 percent
aromatic structures, and 45 to 60 percent heterocyclic ma-
terial. These materials are said to represent structures prob-
ably present in the original kerogen and suggest that kerogen
is predominantly a heterocyclic material connected to or asso-
ciated with smaller amounts of hydrocarbon material consist-
ing of straight-chain alkane, cyclic, and aromatic groups.
When pyrolyzed at 500C. kerogen yields approximately 66
percent oil, 9 percent gas,S percent water, and 20 percent
carbon residue. Approximately two thirds of the organic car-
bon and hydrogen are represented in the oil, two thirds of the
oxygen is converted to gas and water, nitrogen is distributed
evenly between the oil and the residue, and two thirds of the
sulfur is in the oil and one third is evolved as gas. The principal
gas constituents are hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, am-
monia, hydrogen, methane, ethane, and alkanes.
The elemental composition of kerogen is approximately
80.5 percent carbon, 10.3 percent hydrogen, 2.4 percent ni-
trogen, 1 percent sulfur and 5.8 percent oxygen. This material
has a carbon-to-hydrogen weight ratio of 7.8. The crude shale
oil obtained by pyrolisis of the kerogen has a carbon-to-
hydrogen ratio of between 7.2 and 7.5 depending upon the
grade of oil shale being retorted and the retorting method used.
RETORTING METHODS
Since the characteristic of the shale oil produced is some-
what dependent on the method of retorting, the methods
available should be considered. Retorting oil shale can be ac-
complished either by mining, by crushing and retorting the
material above ground, or by fracturing the shale while it re-
mains in the ground and retorting it in situ.
Above-ground retorting processes may be placed in four gen-
eral classes: Class I, where heat is applied to the outside of the
retort and is conducted through the wall to heat the shale;
Class II, where the shale is heated by internal combustion
within the retort; Class III, where heat is transferred to the
shale by forcing externally heated gases through the shale bed;
and Class IV, where the heat is transferred to the shale by the
introduction of heated solids into the bed of shale.
The Class I retort is exemplified by the Fischer assay retort,
which is used as the standard method of determining the
amount of oil producible from a given shale. Another Class I,
which was used commercially in Scotland and other European
countries, was the Pumpherston retort. This retort was suit-
able for small-scale production; the oil from it contained 15 to
20 percent naphtha and a low percentage of residuum.
The Class II retorts are those that were developed by the
Bureau of Mines (the Gas Combustion Retort) and by the
Union Oil Company of California. In these systems, where
combustion takes place in the shale bed to generate the heat
required for retorting, there is a substantial loss in the naphtha
fraction due to combustion and cracking to gaseous products.
The Class III retort is represented today by the Petrosix
Process being developed in Brazil by Petrobras. In this system
the off-gas from the retort is heated in an external heater and
is introduced back into the retort to provide process heat. The
product gas has a high heating value, as does the process gas
from other indirectly heated retorting systems.
The Class IV retort is exemplified in this country by the
Tosco II Retorting Process, which uses ceramic balls to trans-
fer the heat from a ball heater to the bed of shale, which is
comminuted in the process. Another Class IV retorting pro-
cess, which is being developed in Germany by the Lurgi Com-
pany, uses hot spent shale as the transfer medium.
The current development in Colorado, on Federal tracts
which were leased to private companies several years ago, in-
volves creating underground retorts by a combination of min-
ing and blasting with conventional explosives and then retort-
ing these rubblized chambers by means of combustion systems.
ASSOCIATED MINERALS AND BY-PRODUCTS
As stated previously, the retorting and refining of shale oil
will produce substantial quantities of ammonia and sulfur by-
products. In addition, there are some saline minerals present
in the Green River oil shale which can be mined separately or
in conjunction with the production of oil shale for their or-
ganic content.
Chief among these saline minerals are trona, a sodium sesqui-
carbonate, and nahcolite, a sodium bicarbonate mineral. The
trona beds in the Green River oil shale formation of Wyoming
are currently producing most of this nation's soda ash. The
very large reserves of nahcolite in the Colorado portion of the
Green River formation will be produced in time and will com-
pete with trona as a source of soda ash or sodium carbonate.
Halite is also deposited in Colorado.
In addition to these, some of the richest oil shale sections in
the Piceance Creek basin of Colorado contain substantial quan-
tities of dawsonite, which is a sodium aluminum carbonate.
With careful r.etorting of the oil shale, it is possible to render
the dawsonite soluble, and this will provide a feedstock for
both soda ash and alumina production.
There is one other occurrence in the oil shale formations,
the extent of which is not known at the present time but
which offers some intriguing prospects as a feedstock for the
chemical industry. This is a black water or black trona brine,
which has been found in several areas of the .Green River for-
mation of Wyoming. This black trona brine appears to be
primarily a sodium salt of a polymeric acid in solution with
substantial amounts of sodium carbonate and sodium bicar-
bonate. The polymeric acid has a molecular weight on the
OIL AND SHALE OIL Buck 5
order of 1500 and can be retorted to yield materials similar to
products from retorting kerogen in oil shale. In addition to
this polymeric acid, there seems to be a substantial percentage
of sodium salts of dicarboxylic acids having from four to four-
teen carbon atoms.
POTENTIAL CHEMICALS
We must conclude that our vast lacustrine deposits ofthe
Green River formation in the heartland of the nation consti-
tute a veritable treasure chest of feedstocks for future chemical
production. Their easy accessibility, their high organic-matter
content, and their association with other valuable mineral de-
posits argue for rather early development for this purpose.
The variances in the formation both laterally and vertically
and the variety of processing techniques which may be em-
ployed permit the operator to have considerable control over
the product mix obtained from exploitation of the resource.
The potential chemicals derived from retorting and refining
oil shales and the resulting shale oil range from synthesis gas
components, hydrogen and carbon monoxide, through a full
range of hydrocarbons-paraffinic, olefinic, and aromatic-to a
large suite of organic and inorganic acids and bases. Some per-
spective of the potential can be gained by considering a hypo-
thetical chemical refinery based on oil shale.
Consider an underground mine producing 100,000 tons a
day of shale containing 30 gallons per ton of oil and 5 percent
dawsonite. This raw material would be retorted by one of the
indirect heating methods, and the retorted shale processed to
recover the products from the dawsonite. The naphthas
would be cracked to produce petrochemicals. The heavy oil
would be coked and hydrogenated to produce a fuel oil.
Under these conditions our hypothetical chemical refinery
could produce the following products, giving no credit to the
gas production, which could supply plant heat, hydrogen, and
power.
Alumina 1,500 tons/day
Soda ash 1,500 tons/day
Fuel oil 55,000 barrels/day
Coke 750 tons/day
Sulfur 100 tons/day
Ammonia 325 tons/day
Ethylene 1.3 million pounds/day
Propylene 600,000 pounds/day
Butadiene 200,000 pounds/day ,
BTX 500,000 pounds/day
The fuel oil could, of course, be further cracked to yield addi-
tional organic chemicals.
The resource of available high-grade oil shale in the heartland
of America can supply almost a complete spectrum of chemi-
cal feedstocks for centuries to come. Its utilization awaits the
development of the need and the refinement of the economics
in competition with other alternatives.
REFERENCES
1. Duncan, D. C., and V. E. Swanson, "Organic-Rich Shale of the
United States and World Land Areas," U.S. Geological Survey Circu-
lar 523 (1965).
2. Young, N. B., and J. W. Smith, "Dawsonite and Nahcolite Analyses
of Green River Formation Oil Shale Sections-Piceance Creek Basin,
Colorado, U.S. Bureau ofMines RJ 7445 (1970).
3. Hendrickson, T. A., "Synthetic Fuels Data Handbook," Cameron
Engineers, Denver, Colorado (1975).
4. Cameron Engineers, Inc., "Synthetic Fuels" (June and September
1970).
5. Phillips, T. E., "A Survey of Potential Methods for Resource Re-
covery from Black Water of the Upper Green River Basin," M.S.
thesis, University of Wyoming (May 1976).
6. Stork, K., C. H. Viens, P. C. Yeung, "Petrochemical Challenge for
2000," Petroleum/2000 (August 1977).
7. Atwood, M. T., "Above-Ground Oil Shale Retorting, the Status of
Available Technology, E/MJ (September 1977).
Dr. F. A. M. Buck, Business Representative for Shell Chemical
Company in Houston, has been with Shell Oil and Shell Chem-
ical for the past twenty-six years, including a release year in
the U.S. Office of Oil and Gas, where he was Industrial Spe-
cialist. He is currently chairman of AIChE's Energy Coordi-
nating Committee and is past Chairman of its Fuels and
Petrochemicals Division.
F. A. M. BUCK
The assignment I have this morning is to talk about the eco-
nomics of making petrochemicals from petroleum and shale.
I think you will agree that's a pretty broad topic. The fairly
simple and abridged Table 1 indicates the distribution of the
sources of the raw materials in the petrochemical industry.
If you sum up the total hydrocarbon material, this includes
petroleum-derived material, natural gas, and natural gas liquids,
all expressed in million barrels per day of crude oil equivalent.
A million barrels a day is something like 2 trillion cubic feet
of gas; a million barrels a day is the 2 quads that people talk
about. (The total U.S. economy operates at 75 to 80 quads.)
6 Buck CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
TABLE 1
Natural gas liquids are essentially all used as feedstocks.
For example, all the ethane used in the United States is found
in chemical plants, as is a pretty significant fraction of the pro-
pane, but by no means all; a lot of propane is used by the
farmers of the United States.
A pretty small fraction of crude oil is used by the petro-
chemical industry, about 2.6 million barrels a day of crude
The significant thing is that that's only 10 percent of the
natural gas that we use in the nation. In very rough terms,
in the United States about half the natural gas is for what we
call residential and commercial use, and about half is used in
heavy industry. That half of the natural gas used in heavy
industry, of course, includes today a lot of natural gas that is
used to raise steam in boilers for electric power generation.
It just seems to me that that's something that has to go. As
Dr. Spuhler said, the concepts there are not amenable to
short.range economics, and we have to acquire somehow or
other in this country the incentives that make industry move
away from burning natural gas, not only in boilers but in our
chemical plants. A lot of natural gas can be replaced by heavy
oils that are not suitable for residential or the light commercial
consumers, and we'll do that, but it will take a little time.
U.S. CHEMICAL INDUSTRY
1974 USAGE - 10
6
BID COE
oil equivalent, which is a mere 7 percent of the nation's en-
ergy budget. I guess most of that would be for the manufac
ture of ammonia and some methanol.
Figure 1 is a simple illustration of the liquid petroleum
demand in the U.S. Of course, this is a mixture of actual and
projected, and you notice that we are not bold enough to
project a constant increase here. We are at the S part of the
curve now, which I think makes common sense, but look at
the difference between what our demand line is and what
we think we can get from domestic sources. Look further
at what's going to happen to production from what we know
to be existing reserves. That's a pretty optimistic projection;
in fact I am not sure how Texas A & Mdid it. We in Shell
make projections ofthis nature, and I know our future dis-
covery volume makes simple assumptions such as we will be
twice as efficient or effective per dollar invested in exploration
as we were in the past ten years. Uyou don't use assumptions
like that, you have a pretty bleak picture. This OPEC material
comes in at what we call world prices. I don't know whether
they are going to change or who has influence on setting them,
but they are certainly different from what the regulations
permit us to' charge for our domestic material. You just can-
not imagine that we can continue in a situation where our
resources are being sold at anything else than world prices.
It doesn't make any sense whatsoever, especially if it leads
to situations like our exporting some of our raw materials
on the basis of our fictitious low prices. Another thing is
that the unconventional materials like, for example, those
that John Hand was talking about will augment this domestic
source, but they won't do it very rapidly, and in terms of the
units that we have here, they will hardly be detectable through
1990, perhaps 1 million barrels a day. Would anybody be
bolder than that? Ask yourself, at what price will this material
come to market? The answer has to be at the world price.
Nobody is going to produce something that's scarce and bring
it in at other than the world price; so to me it's obvious that
until we get everything operating on the world price, we will
really impede the production rate of these substitute materials,
whether it's liquid or gases from coal or from shale.
6
4
7
8
21
10
TOTAL,
%U.S. CONS.
.25
.21
.37
.71
1.54
FUEL
.41
.34
.36
1.11
FEEDSTOCK
ELECTRICITY
TOTAL
COAL
CRUDE OIL
NGL
NATURAL GAS
U.S. OIL SUPPLY
OPEC
1980
~ - - " " __"'-FUTURE
...., DISCOVERIES
........
.....,
EXISTING RESERVES .....
1975
YEAR
Fig. 1
25
>
20
c(
C
0:
w
0.
en 15
oJ
w
a:
a:
c(
ttl
Z 10
Q
oJ
oJ
DOMESTIC
~
5
0
1960 1965
OIL AND SHALE OIL Buck 7
Now, I've talked about competition here, and I guess this is
the object of the meeting. The question of interest, then, is
how will the monomer cost of petrochemicals vary as a func-
tion of feedstock type? I am going to stop at the monomer
because that's as far as this conference really ought to go;
we are not going to be talking about the downstream costs in
making finished petrochemicals. In monomers I guess I can
include ethylene and propalene and butadiene and BTX
aromatics. I really ought to include ammonia and methanol,
and here I am less comfortable, and so I will depend on others
to help me. If there is some shortfall or less natural gas liquid
than desired,how will this affect the economics of making
petrochemical monomers? We can make all we want from
crude because, as Table 1 showed, the petrochemical indus-
try draws down only 4 percent of the crude budget; that's a
very small amount, and so there ought to be a lot there, and
there is. I guess it is true that there is not very much ethane
around that people can acquire to build olefm plants, for
example. I think it's academic for us to discuss at too great
length what the relative economics are of making olefins out
of natural gas liquids or out of crude, because the simple fact
of the matter is that except for some imports, there aren't
enough natural gas liquids around to serve as significant raw
material for olefin plants.
There are 11 or 12 or 13 new world-scale olefin plants under
construction right now in the Gulf Coast area, and only one of
those is based on natural gas liquids. The decision 12 to 1 was
not really made by economics so much as by the fact that the
other 12 guys could not find the ethane or the propane to
feed their plants with. So let's agree that the determining
economic factor for olefin plants in the future is going to be
the cost of crude, that is of the fractions derived from crude
oil.
Of course, some shale liquids will come to market in the
1980's, possibly the 1990's, but volume won't be very large
and they will come at world prices; so you ask yourselves,
given a shale-liquid fraction and comparing it with a similar
fraction from crude, does it affect the cost of making mono-
mers? I think the answer is no. The liquids out of shale are
acceptable feedstocks. I am not quite sure that we are con-
fident we know enough about the nitrogen content; there
may be some costs that relate to nitrogen content and the
effect of nitrogen on the catalysts, and such matters, but
these are details that I think we won't get into in this
summary.
As for coal and lignite, I would think that the statement
about shale liquids covers the liquids from coal and lignite as
well. There is one area that is quite different, though, and
that is the gasification of coal and lignite, in which one would
aim at getting a monomer, not something like ethylene or
propalene or butadiene, but carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
That's a pretty reactive monomer mixture, and I suggest to
you that that is an area we better keep our eye on because if
you take coal (and I apologize to the experts here) at say $1
a million B.t.u., which seems to be something that people will
accept as possible, and gasify it, the simple arithmetic that I
do says that this gives you carbon monoxide and hydrogen
at something between 3 and 6 cents a pound. That's a big
spread. I've given myself a possible error of 100 percent, but
even without that error I end with 3 to 6 cents a pound, and
against ethylene, anotherreactive monomer, at say 12 to 13
cents a pound, I think there is some potential there for chem-
ical development.
Imported natural gas liquid is an area that we don't have the
fmal word on, I feel sure. There is a move under way to im-
port into the United States some propane, some liquefied
petroleum gas as propane. There is a good market, and many
people are confident that we can do this economically. The
producing nations, as you know, not being impeded by some
of our antitrust laws, are indulging in a little thing called the
"tie-in sale," by which if you want propane you have to take
some butanes; so there will be a lot of butane coming into the
United States, which may exceed our requirements for things
like gasoline, and so we may have some butane available as
natural gas liquids for the petrochemical industry. Further-
more, there are some people around who say that you can
even afford to bring in ethane, liquefied low-temperature
ethane, discharge it, and use it as a raw material. I assume
that the alternative natural gas sources in this nation, say
Arctic gas or gas from coal, are going to cost something
between $4 and $6 a million B.t.u., and so you say to your-
self, "If I can bring this material to market at $4 to $6...."
Work out what ethane would cost as a petrochemical feed-
stock at $4 a million B.t.u.; it's within the realm of possibility,
and I am sure there are some people somewhere who would
rather import ethane than shut down their existing ethane
cracker. If you get up in the $6 range, and that's the range
of my error, importing is pretty unlikely, but at the $4
range it's not out of the question.
When you work all these factors back, the basic raw material
for many of the petrochemicals (excluding ammonia as I said)
is going to be crude fractions, and so I thought we had better
look into the future to see what we can find out.
Today in the United States crude costs around $12 a barrel.
(These are pretty severely rounded numbers.) Ethylene is
selling for 12 to 13 cents a pound, and there is not much fat
in the ethylene business at that price. Benzene is at 75 to 85
cents and going down. A lot of people are predicting what
crude will be in the future, and I picked up an estimate by the
U.S. Tariff Commission just because it had a nice round num-
ber-$25 a barrel. Ask yourself what will that mean to the
principal petrochemical monomers? The coefficient on this
8 Buck CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
CRUDE COST VS MONOMER PRICES
I think you would come to the conclusion, however, that
there is no particular reason why their petrochemical mono-
mers or first derivative products would invade our nation,
because their basic cost of manufacture, except for the fuel
cost, is no better than ours; in fact, their capital cost and
maintenance cost and such are going to be higher. Of course,
the refiners on the Persian Gulf have the ability to work the
numbers any way they want. If they want to take a different
capital return or assign themselves a different raw material
cost, they can do it. I would think, therefore, that we shall
see some material in the United States coming from the
Persian Gulf. The question is really one of timing, and I sup-
pose it won't happen very quickly.
In summary, there should be a continued growth of the
petrochemical industry, and as I see it, this growth is not
antisocial. It is a small percentage of the energy budget. It
does make a lot of jobs and support a large fraction of the
United States economy and the people. There will be con-
tinued growth based primarily on the petroleum feedstocks,
but I don't see any urgent need to get rid of the small fraction
of natural gas that is used. There will be some penetration in
the U.S. supply pattern by coal and lignite, and I think that is
surely coming, primarily in the area of ammonia and possibly
methanol. Biomass I'll put a question mark on, because I am
uncertain about it. Surely we shall see some imports from the
Persian Gulf.
price increase I took from Braunstein's recent book. He
works out how the profited cost of ethylene will change as a
function of crude cost, and this would be the Braunstein
coefficient. Similarly, benzene (I think the price also comes
from Braunstein) will be about $1.50; so that's a doubling of
the monomer cost. The next question we have to ask our-
selves is what this is going to do to the competitive position
of these materials.
Now, the first thing to ask yourselves on foreseeing these
large price increases is will we have a market to sell to? There
is such a thing as pricing yourself out of the market. What
about natural products? And here I am talking about paper
and wood and aluminum and steel and so on. A recent paper
given at the American Chemical Society concluded that even
with this doubling of monomer prices, many of the principal
markets of the petrochemicals will remain competitive; that is,
even though our raw material cost is going up, reflecting the
real cost of energy, so is the cost of aluminum and lumber
and so on keeping pace with the cost of energy. We'll remain
competitive, that's my conclusion.
We really ought to analyze what we can do against the rest
of the world. What can the Japanese do? They are on world-
scale prices,just as we are. Their economics isn't any better
than ours. Their wage rates are high, and petrochemical mono-
mers are not labor-intensive materials anyway. We therefore
have no need to fear masses of imports from Europe and
Japan.
I can't say very much about the Persian Gulf, because I
don't think we know too much about it. If, however, you
were to logically construct the cost of monomers or the first
derivative products in the United States which you hypothe-
size were made in the Persian Gulf, and if you use alternate
value economics, which is a nice, sensible way of doing your
economics, you might say to yourself, once the Arab nations
or the North African nations get ethane collected at a source,
they can either feed it to an olefm plant and make ethylene,
or they can sell that ethane. It might be possible to liquefy
ethane and transport it to the United States. If you use those
CRUDE, $/BBL
ETHYLENE, CPP
BENZENE,CPG
1977
12
12-13
75-85
1985
25
23-25
CA. 150
OIL AND SHALE OIL Higgins 9
E. J. Higgins, Manager, Olefins Technology Division, Exxon
Chemical Company, Florham Park, N.J., is involved in re-
search and development, being responsible, in particular, for
developing processes for various feedstocks.
E. J. HIGGINS
80
60
ETHYLENE PRODUCTION FROM FEEDSTOCKS OTHER THAN NGL
Fig. 1
o L - - - - ~ - - - - - r - - - - _ r _ - - - _ _ .
1965 1970 1975 1980 1985
20
40
feedstock only, and it is kind of an inverted scale, the per-
centage of ethylene that is generated from sources other than
natural gas liquids. As you can see, in 1976 only about 26
percent of all ethylene in the United States was produced
from feedstocks other than natural gas liquids. However,
at the same time in Japan 100 percent of the ethylene came
from petroleum-based naphtha and heavier fractions, and in
Europe about 98 percent came from other than natural gas
liquids. The forecast shows that in the United States the
need for feedstocks other than natural gas liquids will increase
to about 55 percent by 1985. During the same period in
Europe the dependence upon natural gas liquids will actually
increase to about 5 percent.
Exxon, which is not typical of the industry, has over the
years had petrochemicals operations predominantly dependent
upon petroleum liquids (Figure 2). In 1976 only 8 percent of
its ethylene came from natural gas liquids. In the United
States the figure was only about 6 percent. Moreover, most of
the increase tailing off out into the 1985 period comes from
operations outside the United States.
Well, the message from all of this is that the industry is not
really faced with breaking virgin ground. There is a great deal
I will concentrate my comments primarily in the olefins area.
As I see it, the other tonnage petrochemicals that come from
natural gas liquids or natural gas are ammonia and methanol,
which I don't see petroleum or shale making inroads into at
all. I think the shift there is more likely to be into synthesis
gas from coal-derived sources. For the other major area, the
aromatic derivatives, the natural gas liquids are not a major
factor anyway. We are really looking at by-products of petro-
leum processing and refining or pyrolisis products from either
pyrolisis of liquids for olefins or pyrolisis of coal; so I am going
to give kind of short shrift to everything other than the olefins
area, where there is a lot to be said. Depending on your view-
point, the declining domestic supplies of natural gas liquids for
chemical feedstocks can be considered anywhere along the
range between a mere forecast of adjustment of industry pat-
terns on the one end and imminent doom on the other. Regard-
less of your position, we need to keep things in perspective. We
need to remember, first, that the petroleum industry was born
without natural gas liquids, and, second, that the industry
flourishes in most parts of the world without natural gas liquids.
The petrochemical industry started in 1920 at Bayway,
where thermocracking severity had reached the point where
by-product fuel was uncontainable. In response, a process was
installed to convert propylene to isopropol alcohol to eliminate
the need for flaring the excess gas. This was such an economic
success that it was followed by process modification which
permitted increased yield ofolefms, and this eventually evolved
into the production of ethane and butadiene and the beginning
of a major change in the chemical industry which backed out
the older acetylene-based chemistry. It was not until the early
1940's that someone got the bright idea to take advantage of
the glut of natural gas liquids being thrown up by the ever-
increasing production of natural gas on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
These provided cheap, convenient feedstocks, which became
the basis for a phenomenal growth in the petrochemical indus-
try in the United States.
Figure 1 shows, among other things, the results of this de-
velopment. This figure is on a completely different basis from
Dr. Buck's. This has none of the fuel shown in it. This is
10 Higgins CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
u.s. PETROLEUM PRODUCT DEMAND OUTLOOK
unpredictable success. The availability of domestic crude oil
will continue to decrease. The V.S. balance of payments will
be seriously affected by oil imports, thereby providing a major
drive to reduce imports. There will be a constant threat of an
abrupt OPEC price action, and then there are the possible V.s.
government actions which could impose restrictions or pro-
scriptions on the use or the end use of fuels and possibly could
provide support or encouragement to the development of
domestic oil, gas, shale oil, coal conversion, or tosens; so this
array of interacting uncertainties really precludes confident
forecasting. Nevertheless, here is a chart (Figure 4) that may
help. I have no real pride in the exact shape of these curves,
and the time scales across the four figures are not necessarily
the same.
MOGAS
TIME _
1975
TIME _
1975
1-------
T
of technology already available, and it is more a question of
adjusting and adapting, unless one happens to be sitting there
with a modern efficient facility capable of cracking only
natural gas liquids.
At the risk of running into headlong conflict with John
Hand, I would like to deal very briefly with shale oil. Figure
3 shows the estimates on shale oil availability out to the turn
of the century as a percentage of total crude oil consumed in
the Vnited States. It shows that shale will be only a very minor
fraction of the overall energy feedstock equation and that the
most optimistic estimates of shale oil availability in 1990 is
less than 5 percent. Moreover, as the shale oil fraction could
be cracked in facilities suitable for cracking petroleum liquids,
no major special research is involved. As a final note on shale,
it is clear that the crude shale oil fractions, before they have
been hydrogenated to remove n1trogen, are pretty deficient in
hydrogen and really not very prime candidates for olefin-
generation feedstocks; so let's go on to see what petroleum
feedstocks will be the prime candidates for ftlling the gap in
natural gas liquids.
Whatever happens will be caused by alarge number of factors,
significant among which is the decrease in natural gas supplies,
which will affect the consumption of all alternate fuels.
Atomic power and coal burning will be running the gauntlet of
administrative and environmental impediments with somewhat
ETHYLENE PRODUCTION FROM FEEDSTOCKS OTHER THAN NGL
TIME _
CRUDE
T
Fig. 4
TIME _ 1975
HEAVY FUEL OIL
._---
1975
However, I do see gasoline demand going up through a peak
and then finally settling back. Fuel oil demand will increase to
displace waning natural gas supplies and then will fmally give
way to increasing coal and nuclear utilization. Total crude oil
consumption, whether produced domestically, imported as
crude, or imported as refmed products, will grow ever more
slowly and then finally drop off. Only distillate demand seems
to be rising out to the limit of my vision, as distillate fuel takes
over from natural gas and as dieselization of automobiles be-
comes effective.
Both decreasing lead levels and decreasing gasoline demand
will tend to move limited volumes of low octane, light virgin
naphtha, and erathonates from aromatic extraction in the
chemical feedstocks. However, in spite of the strong demand
for distillates for other uses, which should give them a price
premium that will tend to discourage their use as chemical
feedstocks, they will probably have to balance the need.
Meanwhile, the incentive to use heavy fuel oil boiling-range
material will grow, and so it could become a factor of un-
magnitude.
1990
--
--
'985
Fig. 3
'980
EXXON (WORLD WIDE)
'965
IL.....-_--.-,__--,-,__-,-,_-------"
1910 1975 1980 1985
1975
20
4.
8.
'0
Fig. 2
'00 -fEUROPE
/===EX::X::ON::'U::S::Al=======-_-_-_--::- __ __
U.S. SHALE OIL PRODUCTION AS A PERCENT OF OIL DEMAND
OIL AND SHALE OIL
Clearly, in this unpredictable situation temporary gluts and
shortages are almost certainly developed from time to time in
each of the major petroleum categories. Therefore prudence
dictates securing all the feedstocks flexibility possible. Except
for the heavier fractions, the technology is generally available
to crack the feedstocks we expect to see. Then, what are the
R and D needs?
Figure 5 shows the major areas that should demand industry
attention. These are the investment level, the selectivity to
obtain the desired olefins, energy consumption, and then feed-
stock flexibility.
Figure 6 shows why the investment level needs to be the
subject of R and D activity. This curve, which was published
recently in the Oil and Gas Journal, shows dramatically that as
AREAS FOR FURTHER R&D
INVESTMENT REDUCTION
Higgins
ETHYLENE PLANT INVESTMENT AS A FUNCTION OF FEEDSTOCK
120% r-----------------___.
110
100
90
80 L-j---+---+--+---I----I-__+----J
SOURCE: OIL & GAS JOURNAL
Fig. 6
ENERGY EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENTS IN ETHYLENE STEAM CRACKERS
100 ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _ _ _ .
11
IMPROVED SELECTIVITY
IMPROVED ENERGY EFFICIENCY
FEEDSTOCK FLEXIBILITY
Fig. 5
so
60
least continue these trends in an effort to approach as closely
as possible the theoretical minimum represented by the heat
of cracking. Of course, there are other problems all the laws
ofthermodynarnics working against our bringing that down-
but these curves over the period indicated have not shown any
slackening off. We are not starting to work into the asymptote,
as we will at some point, but it is interesting to note that on
the total light olefin basis, the ethane crackers use more energy
than the naphtha crackers.
One of the very effective ways of reducing energy consump-
tion per ton of olefin is to improve the selectivity of the
process. Figure 8 shows what has happened over the years in
this area. For a given light bridge and naphtha feedstock,
selectivity to ethylene has gone up by 60 percent over the base
which represents the best achievable in 1962. There appears
to be significant potential for further improvement if the prob-
lem is attacked on a wide front by means of both the extrapo-
lation of existing techniques and the exploration of yet un-
the feedstocks get heavier, the investment per ton of ethylene
goes up dramatically. This situation is really not as bad as
depicted here if there are outlets for the coproduced heavier
olefins, but this is what happens to the investment per ton of
ethylene, and no matter whether you have outlets for every-
thing or not, the price tag of a major heavy-liquids cracking
facility is certainly on the order of 72 billion dollars for an
industry-size unit, and this gives a really major incentive for
trying to find ways of reducing this capital demand.
Research and development will probably be carried out
primarily by major international contractors, as it has been
over the past two decades. Energy consumption and olefin
generation have always been very high. Depending upon the
feedstock utilized, the hydrocarbon consumed as fuel has been
as much as or more than the amount going directly to ethylene.
Moreover, even with the rapidly escalating fuel cost experi-
enced over the past few years, there has been a great deal of
successful effort applied to reducing this consumption.
Figure 7 shows the impact of this effort. This is a plot of
the total energy consumption, including fuel, steam, and elec-
tricity per ton of light olefins, including propylene and the
C4's, versus the start-up year of the plant for various types of
plants. As you can see, fuel consumption is quite sensitive to
the feedstock employed, but not nearly as sensitive to that as
it is to the effort that has been applied in trying to reduce the
amount of fuel consumption.
The move toward heavier feedstocks, coupled with escalating
energy costs, provides a huge incentive for the industry to at
40 -
20
1955 1965
Fig. 7
1975 1985
12 Higgins CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
commercialized techniques. A lot of people are working in
this area.
Finally, there is the need to explore further techniques for
extending the commercially viable range of feedstocks, and
Figure 9 shows some of the areas in which effort is under way
and which show promise of extending feedstock utilization
down into the heavier, less costly fractions.
The first of these is vacuum-gas/oil cracking. This is a mere
extrapolation of the normally accepted pyrolisis technique,
which has had limited application already, and since it does
give a great possibility of extending into the higher boiling
ranges, it will warrant further development.
The Carbide Korea Kyoto process, employing partial com-
bustion with oxygen, shows promise of high selectivity to
petrochemicals when feeding the asphalt-of-oil coal crude.
The industry will be watching this very active development
with a great deal of interest.
The hydropyrolysis process under development in France
employs very-short-residence-time cracking in the presence of
SELECTIVITY IMPROVEMENT IN ETHYLENE
STEAM CRACKERS
200 ,-------------------,
hydrogen at relatively high pressure. It will provide a high
degree of feedstock flexibility and produce flexibility because
it can recycle unwanted fractions. It will accommodate a
fairly wide range of possibilities. This process has reached the
semicommercial demonstration phase and warrants further
watching.
Molten salt cracking will accept almost any conceivable
feedstock. It has been under development by a number of
companies for several years but has not nearly reached
commercialization yet.
High-temperature fluid coking is under development by the
Japanese petrochemical industry under the sponsorship of the
government. If successful, it will crack almost anything.
In summary, I can see that the Rand D task facing the
industry is not one of starting from ground zero. Over the
years each of the major international contractors involved
in ethylene plant construction has been actively involved in
Rand D. More recently there has been a significant increase
in the activity in this area on the part of both the petroleum-
based and the chemical-based major petrochemical producers.
These efforts, which have been yielding dramatic results, can
be expected to continue to do so as both the efforts and the
incentives intensify.
>
f-
;;
i=
o
w
~
w
en
w
Z
w
~
>
:I:
f-
w
150
100
50
1960 1970
Fig. 8
1980
RESIDUUM CRACKING PROCESSES
VACUUM GAS OIL CRACKING
CARBIDE/KUREHA/CHIYODA PROCESS
HYDROPYROLYSIS
MOLTEN SALT CRACKING
HIGH TEMPERATURE FLUID COKING
Fig. 9
OIL AND SHALE OIL
DISCUSSORS
Higgins 13
R. G. Keister, Program Manager, Advanced Cracking Reactor,
Union Carbide Corporation, South Charleston, West Virginia,
has worked in R&D, coal hydrogenation, the Fischer-Tropsch
Processes, and also in biodegradable detergents, new agricul-
tural chemicals, and terpolymer monomers.
George Butkovich, Coordinator of Synthetic Fuels, Marketing
Service Department, UOP Process Division, Des Plaines,
Illinois, has performed economic evaluations and refinery
process studies, using planning models, and has served on a
task force studying the environmental impacts of UOP pro-
cesses. Earlier he worked at Amoco Oil Company on large-
scale optimization planning models.
C. J. Roth, Manager of Feedstocks and Fuels for U.S. Petro-
chemical Division, Gulf Oil Company, Houston, is responsible
for the acquisition of raw materials and fuels for the chemical
company's U.S. operation and for pipeline operations to sup-
port feedstock and product movement.
Dr. Bruce A. Melaas, Director of Energy Affairs at Celanese
Chemical Company, New York, is responsible for formulating
energy policy and for coordinating the energy conservation
program at Celanese. Dr. Melaas is Chairman of the Petro-
chemical Energy Group, composed of twenty-one independent
petrochemical companies representing about eighty percent
of the petrochemical industry in the United States.
14 Keister CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
BRUCE MELAAS
Before I disagree or agree with the speakers, I would like to
mention that there are two elements of the chemical or petro-
chemical industry. One is the independent type that is not
afflliated with the oil industry, is not integrated to natural
resources in the ground. Second, a number of the companies
are becoming joint-venture partners with the major innovative
oil companies now. Each of these groupshas different
problems.
I agree with Mr. Higgins that we are concerned with what
happens if natural gas is taken away. The answer is relatively
simple; we go to coal I think, and I think that is what he in-
timated as well. Therefore, you have to assume that natural
gas liquids are also at stake and that they, by government first
or whatever, would be removed from the potential feedstocks
as well. That is where one of the big differentiations between
the independent petrochemical companies and the integrated
petrochemical companies occurs.
The other element of concern would certainly be that those
companies which now have plants within the United States to
consume natural gas liquids or natural gas would, if govern-
ment rationing did occur, be able to continue to operate on
some sort of feedstock that they are used to, which would
allow them to be competitive.
The topic of this conference is oil versus coal shale, and as
I am not an economics man, I still don't know what the price
of a barrel of oil produced from shale will be relative to the
price of crude oil.
payments problem and that it contributes very heavily to that
positive balance brought about by the agricultural industry.
If the petrochemical and chemical industries are faced with
going to shale oil as a feedstock, that change, coupled with
President Carter's energy plan, which would take us above
world prices and add on to that what must be a higher priced
raw material from shale oil, would mean cutbacks and the loss
of jobs within our industry due to loss of markets around the
world and also to the capability of the other large petrochem-
ical and chemical companies throughout the world to import
material into our markets in this country and thus further
depress our industry.
I think I said I generally agree with Dr. Buck, who said that
we would be using petroleum as far as we can see. I am con-
cerned about the shortage of natural gas liquids, which the in-
dependent sector of the petrochemical industry has grown on.
I think we all ought to take care that those materials,that are
already in short supply are not diverted to other fuel uses,
some of which include synthetic natural gas.
I agree with Dr. Buck's comment that the petrochemical
products, whether they be plastics or rubber tires, will remain
competitive and probably make further inroads if we remain
on petroleum feedstock.
As far as shale oil goes, since we are in a competitive region
and since it does appear to be a lot more expensive than
petroleum, I would suggest first that the oil and products that
come from shale oil certainly be pumped into the gasoline
market and not serve to create economic disincentives for the
petrochemical and chemical industry in the United States.
I agree with the consensus here that petrochemical feed-
stocks will be produced from crude oil fractions of some
type, certainly in the next twenty to thirty years. The
number was tossed out that we use only 1.1 out of 7,as
feedstocks. The chemical industry, I am sure, is willing to
switch its boiler fuel to the other forms of B.t.u. energy where
only the B.t.u. matters, not the real form of the molecule.
Twenty percent of the production of the U.s. petrochemical
industry is shipped overseas. I think Mr. West stated that the
petrochemical industry has a positive $4 billion balance of
R. G. KEISTER
Carbide has been working with Chiyoda Chemical Engineer-
ing and Constructors in Japan and Kureha, also from Japan,
on a process since about 1973. We at Union Carbide pretty
much made our minds up that the natural gas element will be
supplied through coal and through synthesis gas and that there
will be crude oils available for converting to petrochemicals.
We crack in the burner of our ACR at some 2,000 degrees.
We can crack crude oil or any distillates. In the Ozaki Quench
OIL AND SHALE OIL Keister 15
Cooler we have a pitch stream and we have a heavy tar stream;
there is a gasoline fraction, a little different from what I think
you have been used to seeing. The temperatures are consider-
ably higher than conventional. We collect, of course, the grip-
piing or pyrolysis gasoline. The gas goes on to compression
and acid gas removal. Among other advantages, and I think
the most important one, that we have at Union Carbide is
flexibility. We can crack naphtha gas oil, atmospheric gas oil,
or vacuum gas oil. We find that the economics of it tends to
make us want to crack the whole distillate, and that is the way
we built our program. We have the ability to crack any of
those in any form and in the same reactor. We can recycle
gases to the same reactor. The recycled ethane, propane, and
nonbutadiene C4's can be recycled directly to the reactor.
We don't at this point worry about sulfur. The gases may
be sour. We don't have problems processing a sour crude. I
believe last count was something like 350 to 400 runs on
various feedstocks. About 200 of those have been done in
Japan and about 150 in the United States. We processed the
distillates from Arabian and Iranian light, the heavies, and the
light distillates. We have no problems with sulfur at this point.
We think, one, that due to our flexibility we can move,
regardless of what the fuels market does, to those feedstocks
which are rejected or are discarded from the petroleum in-
dustry at favorable prices.
The second element, the raw material efficiency, and of
course this refers to 1985, is that we think we'll have a pilot
plant, what we call a demonstration unit, at Sea Drift operat-
ing in 1979. We think a commercialization date of '79 or '80
would be very reasonable, and we think that our first plant
will be in '85. We are looking at the time frame of '85 on,
with this type of technology. As for our raw material ef-
ficiencies, we count 70 percent chemical-valued products
from the ACR vs. around forty-four from conventional
plants. Ever since we put out that figure, we have checked
our numbers and checked them again because it is an incredible
comparison, and we find that it is true, leaving out the recycles,
of course, and the fuel products which we discard. From
crudeoH, it truly is a60 to 70 percent number.
Also, we can feed five or six selected crudes to this process;
as I said, Kureha feeds Sereha. Particular crudes that have
low conrads and carbon content can be fed directly. We
think that with the value added we could preferentially buy
these crudes because of the type of products we make and the
value that we add.
When you talk about energy efficiency, we think the com-
bination of injecting the feedstock directly into the flame and
recovering the heat with the Ozaki probably will put us well
down on the energy efficiency curve. The Ozaki and the
Flame-in give us an opportunity to recover the whole stream.
Some people worry about whether we can keep it on stream.
This specific process has had a IS-day scheduled run in Japan,
and it lasted fine, no fouling problems. I think our fall-back
position on this is that Kureha, which has operated a more
severe program than ours, more severe in regard to the ethylene
to acetylene ratio, at conditions very close to ours with high-
temperature steam and feeding of crude oil, is approaching
three years between shutdowns. I think this compares with
conventional cracking of 40- to 60-day tum around on the
fumace.
The third element is product flexibility. We operated our
process down to 8. The Kureha Process is about 1. We
have operated from 8 to 25. We have some data near
50 where conventional technology operates. In this type of
economics we always value ethylene and acetylene equally,
at parity. This is a convenience for us at this time, and we see
no reason to change it. In a commercial operation, however,
whether they are equal as far as offerings are concemed is a
matter of a commercial judgment at the time. Finding or
reversing the trend that takes the derivatives of acetylene over
into ethylene might be a useful problem for our future. Will
it be in a pound ethylene plant? We talk about 50 to 80 mil-
lion pounds of acetylene from a billion-pound ethylene plant.
Propylene, where we operate propylene, is minimized. We
make less propylene conventionally.
In considering lower cost ethylene, we have talked about a
three- to four-cent advantage in 1985. We find that, again
going back to Mr. Higgins' Figure 9, we can obtain a C2
selectivity between 140 and 150 percent of conventional
cracking in all fractions, if conventional cracking could handle
vacuum-gas oils. We projected what one might expect from a
raw vacuum gas oil, and we think that with it plus atmospheric
plus naphtha, we can get over 150 percent C2 selectivity.
Our real problem in the ACR has been depending on the
projections for raw material costs and product cost in 1985.
Some projections are kind of wavy out in that period of time.
We worry about it, but we compared the sensitivities of a
change of 10 percent in price and value of the products and
found that a 10 percent change in anyone of those the ACR is
producing had half the sensitivity of one from a conventional
process; so the chance of a standing ACR being uneconomical
is half as much as of a standing naphtha gas oil plant. We
think that for a company in the defensive position, as some of
us have been in in the last years, the position of having to cut
back capacity, the manufacturing cost of ethylene on an
ethylene-only basis from the ACR compared with a con-
ventional ethylene process is roughly 20 to 30 percent less.
16 Butkovich CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
C.l. ROTH
I agree that shale oil as a feedstock will not be a major
contributing factor, at least through the rest of this century,
but I would say that the decision on imports will be based
strongly on political considerations. I will differ with Mack
Buck a little bit on the political impact worldwide as a result
of administrative policy developing. I contend that industry
is becoming confused by some of the governmental action,
some of the Administration's intentions for the future. There
is great volatility in the present efforts to solve the long-term
energy problem as it would impact on the chemical industry,
and our industry will be severely penalized if these trends
continue. Only last week at an MeA energy-conservation
session in Washington I heard Dr. O'Leary talk about an
overheated natural gas industry. He commented that no new
economic incentives were necessary in this industry, as present
activities were already high and productive. However, he
failed to recognize that this activity resulted from some
tremendous incentives that were imposed on the industry by
the intrastate gas market. His comments included "no ad-
ditional incentives are required because already the price of
natural gas is ten times or more what it was 10 years ago,"
"work-over rigs cost 3 to 3 ~ times what they did 5 years ago
to employ," "roughneck wages are up more than any other
wage scale in any other industry in the United States." Maybe
some of you hear Dr. Schlesinger threaten, if you want to use
the term, a $5 crude oil import tax if the Administration's
energy policy was not imposed. On the basis of these com-
ments I have little doubt that the industry could become non-
competitive if the Administration's policies proceed. More
commodity chemicals will undoubtedly be produced in the
developing nations. I feel a little stronger about this than
Mack Buck seemed to when he talked on the subject.
I think our industry may be approaching the indecisions
that the refining industry has been facing over the past 4 or
5 years. I would say that the petrochemical industry must be
more concerned with reduced levels of demand resulting
from a loss of world-scale competitiveness and therefore with
decreased profitability and escalating cost. Barring govern-
ment intervention, our industry can always be economically
competitive for the purchase of feedstocks away from the
energy market. Whether or not it can remain competitive on a
world scale will then be the question.
I propose that our energy concern must shift from feedstock
availability toward our ability to compete and thus main-
tain a healthy world position.
GEORGE BUTKOVICH
I would like first of all to agree with Mr. Higgins that the
technology for processing synthetic fuels is indeed available.
However, technical research is a long-term proposition, and so
research is continuing along these lines. In particular, at UOP,
which is primarily a research company, we have been inves-
tigating new hydrocarbon sources, primarily with respect to
their effect on operating parameters and the economics of our
processes. Our interest is principally in technology for aro-
matics and their derivatives. For example, Venezuelan crude
has a high metals content. With shale oil we might have more
significant amounts of nitrogen. The yields and economics
of these processes have been improved in the past; with
continuing research and time, the economics will improve in
the future. Feedstock contaminants, as I just mentioned,
require particular attention. In shale oil, the problem is
nitrogen. Sometimes, I hear about 2 percent, weight percent,
and this is of concern due to further downstream processing,
particularly reforming-in our case platformitlg.
I would be interested in hearing more about the fact that
shale oil is evidently not reported to be a major contributor to
future petrochemical feedstocks or petroleum feedstocks. I
think a lot of money is being spent on shale oil. Are we saying
that all this spending on shale oil is ill-advised? With respect to
shale, I would be interested in hearing more about some of the
specifics needed-the specific economics of shale oil, what
research is needed in the future, some of the feedstock-
adaptability problems if there are any, problems with environ-
mental controls in developing shale oil, and other areas of
regulation. One area which has not been discussed here but
which seems important to me is government-industry inter-
action. Industry wants government support to help develop
these synthetic fuel oils, but, on the other hand, industry feels
bound by government regulations, and this seems like an
interesting area for discussion.
OIL AND SHALE OIL Higgins
DISCUSSION
17
K. D. Timmerhaus: What are some of the economics associ-
ated with shale oil, let's say in terms of dollars per barrel, and
how competitive is this at this point?
John Hand: Well, economics isn't my field, but I think
we can consider that shale oil is in the ballpark, competitive
with the world price of oil at the present time. Actually,
there has not been any large-scale production of shale oil
in this country yet, and as with any new industry, the first
processes to come on stream are going to be expensive to
operate, and we will learn more about them as we get into
the second- and third-generation facilities; at least this has
been the trend in almost any new industry, and I don't see any
reason why it should not be the same with the production of
shale oil.
Our company has been doing economic studies in the pro-
duction of shale oil for twenty years, and it always has seemed
to be just competitive with the new production of oil. When
the world price of oil goes up four times and you say that
shale oil costs go up four times, it is rather hard for me to
follow that because it is a matter of additional manpower and
the cost of equipment to produce the shale and get it into the
retards. We anticipate that these C2 projects that are on the
way at present will define prices of crude shale oil somewhere
in the range of 10 to 20 percent below the present imported
price of crude oil, but that is an estimate on our part. It is
not backed up by any direct involvement in the development
or operation of these facilities.
feedstock problem I have no quarrel with. I think it is going
to be a matter of physical development that will take time.
Al Stiles (University of Delaware): I have a number of
questions that I would like to ask about shale oil. Occidental
is currently doing quite a bit of work in this area, and I think
intends to derive both a liquid and carbon monoxide and
hydrogen as products. Underground gasification, I believe,
does the same thing. Now, if we have a competitive position
here, do you think that underground coal gasification, will be
the preferred route to go, or do you think that shale will be
the preferred route? If you answer that shale is preferred,
do you believe that there is going to be a serious abatement
problem for the liquids that are going to be extracted from the
shale as the ash that remains after the oil is extracted or
burned away? There is going to be a waste stream from the
shale. Instead of acid coming out ofthe coal mines of West
Virginia, there would be a basic and intolerable stream coming
from the spent shale mines.
E. J. Higgins: I don't know that I want to set myself up as
an expert on the gasification of coal, but the work that is
being done in this country at present seems to be very en-
couraging, especially the gasification of Western types of coals
and lignites. In the West you can get good communication
between your wells, and I think that as far as the production
of carbon monoxide and hydrogen is concerned, that's prob-
ably the way to go instead of hoping to get any large-scale
production from the retarding of oil shale. I think from the
K. D. Timmerhaus: If you have come up with this type
of estimate, who needs convincing at this point to actually
make the investment to get started ? Who is going to do the
convincing?
John Hand: I think you have to say that the industry is
going to have to be convinced. The industry has invested a lot
of capital in research into the production of shale oil. We
are at a point now where we need to demonstrate it. There are
a number of ways we can go, although we are limited by
environmental concerns. There seems to be a consensus that
we need to go into a demonstration-type rather than a full-
scale production basis, and so the projections that have been
made about the potential contribution of shale oil to the
standpoint of oil shale, we should be looking at more of the
heavy oils, rather than at oil as a gas, although there is some
interesting research being done by IGT and others on the
gasification of oil shale.
The matter of the contaminants from the spent shale,
certainly has been a concern of everybody that has given any
thought to the fact that, if we mine and retard above ground,
we are going to be mling canyons in the West with spent shale.
In the research that's been done, however, we don't really
have a serious problem, because the carbonate content of the
shale produces a spent shale that has some cementing qual-
ities, and if it is properly placed in the spent-shale deposit
and wetted down and compacted, you create a situation where
18 Fryback CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
the water will run off rather than leach to any degree. There
will be some drawing up of the salts to the surface, but not
much more than is being put out now by the water flowing
through these saving deposits and coming to the surface in
various streams. This salt is as valuable as sodium carbonate
and would be amenable to recovery; so we don't really see
that this is a major problem.
Lawrence Mongan (Dupont): I would like to ask Mr.
Higgins do you, comparing shale oil with crude oil, look on it
as an equivalent source for chemical feedstocks, or would you
recognize any significant advantages or perhaps significant
disadvantages in making feedstocks from shale oil?
E. J. Higgins: In the selection of a feedstock for olefm
production, one of the key things that you always look at is
the hydrogen content of that feed, and in this respect the
shale oil is definitely deficient. It tends to be more aromatic,
and I have seen hydrogen contents of about 11 percent,
which is very, very low. You would not choose to run that as
the pyrolisis feedstock.
Considering that the ethylene you are trying to make has
over 14 percent hydrogen in it, you are starting off with a
foot in the ground. It's not an ideal feedstock, but, on the
other hand, that's no reason why we should not produce all
the shale we can get. It is still a fuel that can displace others
and make them more available for petrochemical feedstocks;
so in the short term I expect to see shale have an impact on
the industry.
Martin Hawley (Michigan State University): I would like to
direct a question to Mack Buck. It seems to me that the
information that has been presented here today could actu-
ally be interpreted as an early realization that we are entering
the twilight days of olefm chemistry based on feedstocks from
petroleum and that the world situation as related to petroleum
could be pricing this feedstock out of the market. If we look
at some alternatives, for example carbon monoxide-hydrogen
chemistry, based on maybe a source of coal or biomass, or
different chemistry such as chemicals from cellulose or lignin,
what price of crude oil would you have to have in order to
cause it to be priced out of the market compared with your
projections of say coal and lignin and cellulose?
F. A. M. Buck: The question calls for a quantitative answer,
and I am not sure that despite some pretty efforts we have
made to get quantitative answers, we can give you one, but I
can give you a qualitative answer. Then maybe we can develop
that. (And by the way, Professor Hawley is quite an expert on
this himself.) Qualitatively, as you would expect, certain
types of chemicals are more likely to be substituted; the manu-
factUring process is going to be substituted. You can think
right away, for example, if you are going to make something
like ethylene glycol, which has a pretty good oxygen content,
why cannot you make ethylene glycol from carbon monoxide
and hydrogen? In fact, our calculations would show that
that's an area where the competition is likely to be quite close.
On the other hand, if you are going to make something like
polyethylene, where the oxygen has to be removed from the
carbon monoxide-hydrogen, then you would expect that
ethylene has an economic advantage to start with. I guess,
I am only speaking qualitatively, we have never seen a threat
to ethylene as a raw material for polyethylene. When you
sum up some classes of chemical products, like polyethylenes
and I guess I could throw in styrene, there are a number of
materials which don't have any oxygen at all. I think it is
going to be a long time before synthesis gas can invade that
area. I think the price of crude can go quite a lot higher
before it becomes noncompetitive.
You asked about cellulose and lignin. I would like to refer
to R. C. Perry's recent remarks that the harvesting cost of
those is significant, and so you must make sure that you are
talking about a manufacturing base that is equivalent. If you
have so many pounds of cellulose as opposed to so many
pounds of coal or a barrel of crude, you can construct your
economics, but I think the point is that the harvesting cost of
the cellulose is a sleeper, and you can become noncompetitive
because of that factor.
Mel Fryback (Sunoco Energy Development Co.): I had a
couple of comments with respect to shale. My company,
along with Phillips and Sohio, own the tetral shield leases in
Utah. We paid $120 million for the privilege of arguing
with the government about how to get on with the develop
ment. John Hand was asked a tough question, what is shale
oil going to cost? I don't think anybody really knows for
sure. We all have a lot of numbers. The important thing,
I think, is that we must get on with these modular demon-
strations in order to get at the cost of commercial shale.
At the moment, however, our numbers do suggest that raw
shale oil could be produced competitively with the world
price of crude. When you start to talk about refining that
raw shale oil, then you get into numbers that would exceed
the cost of imported crude today, but only marginally so.
The raw shale oil which comes out of the ground, aside from
the high nitrogen and the No
x
problems, is perfectly good
residual fuel substitute or boiler fuel. When you hydrotreat
it severely to get the nitrogen out, you get a fine-quality
OIL AND SHALE OIL Higgins 19
material for supplying the transport sector with fuels. It is
an ideal fuel for producing the middle distillates in gasoline,
and I would support the opinion that shale oil will turn out
to be a substitute for crude in the transport sector market,
thereby making components available for the petrochemical
feedstock.
Tom Richards (Olin Corporation): In the past couple of
years we have seen the U.s. balance of payments go from a
surplus to a deficit, projected this year at some $25 billion.
I would think that on the basis of the projections that we saw
on the graph this deficit is probably not going to get any
better in the near future, but obviously the United States
cannot run a $25 billion a year deficit. The government has
refused some support to the dollar in the international markets,
which has devalued the dollar some, but on an international
basis, I don't think the Arabs would stand for a greatly de-
valued dollar for acceptance in exchange for crude. I wonder
what some of the major oil companies, particularly, might be
considering as a possible outcome of this deficit. I would like
to hear something on that because I think it is going to greatly
affect the chemical industry, perhaps more than any of us here
realize.
The price of crude imported is going to become, I would
think, more of a luxury than we can afford. This would
probably shift emphasis to things like the shale oil and nuclear
energy that we have, and I would think the economics might
swing toward greater emphasis on development. I wonder
whether the oil companies are looking at the problem in this
sense, or are they looking at continuing to buy foreign crude
and bringing it in at the same level or maybe even higher
levels than they are now?
F. A. M. Buck: In the chemical company we do worry
about that a lot. But I think that the thrust of what we are
talking about this morning is that the petrochemical industry
uses such a small percentage of the petroleum available in the
United States that your question really ought to be directed
to what will the motorists or some other group do. Our
-problem will be to maintain a raw material flow to our in-
dustry, and we have high credits for this because we make a
major contribution to the economy in terms of jobs and
matters of that nature.
With respect to the accelerated development of substitutes
that you are talking about, naturally that acceleration must
take place if we are going to cut back on imports, but that
substitute material can better go into the fuels market, the
transportation market, and all those areas where basically
they just want some form of energy and are not sensitive to
the form value of the raw material. The petrochemical in-
dustry uses an energy material, but it has superimposed on it a
form value, and Mr. Higgins says that one ofthe character-
istics of form to us is the carbon hydrogen balance. Why
should we, for example, strain to get shale oil produced from
the mountain regions of Colorado down to the Gulf Coast
when it has the wrong form? It doesn't do anything for the
chemical industry; in fact, if anything, there is a certain
disadvantage to it. Use it up there to heat houses and run
power plants and the like, and the petroleum that is thereby
released can become the feedstock to the petrochemical
industry.
Bruce Melaas: It seems to me that the shale-oil-, oil-, petro-
chemical-feedstock problem is so complicated that it boggles
many minds, and if we let this get into the hands of the
bureaucrats in Washington we are lost. One of the best things
we can do is keep that small part referred to as petrochemical
feedstocks available to the petrochemical industry and do
everything we can to let a free economic market take over and
develop these other raw materials.
Marvin Brinn (DuPont): I would appreciate some comments
by panelists relative to the desirability of getting on with a
commercial shale oil production similar to the Manhattan
Project.
E. J. Higgins: I think we are in a situation with shale oil
where we really don't need anything quite like the Manhattan
Project. All we need is an economic climate in which an
investor can be assured that ifhe proceeds with a project it
will fly. We are not talking about something that is totally
noncommercial. We are talking about something that is on
the threshold, and all we really need is an economic climate
and a legislative situation that an investor can have confidence
in. There has to be the necessary legislation to work the
trade off between the environment and the needs of the nation
for energy.
20 Higgins
WORKSHOP
CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
E. J. HIGGINS, CHAIRMAN
This transcript represents the reports of the three groups into which
the workshop was divided, under the chairmanship of E. J. Higgins,
John Hand, and F. A. M. Buck. Discussion was invited, and where
possible the discussors are identified.
F.A.M. Buck: I'd like to calion some of the people that put
these statements together, to have them explain the rationale
behind our statements.
Mel Fryback (Sunoco E ~ e r g y Development): The approach
should be to solve the energy problem so that the U.S. petro-
chemical industry may continue to use its conventional feed-
stocks, such as natural gas and natural gas liquids, for existing
plants. In the future, as other possible feedstocks, such as
shale oil, are developed, the industry will select the best feed-
stock, depending upon the economics of the specific situation.
Probably the best use of commercial shale oil will be to re-
place.gas in the utility boilers. And the alternative and ultimate
use will also include upgrading to transportation fuels, such as
motor gasoline, jet fuels, and diesel.
I guess the rationale here is that obviously a change away
from conventional feedstocks is going to discommode every
sector of the economy, certainly it is going to be painful to
the chemical industry. And as Mr. Perry mentioned at lunch,
you have to worry very much about whether you are going to
stay competitive in the international marketplace.
What we really in effect were saying is that we have to solve
the overall fuel problem or we are all in trouble, all sectors of
the economy. But given that you can make some significant
contributions to your fuel problem in a timely manner, then it
seemed to us that the obvious route was to allow the alternative
fuels to move at least initially into the fuel marketplace. And
allow then the continued high priority utilization of the con-
ventional chemical liquids for the chemical industry.
John Hand: Briefly, our group agreed that petroleum is the
best alternative feedstock. The question is will we be legislated
from using it? We seem to feel that we could outbid the energy
industry for petroleum as a chemical feedstock if allowed to
do so.
Furthermore, the replacement of gas by oil and oil by coal
for fuel is a trend which we feel is in the right direction. Again
it frees the feedstocks for the chemical industry. In using shale
oil as a fuel for boilers we wanted to know more about where
we stand in regard to the technology to handle the organic
nitrogen content of the shale oil. We think the sulfur problem
can more or less be accommodated. The question that arises is
what is the effect of the 1977 Clean Air Act amendment on
the utilization of shale as a boiler fuel?
E. J. Higgins: The third group has statements that kind of
bracket and incorporate most of the things that have been said.
We went through a stepwise look at the whole situation, which
began with recognizing that there is an energy shortage and
that something has to be done about it. And we see the pro-
jected feedstock dislocation, which is the reason for our meet-
ing here, as just a manifestation of that overall energy crisis.
In response to that, we in the petrochemical industry need
to continue to make every effort to gain ever higher efficiencies
in energy consumption and in our feedstock utilization. The
nation needs to find ways to concentrate the many remaining
petroleum, natural gas, natural gas liquids into end uses where
the physical and chemical form is essential. And we refer to
the petrochemical feedstock area, to transportable fuels for
the transportation industry, and, to the degree necessary, to
home heating in regions where natural gas cannot be supplied.
We need to have all large stationary B. t.u. consumers shifted
to coal or nuclear, starting with the biggest and working down
to the smallest that it makes sense to convert.
The government also needs to promote conservation, one
way or another. As acorollary, we also need a reasonable com-
promise between environmental and energy goals if we are to
achieve the replacement of the unquestionably clean fuels by
fuels such as coal which will have more of an environmental
OIL AND SHALE OIL Fryback 21
impact. And then the government should encourage domestic
investment in intermediate and long-range energy sources which
will extend the time of availability of the form-specific hydro-
carbons for essential uses.
The final area of our deliberation says that we need-and this
once again is something that will have to be more of a govern-
ment impact than an industry impact-the creation of an
economic climate that will first of all encourage domestic in-
vestment. Decontrol of artificial price restrictions, such as gas
and petroleum price control, will in time permit the energy
costs to rise to the world-scale competitive level. This is one
of the ways in which we could discourage overconsumption
and promote conservation. And the corollary is that decontrol
needs to be done in such a way that incremental revenues are
plowed back into investment in long-term energy resources.
And then, as part of what we need to see from the govern-
ment, discouragement of consumption obviously is going to
improve the balance of payments, on which imported oil is
having such a devastating impact. Then the next thing we see
is the need for policies which will permit the development of
the outer continental shelf and other alternative sources of
conventional fuels. And a part of that is, again, the environ-
mental comprises that it will take to facilitate the development
of coal use for conventional B.t.u.
Finally we would like to see from the government support of
more research and development in the speculative, longer-range
areas, such as biomass and synthetic crude from tar sands or
coal or any of the other long-range energy sources.
And that's about what we covered this morning. I guess we
got a little global and got into a lot of other people's areas of
activity. But I think we need to have some discussion-of
whether there is support for those concepts.
F.A.M. Buck: I agree with you. You people went beyond
what we considered the scope of our discussion to be. We
restricted ourselves to the problems of the petrochemical in-
dustry relative to the availability of conventional feedstocks
in the future. And we merely noted that one way to avoid a
precipitous problem would be to solve the energy problem. We
did not decide how to do that.
We said first that if you solve the energy problem, there is
no feedstock problem at all. The second thing we faced was
the position of shale liquids in the general scheme of the energy
problem and how they would influence the selection of feed-
stocks. Again, you won't find our statement instructive to-
ward national policy, but it is our observation as to where shale
liquids will fit in.
Carl Chambers of Occidental Petroleum helped frame this
statement.
Carl Chambers (Occidental Oil Shale): One of the things
we could all agree on as a group, was that a realistic projection
for the production rate of shale liquids will be about 2,000,000
barrels a day by the end of the century. This should help sup-
plement the feed to boiler and would tend to release natural
gas to the previously identified high priority users-residential,
light commercial, petrochemical feedstocks-notably for
nitrogen fertilizers and certain special applications such as
drying.
There was some question as to just where shale oil as a liquid
hydrocarbon fuel will stand in regard to boiler fuels. Everyone
is trying to take fueling boilers away from oil and gas. Whether
the shale liquids will be included is not quite clear at this time.
Boiler fuel, I think, would be a good, logical place to utilize
the unrefined, raw shale oil crude.
Don Lee (Ashland Oil): My question is whether the crude
shale oil needed any cleanup to be applicable to boiler feed.
Unidentified: Tests that we have performed indicate that
the preliminary cleanup required is minimal.
Mel Fryback: At a meeting in Grand Junction, Colorado,
last Thursday, Harry Pforheimer of Paraho advised everybody
that an amendment has been introduced into the Senate to
indeed ~ e p a r a t e shale oil: from the exclusion of oil and gas
from boilers. Whether that ever will become law, I don't know.
Unidentified: Does anyone have any feel for what level of
production of shale could be attained if all stops were pulled
out and investment capital were not a problem? Could an all-out
offensive by industry, with or without government support,
raise that level of 2,000,000 barrels a day by the end of the cen-
tury significantly?
Mel Fryback: I think the one thing that we have to con-
tinually recognize is that the production of shale oil is not
resource limited. There is a hell of a lot of it there. The ques-
tion is what is going to be the constraint? If you're going to
speculate that all constraints, such as the environmental im-
plications or possible water shortages, have been eliminated,
then I would submit that probably you could produce 6 or
7,000,000 barrels a day. But I think that's a rather highly
idealistic viewpoint.
John Hand: On the subject of shale oil, the concern of our
group was to get more information as to the types of products
22 Baldwin CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
that can be derived from retarding and refining shale oil. What
are the economics involved, and what characteristics of the
products commend themselves as chemical feedstocks? We only
brought up the question. We felt that more information was
needed in the chemical industry to determine whether shale oil
would be a preferred feedstock. Otherwise, our feeling was
that if it had no such attributes we could fmd feedstocks from
other petroleum sources that would be more suitable.
F.A.M. Buck: John, would you support the figure offered?
I thought Carl put it correctly. You can take almost any num-
ber, but we settled on 2,000,000 barrels a day as a reasonably
expected figure around the year 2,000.
John Hand: Yes, I support that one. I thinkjust the physical
development of an industry of the size we are talking about
would not allow us to move any faster without utter chaos.
R. G. Keister: We took raw shale oil qualities and hydro-
genated them on a paper basis and then got the hydrogen con-
tent up. If I recall, we got it to a hydrogen-to-carbon ratio of
around 2. Under those circumstances it is a very favorable
cracking feedstock for the ACR. That's what we speculated
on. And once Occidental and Ashland have a product out, we
have been offered drums of it for evaluation or for testing. At
that point, unless it has a high aromatic content, and I under-
stand it does not, it should be a satisfactory feedstock for
making ethylene, once it is refined.
Unidentified: The information I have seen on it showed a
low hydrogen content, which could be either a lot of olefins or
a lot of aromatics. And what you are saying is it must have
been olefins as opposed to aromatics and that therefore it could
be upgraded into a reasonable feedstock. I think the key here
is that no matter how good or how bad it is, there is not a lot
of it. And out through the period in which the crisis is likely
to come into being, it is not going to be a major factor.
This is just one of the sources of incremental hydrocarbon or
energy that need to be developed and paralleled with a whole
bunch of others to minimize the dislocations and the problems
we are going to have. I guess that was one of the points that
our group discussed. We went through a kind of a list of the
areas where we needed encouragement of domestic investment.
This list contained, in addition to shale oil, tertiary recovery,
the accelerated development of nuclear, and the development
of the breeder reactor, which downstream would provide still
further energy. We also considered selected use of solar en-
ergy where it made sense and the development of coal and syn-
crude approaches to further supplement petroleum still farther
down the road.
R. G. Keister: Dick, is there a projection for the daily use of
petroleum feedstocks in the year 2000 that we might lay
2,000,000 a day up against?
Unidentified: I'm not aware of any responsible one::. Many
people have speculated that the growth rate will continue at
something about twice the rate ofenergy growth. And starting
from a present level of total U.S. petrochemical feedstock use
of about a million and a quarter barrels a day, one can take it
from there. It is obviously several million by that time with
any level of energy growth rate you want to
3 percent. So the 2,000,000 barrels a day from shale would
be modest compared with the total feedstock requirements.
F.A.M. Buck: We also tackled the problem of what would
happen if the energy problem were not solved.
John Crecca (Owens Coming): In essence what we are say-
ing is that if we don't solve the energy problem, then we are
faced with a supply problem. And in the past I think the gen-
eral assumption has been that petrochemicals will always outbid
the fuel market; therefore there will always be supplies. But
iffaced with a situation like the one a good part of the country
was faced with last winter, we are going to have to work out
a compromise, possibly government mandated. The petro-
chemical industry will not have an unlimited supply of feed-
stocks even if it is willing to pay for it. The government would
probably step in and do some allocation.
Frank Spuhler (Texas Air Control Board): My comments I
think are almost peripheral to your larger consideration. Even
in the most simplified basic case for shale oils, or syncrude from
shale oil or from coal or from any other source, the thrust
seems to be that this would be most desirably used to back up
the conventional feedstocks for petrochemicals. That makes a
lot of sense, I think, to the industry. But are there pollutants
that have to be considered? I think that we will have new
source performance standards, guidelines, for this newindustry.
I think sulfur oxides may be a little problem. I think the
nitrogen may be a problem. In other words, if you get these
first-stage syncrudes and use them either whole or in fractions
to back out conventional feedstocks, will the quality levels
satisfy the minimum needs of clean air? I think so, but at a
cost on sulfur. I think the technology is here, and I think the
yardstick is going to be new source-performance standards,
not grandfather-clause standards. But is there a problem
on the nitrogen?
F.A.M. Buck: Fred Barnett, who is not here, spoke to that
point. He spoke about a split cycle in the combustion zone
of boilers. Is there anyone here who can explain it?
L. L. Baldwin (Shell Oil): I believe what he's talking about
is two-stage combustion, just like the stratified combustion in
a closed-cycle engine. You maintain your combustion in two
stages so your temperatures don't get so high as to convert the
nitrogen, whether it is atmospheric nitrogen or combined
nitrogen, to nitrogen oxides. This is a feasible method of
maintaining the low concentration production of nitrogen
oxide.
Avariant of that is to recycle some combustion gases to keep
the temperature of your oxidation down. Another modifica-
tion that works very well is to put your nitrogen-oxide-con-
taining stream into the reducing envelope of your flame; it
will actually reduce the nitrogen oxide back to nitrogen and
OIL AND SHALE OIL Whiteside 23
destroy your nitrogen oixde. This is not only a test situation
but has been industrially practiced by Shell. I would agree
that the technology is already at hand. But any new source
application needs to take into consideration the firing con-
figuration in order to enjoy this ability to suppress nitrogen
oxide.
Frank Spuhler: The technology says that we are going to use
the flue gas recycle, the control of the kinetics, and minimize
the nitrogen oxide formation, an 0 formation if you will, in
the furnaces like the exhaust gas recycle in a car, for example.
These are effective to a degree, but in a firebox up in the level
of l200-if I can talk in terms of stack gas concentrations-or
so parts per million. And you can get at these maybe 20 per-
cent reductions by this first-generation technology. But, re-
member, the problem is not only nitrogen oxide per se as a
pollutant, but also the way it gets into this oxygen business
gets real complicated.
In Japan they are goingto second or third generation. If you
put some ammonia in there and let it react with this, you can
come out with nitrogen. Then you can come down to 100 to
200 parts per million in the the nitrogen oxide
emissions, I think, are a sleeper; they are going up and up and
up and up, and by the 1980's they are going to be between
35 and 40 percent higher than they are now.
One further point, we can't say what the level will be when
EPA fixes the yet-to-be-studied nitrogen oxide levels. But they
have got a mandatory deadline. They are going to come up
with a number.
E. J. Higgins: One of our groups mentioned that his com-
pany had done some shale oil upgrading using a very severe
hydrotreat, 800 pounds with about a space velocity of 2,
cobalt molycatalysts at about 730
0
; so they were practically
cracking the oil, practically a mild hydrocracking. Follow-
ing that kind of treatment, they were able to run it through a
refinery like any other crude. It therefore can be upgraded
to be a completely compatible crude oil, but that is an ex-
pensive process. And not only would it be expensive; I can
imagine that it probably would consume 5 to 10 percent, of
the total energy just to upgrade it. I hope we would not be
faced with that for every barrel of shale we brought out of the
ground, or we sure would lose efficiency by substituting with
it.
F.A.M. Buck: I would like to know whether there is a fun-
damental reason why we're concerned with nitrogen oxide
formation in Western mountains. And I ask this question
against the background of Johnny McKetta's speech in which
he said that we do a lot of things nationwide because the Los
Angeles basin finds them necessary. My question is are we
being wagged by the tail of California?
Frank Spuhler: I frankly don't know the answer to that ques-
tion, but I don't think concern with nitrogen oxide needs to be
out of context. I thinkit is there, in the real world. There will
be a short-averaging time standard. I think all of us who have
looked at liquids from coal, oil shale, or whatever are aware of
the generalized nitrogen problem. I think you must consider
the sulfur problem too. It costs money. You decide what you
want, and that's it. There is a little more difficulty with the
nitrogen, though.
I think the Federal people recognize nitrogen oxide as a
sleeper, and I don't know how it got into the amended Clean
Air Act, but I think that's one of the reasons why it's there.
And nitrogen oxide is on anybody's forecast to go up and up
and up. It is inverse technology, and it costs real money.
Unidentified: I haven't heard nitrogen cited as a big problem
with coal burning. Does coal present the same sort of a
problem?
L. L. Baldwin: I'd like to make two or three observa-
tions that might bear on this. Nitrogen oxides are among
the oxidants that are in the lacrimator type of cycle where
there are hydrocarbons in the air. There are natural hydro-
carbons from pine trees and so on in the West. Look at Rifle,
Colorado, at the oil shales lying on the western side of the
Rockies instead of up against Estes Park, where you can get
the concentration and the inversion layer and also not the same
kind of hydrocarbon concentration. The natural cycle, by
which nitrates and nitrogen got into the soil to start with (which
we are very dependent upon for our agricultural operation),
came about by electrical discharges from lightning. It would
be too bad if we legislated that nitrogen oxide out of business,
because we would be in a pretty tough way.
Looking at the wind patterns up and down the west side of
the Rockies, and relying somewhat on the good judgment of
the country nationwide as we come to a point where there are
real energy squeezes and balance-of-payment squeezes, I would
be quite pessimistic if I didn't think we would make some kind
of adjustment in our pollution control laws. If we look at the
past record, we see that there have been adjustments made
where the requirements of L.A.-basis conditions have been ap-
plied to noninversion conditions.
Frank Spuhler: Let me put it in a little different context.
Suppose we go the most simplified way and have a syncrude
shale oil generated in the area of Colorado or Utah or both.
You pipeline or haul this syncrude to Houston to back up
petrochemical feedstocks. Do you have a problem in Houston
if you do that?
L. L. Baldwin: I think with respect to coal you have to
recognize that there are organic nitrogen compounds in coal.
If you get into brown coal, lignite, you have a lot of nitrogen
compounds partially oxidized. That's partly the reason for the
organic material that gives it the brown color.
Jack Whiteside (Barnes and Click, Dallas): In regard to an
earlier statement that the petrochemical industry obviously
can outbid the fuel industry for conventional hydrocarbon
supplies but that the government probably is not going to allow
that, I think that of all the scenarios, that's the most likely. I
24 Higgins CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
think it may happen this winter. In the light of that situation,
and just looking at the odds of solving the energy problem
versus not solving the energy problem and having to live with
this government allocation, it appears to me-and I think a lot
of chemical companies are doing this already-that companies
should be out hustling to secure feedstock supplies, either by
buying production or by buying oil companies or by investing
in exploration programs, so that they have their own captive
hydrocarbon supplies. We have seen this on a very limited
scale in Ohio-I forget whether it's General Motors or Ford or
somebody drilling gas wells in their own backyard, so that they
have a supply of gas to keep their plant running when their
supplies are curtailed in the winter.
Unidentified (Shell): We are drilling for gas at Marietta,
Ohio, to provide natural gas for a steam methane reformer.
That's a short-term solution; that's not a long-term solution.
But if you talk about allocating the energy that is available,
allocating petroleum feedstocks away from chemical manufac-
ture and allocating alternative energy feedstocks to the chemical
companies because there's an energy shortage in the chemical
drilled at one plant and wanted to get the gas to another plant
but couldn't do it because it had to go through an interstate
pipeline and the FPC would not allow Ford to do it except
under government control. So there is a very deftnite problem
here with the government.
Second, with regard to the proper use of coal, that was not
the point that we were trying to address. We were trying to
decide what to do if we don't have sufftcient supplies. We can
talk about conversion of coal or bringing coal in. I believe
President Carter has talked about doubling the coal output in
the next ftve years. But you read little items such as not enough
drag shovel buckets can be produced to meet this goal in the
next ftve years. This is the kind of situation we could run into.
We have the coal in the ground, we have the shale in the ground,
but we just can't get them to the point where we want to use
them. Then you will run into a problem of a shortage, try-
ing to divide it between raw materials for fuel and raw
materials for feedstocks.
John Hand: I want to comment about the danger I see in
any inference that two million barrels a day, for instance, of
manufacture-I can see an allocation where you get only a pro
rata share of what is available and that pro rata share is shared
with everyone. But it is hard to understand taking shale oil or
coal, both of which are very well suited to producing energy, in-
cluding transportable energy-coal gasiftcation to make syn gas
to make synthetic natural gas-and using these for feedstocks.
What's the logic of allocating the coal into chemicals when you
could allocate the coal to provide that energy requirement?
You increase the entropy of your system by allocating into it a
less suited feedstock requiring more energy to process and al-
locating away from it at the same time one that is better suited
and takes less energy. I believe that our government has more
technical competence at its command, whether it will call on
it or not, than sometimes we think. Some of the proposed
legislation that we hear about doesn't really come to pass.
E. J. Higgins: In regard to the point that the gentleman made
about the drilling in Ohio, I guess there are at least two cases
of drilling in Ohio. And it brings out the point that when the
government mucks around in there you can have a mess. There
was another situation in Ohio where I believe it was Ford
shale oil production is a rather small amount and not of any
signiftcance, because I believe that we need to develop all the
energy supplies that we have available to us. Inorder to survive,
we have got to go for all of them. I have heard this argument
used in Colorado, that we should not develop our shale re-
sources, because the yield will be a drop in the bucket and not
worth tearing up the country for. Yet without that increment
and without the coal increment and without the nuclear and
without the power we are going to run short and we are going
to have a readjustment that we don't really have to make in
this country-I mean if we are serious about our business.
E. J. Higgins: All you have to do is look at that two million
barrels a day with respect to today's imports. That's some-
where between 20 and 25 percent of our total imports; so it's
not a drop in t.he bucket. It's an important increment, which
we must capture.
The consensus from this whole group is that we have to pull
out all the stops for any of these sources that are available to
us. We must develop them as qUickly as possible, or it's hope-
less. We have to solve the energy crisis, or we are all dead.
COAL Davis 2S
COAL
Dr. Hubert G. Davis, Senior Research Fellow at Union Car-
bide, Charleston, West Virginia, is currently concerned with
coal conversion and ethylene production, raw materials, and
energy. Earlier he was with the Manhattan District, where
he was concerned with heavy water, uranium chemistry, and
the development of the barriers in the diffusion process of
uranium enrichment.
H. G. DAVIS
I
Anything that we can make out of oil or gas, we can make
out of coal. But it will be more difficult, more expensive, more
capital-intensive and tougher on the environment to do it with
coal. Logic and national interest dicate that we postpone a
massive shift away from oil and gas as long as possible-for
decades or even centuries. The argument, of course, is that
petrochemicals constitute a superior use of our superior hydro-
carbon resources; petrochemicals, by and large, are not frivolous
modem-day luxuries, but are basic building blocks of our
society.
Why is coal harder to convert to chemicals? Unlike petroleum
and natural gas, it is not a hydrocarbon nor even a mixture of
identifiable organic chemicals (see Figure I). Nor, as the news-
papers sometimes seem to believe, is it carbon. It can be
thought of as a sort of mixed-up, heterogeneous polymer, of
assorted linked and crosslinked, only partly identified mono-
mers. But really itis a rock-of variable composition and prop-
erties depending on geologic age (rank), loaded with inorganic
materials (ash) as well as coal stuff, and with a far lower ratio
of hydrogen to carbon than gas or petroleum-or even shale oil.
Certainly, typical coals have far less hydrogen than a typical
U.S. CONSUMPTION OF PETROFEEDSTOCKS 1976
nrt: TQ[\SIYEAR
METHANE 12
ETHANE 9
PROPANE 5
NAPHTHA 15
GAS OILS 6
OLEFINES
INDIRECT (EX REFINERIES) ~
TOTAL 55
BTU EQUIVALENT (QUADS/YEAR)* 2.4
TOTAL ABOUT Lf-5% OF U.S. GAS AND OIL
CONSUf'IPT ION
WP'.AT IS COAL?
* ONE QUAD = 10
15
BTU
CARBON?
Fig. 2
POLYMER?
ROCK?
CHEMICAL?
petrochemical like polyethylene, about 5 to 6 percent on a dry,
ash-free basis, against 14.4 percent.
Coal is also harder and more expensive to bum than oil and
gas; therefore heat, power, an-d steam produ_cers naturally resist
using coal if they can get something else. But the economic
differences are much less in combustion than in petrochemical
processes. Certainly, one way to extend the years of availability
of oil and gas is to replace them with coal in as many fuel uses
as possible, especially within the chemical industry itself.
There are, nevertheless, forces which may ultimately push us
away from oil and gas. Currently the industry uses some 4
percent of our oil and gas supply as feedstock (Figure 2). In-
cidentally the numbers on the slides are added up from various
- OXYGEN 2-6%
- OXYGEN >18%;
- OXYGEN 14-21%,
- 93-97% CARBON
TYPES OF COAL (RANK)
SUBBITUMINOUS
LIGNITE
HIGH VOLATILE } _ OXYGEN 6-14%
BITUMINOUS
LOW TO MEDIUM }
VOLATILE BITUMINOUS
ANTHRACITE
Fig. 1
HYDROCARBON?
26 Davis
UIS, CONSUMprr ON OF PETROFEEDSIOCKs. 1976
MM IONS/YEAR
METHANE 12
ETHANE 9
PROPANE 5
C
4
's 5
NAPHTHA 15
GAS OILS 6
INDIRECT 3
TOTAL 55
BTU EQUIVALENT (QUADS/YEAR)* 2.4
FUELS CONSUMED (QUADS/YEAR) 3.6
--
TOTAL 6.0
TOTAL ABOUT 8% OF U,S, TOTAL 75 QUADS/YEAR
* ONE QUAD = 1015 BTU
CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATlVES
PRESENT SYNIHESI S GAS PRODUCTS. 1976
APPROXIMATE DEMAND, SYN GAS EQUIVALENT,
THOUSAND TONS/YEAR THOUSAND TQNSIYEAR
AMMONIA 20,000
METHANOL 4,000 6,000
ACETIC ACID 400 600
(FROM METHANOL + CO)
OXO ALCOHOLS 1,000 1,500
HYDROGEN ,v 300 2,300
(FROM SYN GAS)
TOTAL SYN GAS (AS 1:1 HYDROGEN/CO)
37,000
BTU EQUIVALENT, TRILLIONS OF BTU/YEAR - 570
COAL EQUIVALENT AI 70% EFFICIENCY, MM TONSIYEAR -33
Fig. 5
we have huge quantities from synthesis gas (Figure 5), sim-
ilarly large quantities of aromatics (Figure 6), and more vast
quantities from the olefin intermediates (Figure 7). Synthesis
gas was once entirely derived from coal and still is in parts of
the world. Aromatics were and still in part are derived from
coal tar. And at least some of the olefin-derived products
can be obtained via the syngas route (Figure 8).
Fig. 3
published sources and should be approximately correct for the
1974-77 period. Perhaps as much as 8 percent of our total
energy supply is used as feedstock plus fuel (Figure 3). These
percentages seem small, but were large enough to be hard to
satisfy in the shortage year of 1974. And petrochemicals are
expected to grow faster than the oil and gas supply-perhaps as
RAW MATERIALS FROM COAL FOR CHEMICALS PRODUCTION
I, SYNTHESIS GAS
2, LIQUID PRODUCTS - LIGHT OILS,
TARS
3. HYDROCARBON GASES - METHANE,
ETHANE. PROPANE
Fig. 4
much as 8 percent a year versus as little as 1 percent a year
over the 1978-1990 period. Further, the oil and gas supplies
are predicted by many to peak out around 1990 or so. The
percentage going to chemicals grows slowly but significantly.
The chemical industry should be able to compete for this
diminished supply indefinitely. But price or a misguided na-
tional policy or both may move us toward coal.
How could coal then fit in? By various processes, coal can
be converted into synthesis gas (carbon monoxide plus hydro-
gen), assorted liqUids, or hydrocarbon gases (Figure 4). Divid-
ing the commodity petrochemical areas up by intermediates,
BULK CHEMICALS WHICH ARE, OR COULD BE,
DERIVED FROM COAL LIQUIDS

BENZENE 5,500 300
TOLUENE, XYLENES, ETHYLBENZENE, ETC, 10,000 150
NAPHTHALENE 320 300
PHENOL 1,300 15
CRESYLI CACIDS 100 25
TOTAL 17,220 790
Fig. 6
MAJOR BULl< GASEOUS INTERMEDIATES
FOR PETROCHEMICAL PRODUCTION
MTONSIYEAR
ETHYLENE 12,000
PROPYLENE 6,000
BUTADIENE 2,500
ACETYLENE 300
TOTAL 27,000
Fig. 7
COAL
MAJOR PRODUCTS DERiVED FROM
GASEOUS OLEFINS BUT DERiVABLE FROM SYNTHESIS GAS
Davis
HYDROCARBDiiIZAIION OF SUBBlTUmNOUS c o . ~ L
PRODUCTS FROM 30,000 TONS (MAE) COAL/CALENDAR DAY
27
ETHYLENE GLYCOL
GLYCERINE
ETHANOL
HIGHER OLEFINS, ALCOHOLS
Fig. 8
Gasification of coal to make synthesis gas is extensively
practiced elsewhere, by the Lurgi and Koppers-Totzek proces-
ses. Second-and third-generation processes are on the way.
Thus ammonia, methanol, and perhaps glycol and a few other
oxygenated organics are strong candidates for manufacture
from coal-derived synthesis gas. Chemicals via coal gasification
(perhaps from synthesis gas made primarily as a clean fuel) are
a fairly likely prospect, though hardly capable of being very
significant before the 90's.
Aromatics and nonoxygenated aliphatics, if they are to be
derived from coal at all, are even more likely to be by-products.
The aromatics are relatively easy. The low hydrogen content
and basic ring structure of coals make aromatics almost a
natural. Figure 9 shows an estimate* of the potential by-prod-
ucts of a single Lurgi-process SNG plant. Coal hydrogenation
will also yield crudes from which BTX, phenols and naphthalene
can be derived. Figure 10 illustrates how much could come
from a single large hydrocarbonization plant based on a sub-
bituminous coal such as from the Wyoming Lake de SMET
seam. The cresols and higher phenols would overwhelm the
U.S. market. They can, however, be dealkylated or dehydrox-
ylated to give additional phenol and BTX.
BY PRODUCT CHEMICALS
FROM LURGI GASIFICATION PLANT (288 MM SCF/DAY)
FROM R, SERRURIER (1)
MM LBS/YEAR
I:RQIl.l!il MM LBS/DAY
Mr1t1 BTU/DAY
MTONS/YEAR
CH
4
m p
~ ~ ~ ,1 122
C
2
H
6
1.7 38 310
Cr
C
4
1.4 30 260
TOTAL HC GAS 8,2 190 lS00
PHENOL 1.0 180
CRESOLS 1.3 240
C
8
-260'C PHENOLICS 1.8 330
BTX D,S 90
TOTAL CS-260'C 7,9 1440
260'C - 340'C 2,1 380
340'C - S30C 3,3 600
> 530C 2,3 420
TOTAL LIQUID 15,6 ~ 4 5 250 2840
BBLS)
(l) CH
4
FORMED DIRECTLY.
(2) TOTAL CH
4
AFTER MFJHANAIION.
Fig. 10
they are so made in South Africa and perhaps will be here. If
coal hydrogenation or hydrocarbonization ever comes about in a
large way, there will be large quantities of paraffm gases as
by-products. This is shown for hydrocarbonization in Figure
10. Yields are small, and operation of a plant just to make
paraffin gases for feedstocks is improbable. The C2- C4 gaseous
products are excellent cracking stocks for olefin production.
However, the liquid fractions are aromatic. They contain too
little hydrogen to be attractive cracking stocks and are better
traded off for naphtha from the petroleum pool.
Figures 11 and 12 illustrate that the amount of coal which
might be required for petrochemicals is not overwhelming in
the light of current production of about 700 million tons a
year. (The 3 billion plus tons it would take to supply even
the current U.S. total energy requirements is, however, stagger-
ing.) If we had all the technology developed reliably and were
willing to pay the tremendous capital and other costs, we
could conceivably replace the naphtha distilled from about
BENZENE
PHENOL
REFINED CRESYLICS
CREOSOTE
NAPHTHALENE
llO
32
32
20
60
3S0
60
120
30
120
U,S, 1974
11,000
3D "NATURAL"
2SOO SYNTHETI C
200
130
600
TOTAL U,S, FUEL/RAW MATERIAL REQUIREMENT
75 x 10
15
BTU ~ 3,04 BILLION TONS COAL/YEAR
TOTAL U. S, REQU IREf'lENT FOR PETRO-Cf-:EI'iI CALS
3 x 10
15
BTU ~ 120 MILLION TONS COAL/YEAR
OR ~ 500 MILLION BARRELS OIL/YEAR
OR -' 3 TRILLION CF NATURAL GAS/YEAR
Fig. 9
Aliphatics are more of a problem. In principle, they can be
made from syngas via the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis-indeed
*Serrurier, R. Preprints, Div. of Petrol. Chern., Arner. Chern. Soc. 21
(3),573-585 (1976).
FOR m GAS PRODUCTS
0,8 x 10
15
BTU ~ 33 MILLION TONS COAL/YEAR
OR ~ 150 MILLION BARRELS OIL/YEAR
OR ~ 800 BILLION CF NATURP,L GASIYEAR
Fig. 11
28 Davis
AMOUNTS OF RAW MATERIALS TO PRODUCE
EQUIVALENT OUTPUT
OF ETHYLENE PLANTS
(6 TONS/YEAR ETHYLENE)
CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
FRm1 -
I. NAPHTHA
REQUIRES 20 rmLiON TOi'JS NAPHTHA .., 80 MILLION TONS CRUDE
550 mLLI ON BARRELS CRUDE
I I, - FROM COAL VIA SYN 61\S
REQU I RES 40 fmLI ON TOtJS MF g 50 imLi ON TONS/YEAR AS I NED
I I I. - FROM BIor1ASS ill SACCHARIDE FERi1EliTATiON
REQUIRES v 40 i'1ILLIOIl TONS STARCH .v 8 ACRES
Fig. 12
550 million barrels/year of oil with about 50 million tons of
coal. This might or might not be ahappier solution than about
8million acres devoted to growing appropriate biomass (Figure
12).
Since I have no clear idea of how we would obtain the
product distribution we want from either the coal or the bio-
mass option, I wind up with a fervent prayer that we can get
the oil and gas feedstocks we need for many years-far into the
future. But against the time when we can't, we should be
working hard on the other options.
COAL
J. R. Dosher, President of the Pace Company and Consulting
Engineers, Houston, is concerned with the technology of
feedstocks, particularly coal and shale oil.
Dosher 29
J. R. DOSHER
As far as the sources of chemicals from coal are concerned,
I1llook at them as three basic sources. One source would be
by-products from energy operations. There would be basically
a Lurgi type or some other type of gasification process by
which in making the gas one ends with chemical concen-
trates. The second source is the indirect processing ofcoal-
derived liquids. Liquids produced from coal and even, as far
as that's concerned, from shale oil will in effect go into the
same transportation network and be processed in the same
infrastructure that is already set up to process crude
petroleum. I don't think that chemical plants will be built out
at the sites of the coal liquefaction or coal shale or shale oil
plants. The infrastructure is already in place in the refining
centers and the petrochemical centers. The liquids will be
sent there. It will be difficult to distinguish whether liquids
going into these plants were derived from coal liquids, crude
petroleum, shale oil, or whatever. The third major source of
chemicals from coal would be the direct production ofchemi-
cals from coal-derived synthesis gas.
Neither of the first two sources will be used purely to pro-
vide chemical raw material. So in looking at them we must
first look at the energy picture and then draw some conclu-
sions as to whether coal gasification and coal liquefaction
will occur and if so how they will affect the chemical industry.
Table I gives the relative order-of-magnitude cost for various
sources of energy. We are dealing here with plants that have
never been built, with raw materials like coal and shale that
have wide ranges of composition, location, and so forth. The
numbers are adequate for illustrative purposes, to put the
various sources of energy in perspective, and that's all I can
afford them to be. .
The top number that we will base everything else against
is foreign crude oil, laden. This is the market price by which
the price of energy is determined in the world today. Intra-
state natural gas currently sells below it, because we have
somewhat of an oversupply of gas in the State of Texas.
In considering nuclear-based electrical power we in effect
back calculated the price of crude. The delivery price of elec-
tricity would be equivalent to that of electricity derived from
nuclear power; it is one of the very cheapest sources in the
total energy picture.
Coal, that is coal at the mine mouth, could considerably
vary the cost of electricity to the consumer, depending on
where the coal is.
TABLE 1. RELATIVE UNITED STATES ENERGY COSTS
FOREIGN CRUDE
INTRASTATE NATURAL GAS
NUCLEAR BASED ELECTRICAL
COAL
SYNCRUDE FROM COAL
COAL SNG - LOW BTU
COAL SNG - HIGH BTU
SYNCRUDE FROM SHALE
COST PER
MILLION BTU'S
$2.50 - 2.70
1.90 - 2.20
0.80 - 1.50
0.75 - 1.50
4.50 - 5.50
1.70 - 4.00
4.25 - 5.25
2.80 - 5.00
C.O.E.
PER BARREL
$14.00 - 15.00
10.60 - 12.30
4.50 - 8.40
4.20 - 8.40
25.00 - 30.80
9.50 - 22.50
24.00 - 29.50
16.75 - 28.00
30 Dosher CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
Synthetic crude from coal is quite a bit more expensive than
crude. Low-B.t.u. synthetic natural gas (SNG) is dependent on
how big a plant can be built and on other factors that can vary
over quite a wide range, but we think that in certain instances
it can be very competitive with crude. High-B.t.u. gas is
roughly double synthetic crude from shale oil. The economics
we have here is for what we would call a truly synthetic crude
suitable for feeding into refineries. I am in general agreement
with the other speakers that all this is very close to speculative
economics, as none of these numbers have been proved
against the price of foreign crude oil. Table 2 shows the
capital cost of some of the major synthetic processes. It must
be emphasized that the capital cost of most of these processes
is very, very large and that before people will make the invest-
ments required, the regulatory situation must be considerably
less risky then it is today.
Summarizing the economics of synthetic fuels at this point,
with the possible exception oflow-B.t.u. gas and shale oil, it
will take roughly a doubling of crude oil prices in real terms to
justify synthetic fuel. All the numbers shown are 1977 eco-
nomics. So the real dollar price must roughly double to make
some of these gasification, coal liquefaction plants economical.
Now we are faced with the question of whether the process
will increase by this amount and if so when? In Figure 1, I
tried to predict when world production will be limited by the
reserves. The assumptions that have been made are fairly
simple; I really cannot say that they have any scientific basis.
We have assumed that through 1990 the rate of reserve addi-
tion on a freeworld basis will stay the same as existed from
1970 to 75. And then in each succeeding five-year period
after 1990 the reserve addition rate will fall by 5 percent.
TABLE 2. SYNTHETIC FUELS
MILLION
PROCESS DOLLARS
SYNCRUDE FROM SHALE 500 - 700
COAL LIQUEFACTION 1100 - 1300
SNG - LURGI PROCESS 800 - 1000
(HIGH BTU)
SNG - LOW BTU 125 - 175
BASIS: 40,000 BPD
COE CAPACITY
What we come up with, due to a lack of development of alter-
native energy resources inside the U.S. and due to a lesser
degree to the economies of Europe and other places, is that
crude petroleum demand in the free world will continue to
increase right through 1990. The line up to 1990 is based
upon a detailed study of world energy balances; then we just
extrapolated it beyond that. I think you have to preface
these comments on oil demand by saying that they will
obtain short of a worldwide depression. I agree with earlier
speakers that this very situation of increasing demand for
crude oil could very well lead to a worldwide depression with
the huge balance-of-trade problems and the banking problems,
the debts, and all that goes with them.
But if you assume that one way or another the world will
hang together, then at roughly the year 2025 the annual
production multiplied by 10 will cross the reserve curve; that's
the point where the reserve production ratio equals 10, which
800
750
700
650
600
..J
<5
550
~
::::l 500
az:
(,)
en
450
..J
W
400
a:
a:
~ 350
Z
Q
300
..J
..J
ai 250
200
202612027""
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2070
Fig. 1. Free-world crude oil reserves and production.
COAL Dosher 31
TABLE 3. CHEMICAL BY-PRODUCTS OF COAL GASIFICATION
AROMATICS
ANTHRACENES
NAPHTHALENES
SOLVENT NAPHTHAS
TARS
BENZENE
TOWENE
XYLENES
PHENOL
PYRIDINES
SULFUR
AMMONIA
as a source of chemical raw materials, therefore, we think
there will be a limited number of coal gasification plants in
operation by 1990 and probably a significant number by
1995 and that by-product chemicals will be becoming available
from these operations. And this basically repeats what one of
the earlier speakers said: the types of chemicals (Table 3) that
do come out of a coal gasification plant are essentially a full
range of aromatics, and you also get sulfur and ammonia.
Table 4 gives some relative absolute yields for Lurgi gasifi-
cation from two different types of coal. Obviously the source
of coal can have a big effect on sulfur, lesser effect but still
fairly big on the various aromatics. This would be for a 200
million cubic feet/day plant based on the Lurgi process. Table
5 shows the projected demand for benzene in 1990 compared
with 1977 projections of what we expect will be consumed
this year. It also shows the benzene by source.
The coal-based plants today almost entirely result from
coking operations. By 1990 the additional amount that
comes from coal will be what we expect to come from three
200-million-cubic-feet-a-day Lurgi plants in operation. By
1990 it will not have a big impact on the benzene supply; it
still will be only 6 percent of total benzene and will not make
a big impact on benzene economics.
If you look at some of the others like naphthalene and
things of this kind, it cannot swamp the present demand.
is a rough measure of the point where reserves can no longer
support increased production rate.
Looking at this situation recalls an earlier question, how is
the balance of trade going to affect petrochemical feedstock?
I personally believe that the balance of trade will set the petro-
chemical feedstocks. In our country we at least have some
ability to absorb the huge deficits that are occurring. Some of
the less developed countries are just borrowing from banks
and cannot pay back.
When we started doing these types of forecasts, I talked
with people concerned and then tried to develop a rationale
about how the world will continue for as far in the future as
we are trying to look, and I couldn't really come up with an
explanation of how this type of situation could continue.
But thinking that I am an engineer and don't know
anything about economics, I hired some Ph.D. economists,
and they come up with the same answer. It is very difficult
to see how this situation can continue and the world economy
hang together.
One other problem that needs to be brought out is that for
this production to continue to increase at this rate over an
extended period of time a tremendous amount of the in-
creased production has to come from one place, Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis would have to be willing to sell what would
become a more and more expensive resource to people who
could not pay the bill. And the payments they did get, they
could not spend. I think therefore there is a big question as
to whether they would continue to put in the production
facilities to support the reserves even if they were there.
All of this leads me to the conclusion that sometime
between 1985 and 1995 we will have shortages of petroleum
on a worldwide basis. And at that point the price of energy
is going to have to start to move up in real terms, not inflated
terms, at a rate which will make the synthetic operations
economical. The index in constant '76 dollars shown in Figure
2 might continue on out to 1990 before it goes up, but I can
conceive of its starting to go up as early as 1985.
Looking at coal gasification and possibly liquefaction plants
200
160
8120
...
"
~
80
40
1990 1985 1980 1975
0 ....----------------.....-----
1970
Fig. 2. Index of United States energy prices.
(constant 1976 dollars)
32 Dosher CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
TABLE 4. CHEMICAL PRODUCTION FROM COAL
(MILLION POUNDS PER YEAR)
SULFUR
ANHYDROUS AMMONIA
CRESOLS
PHENOL
BENZENE
NAPHTHALENE
TOLUENE
XYLENffi
MONTANA
SUB-BITUMINOUS
125
100
35
30
25
20
15
5
ILUNOIS
BITUMINOUS
325
85
25
25
65
15
20
5
BASIS: 200 MILUON SCFD SNG
PRODUCTION, LURGI
PROCESS
TABLE 5. UNITED STATES BENZENE: PROJECTED SOURCES OF SUPPLY
SOURCE 19'1'1 1990
(MMGAL/YR) (%) (MMGALlYR) (%)
COAL BASED 68
1
4
200
1

2
6
PYROLYSIS GASOLINE 19'1 13 1.025 29
REFORMATE 952 61 98'1 28
TDA 335 21 1,1'1'1 33
IMPORTS 18 1 150 4
TOTAL 1,5'10 100 3,539 100
(1) INCLUDES COKING COAL PRODUCTION
(2) BASED ON 3 SNG PLANTS IN OPERATION
TABLE 6. COST OF AROMATICS FROM COAL
What will it take to recover aromatics from coal liquids
(Table 6)? A Lurgi gasification plant in effect creates a stream
of liquid naphtha that is a fairly high aromatic concentrate.
And what we did was to value the naphtha at 36 cents a
gallon, which is a fairly reasonable price under today's condi-
tions, and then determine the cost of recovering the aromatics,
and the cost would be in the neighborhood of 55 to 65 cents,
which is below current prices for aromatics.
For the coed operation, which is basically a plant designed
to maximize the production of liquids, we see that this liquid
had to be reformed to increase the aromatic yield and then be
PROCESS
BTX COSTS - CENTS PER
GALLON
BENZENE, VOL. % OF BTX
BASIS: 250 MILLION SCF PER
DAY SNG NAPHTHA
VALUED AT 3 6 ~ PER
GALLON
LURGI
55 - 65
60
COED
100 - 110
16
extracted, and with a return on investments and so forth the
aromatics are in the $1 to $1.10 range, which probably is still
comparable with benzene economics from new sources under
today's conditions.
Our conclusioR-with respect to by-products from the gasifI-
cation type of operation is that there will be some marginal
amount available by 1990. It will be economical to recover
this; it will, probably not before 1990, make a big impact on
the economics. As more of these plants come in in the '90's,
however, it could start to have an effect and maybe lower the
overall price a little bit.
As for looking at liquids derived from coal, as I said earlier
we think these liquids will just be mixed in with the normal
liquids going to a refinery or to an olefins complex, and so
the economics will be the same as for any other liquid. Of
course, these liquids, we think, will not be produced unless
the price of crude in real terms is 50 or 100 percent greater
than it is today.
Table 7 looks at a UOP "K" as a measure of aromaticity;
as UOP goes down, aromaticity goes up. The coal-liquid
naphtha, therefore, is actually a little better stock for cracking
in a pyrolysis operation then would be Saudi Arabia naphtha.
And at the price of crude at which this coal liquefaction
operation is economic, we are talking about prices of ethylene
COAL Dosher 33
TABLE 7. COMPARATIVE NAPHTHA PROPERTIES TABLE 10. AMMONIA
COAL
LIQUEFACTION
100/185 190/300 BOILING RANGE, of
UOP "K" 12.85 12.65
SAUDI LIGHT
220/285
12.09
FEEDSTOCKS
NATURAL GAS
NAPHTHA
MILLION
DOLLARS
60 - 70
65 - 75
TABLE 8. METHANOL COSTS-1977
that I would say in today's dollars, without adding further
inflation, would be in the neighborhood of 30 cents a pound.
Synthesis gas technology at a fairly high state of develop-
ment already exists for producing ammonia and methanol
from coal. The technology is being worked on extensively by
the oil and chemical companies for a number of other petro-
chemicals: ethylene glycol, acetic acid, acetaldehyde, ethanol,
ethylene, acetylene. All these have a fairly high chance of
being economical soon. You can make ethylene and acetylene;
the chemistry is theoretically there, but I think the chances
of their becoming economic are fairly low. Under current
conditions, with a return on investment and so forth for a
new grass roots plan using the type of raw material costs
shown in Table 1, methanol (Table 8) from natural gas pro-
duction costs in the neighborhood of 35 to 40 cents, from
naphtha 45 to 65 cents, and from coal 60 to 70 cents.
TABLE 11. METHANOL
naphtha for ammonia is not so favorable. With ammonia
primarily you are looking for hydrogen, and therefore the
CO-hydrogen ratio and so forth and the synthesis gas cost are
not so favorable for coal-derived synthesis gas as they would
be for naphtha-derived or gas-derived. The relative economics
on ammonia from coal as compared to ammonia from
petroleum and gas sources is not quite as good.
Comparing the capital cost on a 1977 Gulf Coast location,
including battery limits, off sites, and so forth, we get (Table
10) capital costs for coal-derived ammonia 3 to 4 times what
they would be for naphtha-derived material. And you get
roughly the same order-of-magnitude difference for methanol
(Table 11). In the light of this huge difference in capital, in
MILLION
DOLLARS
250 - 300
FEEDSTOCKS
BASIS: 1,500 TPD
CAPACITY
COAL SYN GAS
45 - 65
PRODUCTION COST
(CENTS PER GALLON)
35 - 40 NATURAL GAS
NAPHTHA
FEEDSTOCK
COAL 60 - 70
NATURAL GAS 80 90
BASIS: UNITED STATES GULF COAST
1500 - 2000 TONS PER DAY
CAPACITY
NAPHTHA
COAL SYN GAS
85 - 95
200 - 250
As natural gas becomes less available for chemicals, naphtha
will tend to set the economics, and from what we see right
now, coal is not completely out of the picture compared to
naphtha. Table 9 presents the same data on ammonia costs:
from natural gas, per ton, $115 to $125; from naphtha a
little more expensive. The relative economics of coal versus
NATURAL GAS
UNITED STATES GULF COAST
1500 - 2000 TONS PER DAY
CAPACITY
FEEDSTOCK
NAPHTHA
COAL
BASIS:
TABLE 9. AMMONIA COSTS-1977
PRODUCTION COST
(DOLLARS PER TON)
115 - 125
150 - 160
200 - 225
BASIS: 1,500 TPD
CAPACITY
the present regulatory environment, even at equivalent eco-
nomics, I think most people would choose to go with naphtha
or gas just because of the much greater risk from coal due to
the higher capital cost.
I think what we would say as far as ammonia and methanol
are concerned is that, whereas the economics is approaching
being competitive as long as the present regulatory environ-
ment exists, where the high risks are involved, and the huge
capital expenditures, we don't think anybody is going to
start one of these plants until the price of crude or gas is
increased enough for the economics to be very clearly in
favor of coal-derived materials.
I don't have any numbers on the relative economics of pro-
ducing some of the other petrochemicals from synthesis gas.
I know that a number of people are working on these pro-
cesses, and the information we have is that there is a great deal
34 Dosher CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
TABLE 12. PRIMARY SOURCES OF FEEDSTOCKS FOR
NEW PETROCHEMICAL FACILITIES
1950-1975 - NATURAL GAS &LPG
1975-1990- PETROLEUM
1990+ - COAL &SHALE
of promise that economical sources of some of your petro-
chemicals-ethanol and so forth-will result.
Considering all this and what we see in the energy picture
(Table 12), we think that you could say that the period from
1950 to 1975 was the natural gas and natural gas liquids age
as far as the petrochemical industry is concerned. In the
period from 1975 to 1990 we think the petrochemical feed-
stocks will come basically from petroleum, naphtha, gas oils,
whole-crude cracking, and so forth. For the period from
1990 and beyond we believe that we will have to go to coal
and shale oil; these will be the marginal sources of new petro-
chemical raw materials.
I feel very strongly that there will be major shortages of
chemical raw materials by as early as 1990. For these alter-
native resources that we are talking about-the shales, the
gasifications, and so forth-with the regulatory environment
a huge lead time is involved, and if people in chemical compa-
nies are going to protect their position, they will have to start
working on it right now.
One other comment I think should be made. A number of
people earlier were talking about the relatively low percentage
of total crude and total energy that goes into petrochemical
raw materials. I think the chemical industry would be making
a great mistake and would be very naive to assume that in a
TABLE 13. PRODUCTS FROM SYNTHESIS GAS
COMMERaALTECHNOLOGY
AMMONIA
METHANOL
DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGY
ETHYLENE GLYCOL
ACETIC ACID
ACETALDEHYDE
ETHANOL
ETHYLENE
ACETYLENE
period of severe shortages crude petroleum is going to be
preferentially routed to the petrochemical industry. Some
good arguments can be made for transportation fuels and
power generation-all these other things-as far as jobs and
value added and things of this kind are concerned. So I would
like to urge all you people in the chemical industry to get on
with it, or we are not going to have your feedstocks in another
10 to 15 years.
COAL Squires 35
Dr. A. M. Squires, Frank C. Vilbrandt Professor of Chemical
Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Uni-
versity, Blacksburg, has twenty-five patents aud numerous
publications in coal gasification, coal combustion, coallique-
faction, power systems, gas cleaning, and chemicals from coals.
He was the AIChE Institute Lecturer in 1977.
A. M. SQUIRES
As a reminder of where the world supplies of natural gas are
located, Table I shows, not surprisingly, that there is a lot of
gas in the Middle East. Iran is now producing natural gas at a
rate that is less than 5 percent of our rate here in the United
States. This certainly puts the Shah of Iran in a strong com-
petitive position in respect to methanol and ammonia being
shipped around the world in large tankers. Venezuela, for
example, could make methanol and ship it to the Gulf Coast
and charge $2/million B.t.u. for the methane feedstock into
that methanol plant and still compete with U.S. coal. Figure
1 shows economics that are years out of date, but they
still make the point. Similarly with ammonia. The cost of
shipping ammonia from Venezuela to the Gulf Coast is
somewhat greater than the cost of shipping methanol because
you need a refrigerated vessel. In that case the feedstock in
Venezuela could be plugged into the process at $1.50/million
B.t.u. and still compete with stateside coal feeding the
Kopper-Totsek gasification process.
What I think this emphasizes is that the situation for chemi-
cals from coal will really be no different from the ancient
TABLE 1
historic position of these chemicals. Coal chemicals were
always by-products, by-products primarily of carbonization
processes, coal distillation processes for making either town
gas or metallurgical cokes. And even ammonia and methanol
in the early days relied upon coke by-products of town gas
manufacture, which were gasified in blue water gas sets to
make the synthesis gas for the ammonia or the methanol.
Even petrochemicals, from a broad point of view, are by-
products of the development of the oil and gas industries
to supply these materials for fuel. We heard this morning
that the first petrochemical operation was a by-product of
the old Dubs cracker, I suppose as cracking got better and it
made more propylene. And I don't think that that situation
is really any different today. And I don't think that there is
really going to be any early change in this pattern. Mr. Dosher
pointed out that world oil production is going to top out. I
---.-
$25 \'ER ToN TO
Sl-\I'P Pl<oDlJCT H!.01l
LA, TO 0 S
..
S'TAN:D- OfF VALUE
OF NP<.T!JR,&..L- GAS
IN
30
METHANOL COST;
CE NTS PEf: GAuoN
Fig.!
15
T I I I I
a 0.5 1.0 I.S- :Z.O
FfE])STOGK COST', I; PfP.. MILLION :Btu.'L..
35'
II)'WO
2,800
21700
I, 'loo
qOO
500
IRAN
MU'j)KA131
SAllDl
1r<AQ.
KUWAIT'

..d:c..
'PRoVE..ll RESE.RVES OF NATUr<Al GM (i,."..2.)
f\ff<ICA S;OOO
EPST 3,500
EflC,T' 20 -00
();SQ. 17,900
Eul<.O?l: S, BOQ
U.s.t\. 7,70Q
REST' of N.AA. 2,200
C;OVTl+ AM, I, ,00
OCS-AtolIA \,000

36 Squires CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
would put topping out a little sooner than he would; I have
seen pretty persuasive information from petroleum geologists
that suggest it will top out sometime in the mid 1980's. But
whenever the world oil production tops out, can any of us be-
lieve that fuels for transport will top out at the same moment?
I have friends who just came back from their second trip to
Turkey; their fIrst trip was three years back. They say the
change in that country in those three years is just incredible.
They are changing themselves as fast as they can into our
image. The growth in motor cars, the growth in highways are
phenomenal. And Turkey of course is a country with a far
lower national product per capita than ours. They are really
almost emerging from the backward-nation type of life.
I was delighted to see the curves from Mr. Higgins this
morning showing motor fuels topping out in the United
States, but they are certainly not going to top out on the
world scene. So as oil tops out and starts to decline and
motor transport fuels continue to grow, we are going to see,
I think, an astonishingly fast drying up of the world supply
of fuel oil. So I would suggest that Dr. Buck is asking for a
double whammy if he changes from gas as a fuel for his
energy needs in the chemical industry today to heavy oils.
I think those heavy oils will vanish very rapidly indeed, and
then of course he will have to do what he probably should
have done in the fIrst place-try to make arrangements to
use coal for this purpose.
I see coming very quickly, certainly inside of 15 years, a
rapid shift to coal for many, many fuel purposes. So I
ask myself where will chemicals come into this picture?
Before I go on to elaborate that point let me just restate
my belief that chemical feedstocks from petroleum will be
with us for a very long time, dominating the scene.
Aminute ago I said I believe that fuel oils will vanish from
the market very rapidly as motor fuels continue to grow.
What this means is of course that the growth in motor fuels
will be supplied by cracking plants rather than by new dis-
coveries of oil or new production of oil. We will simply be
getting the motor spirits from roughly the top half of the
barrel. So as the refIner continues to refIne more and more
oil, he gets even larger throughputs, well past the time when
the world oil production tops out, and with these enormous
throughputs through the refInery he can of course reach in
and pluck out a petrochemical at a cost that might be very
difficult indeed to match with coal or one of the other new
raw materials.
I have to say that I am generally pessimistic about a major
opportunity for coal or for any of the things that we are
talking about other than petroleum. Nevertheless we should
be alert for the opportunities.
Figure 2 is a fairly obvious list of what people might do to
coal. There are almost surely some Ol;nissions. People of
course can take out mineral matter; people can dry the coal,
as Hugh Davis pointed out; it may need to be passivated if it
is Western coal in order to prevent it from burning during
shipping. There are various ways (probably more should be
listed than are) for desulfurizing the coal, and then we get
into ideas for carbonizing the coal. I am thinking of the
Occidental approach when I write flash carbonization. These
Mechanical par_tlon of mineral matteT
Drying
Drying plus pasBivation to prevent spontaneous combustion
OX)'desulfurustion
"Chemicalor deaulfurization
Flash carbonization
Supercr1ticsl extraction (with hrdrogen present?)
Flash hydrogenation
coal
Solvent refined coal
Partial gasification to fuel gas plus char
Complete gasification
Fig. 2. Methods of treating coal.
are all things that might be done. If we are right that world
fuel oil supplies are going to contract sharply, there are going
to be very large shipments of our Western coal, perhaps a
billion tons a year. These are the coals of which we can
readily expand the production, and if we ship out of the
country or even ship from the West to the East on that kind
of a scale, why not get ourselves some goodies with a nice
processing plant at the mines for instance? By the way, the
Danes are already pointing to coal as an item of world com-
merce. And for the Danish trade in coal there are a number
of suppliers allover the world competing with each other on
price. The Danes tell me they buy coal at typically about
% of the world price of oil. And Denmark is probably well
ahead of the world; setting an example not only for Europe
but also for us in converting from oil to coal in their boilers.
A large utility as a rule relies on the utility boiler for elec-
tricity plus district heat. Large ones are being converted from
oil to coal at a cost of about $100 a kilowatt.
To get back to ways of treating coal (Figure 2) I am not
going to say much about supercritical gas extraction. We do
not know a great deal about it in this country. It is clear that
the National Coal Board has accumulated a very large body of
information and data, but very little of it has been published
either by them or by anybody else. One thing I'm very
curious about is is the residue reaction and will it combust
spontaneously or must I build into the supercritical gas extrac-
tion operation some step for passivating that residue so that
it may be shipped in regular ships around the world without
catching on fIre halfway across the ocean?
Another opportunity is flash hydrogenation. Figure 3 is
based on some data taken fairly early on Illinois No.6 coal
at City College when I was still there, showing that if one
makes about 1 percent of the country's natural gas in this way,
essentially reacting coal with hydrogen to make methane, one
AT" 700'C, /00 An;" .3.0 SeCONDS
ILLINOIS NO. Ie; COAL. (10:-; ASH)
'Y. CONveRSION "FOR. OF
OF CARSON PROPORrtON.IIL 'ftet.l>-S Iq7) U.S.llIMIIJ)
-_._---._--'
CIlt 1'1- 0.22 TRtLLIO"l FTYYR Ni%
(10110 FT""I'DA'!)
7 TO ETMYLENE., "'f!,%
""1.4 MI/..LION TOIIs/l'R,
C.. 10 2.1 MILLION 7OtlS/YR. ....60%
(j:HI..",,,., &1 NtEN')
CoKe. ,q 1'7 MILLIOtl 1OIls;YR.
Fig. 3
COAL Squires 37
1. Saturates
2. Aromatics
Oil fractions:
6. Methanol (absolute)
7. Chloroform with 1% ~ t h a n o l
8. Tetrahydrofuran
9. Pyridine
5. Diethyl ether with 3% ethanol
Fig. 5
2.. Hexanes with 15% benzene
3. Chloroform
1. Hexanes (mixed isomers)
{to Chloroform with lOX diethyl ether
Farcasiu's solvents:
oils, down through some asphaltenes, which are soluble in
benzene but not in pyridine, and then what the Mobil crowd
under Whitehurst call asphaltols, which are soluble in
pyridine but not in benzene.
And I've tried to represent (Figure 4) an increasing com-
plexity of the molecules (they tend to get bigger as you
go down the column) and increasing chemical complexities
too. The point is that the coal, with the rupture of a
relatively few scissile bonds, which have broken very quickly
indeed, just in seconds, has fallen apart into material with a
molecular weight typically of 500 or 600, with some coals
perhaps as high as 900. Coals differ very markedly in this;
some very high-rank Cretaceous coals from Alberta will have a
molecular weight on the average for these species as low as
250 or 300-remarkably low molecular weight for these
prompt products of coal liquefaction.
Figure 4 is a chemical brew with a tremendous number of
reactivities, particularly down toward the bottom of the col-
umn. In the presence of a good donor solvent the mate-
rial is carried on up toward product oil by what we might
call progressive reactions. But there are regressive reactions
that want to ring up the material, polymerize it, turn it
into higher-molecular-weight material, turn it into very
heavy tars or turn it into a semicoke. The coal liquefaction
process is a competition between those two types of reactions.
To tell a little something about how Mobil and the team
there have sorted some of this out, Malvena Farcasiu (Figure
5) sequentially extracts material put on silica gel in a chroma-
3. Polar aromatics; opo-basic nitrogen-, oxygen-,
and sulfur-heterocyclis
tographic procedure, She sequentially extracts with these nLrle
solvents to get fractions of increasing chemical complexity,
and very briefly her first three fractions are characterized
as shown in Figure 6. What we might all asphaltenes are
characterized in Figure 7. Finally, the more complex frac-
tions are getting a great deal of phenolic functionalities
(Figure 8). When you get around 7, 8, and 9, you even get
amphoteric species, moieties having both acidic and basic
properties.
What we are looking at in Figure 9 are the domains in this
macromolecule; I hate to call it a polymer because it cer-
gets very interesting amounts of ethane and very interesting
amounts of chemical benzene, of course along with a very
large amount of coke, which by the way contains essentially
no organic sulfur if one has selected coal that can be rid of
pyritic sulfur.
To introduce some of the major research questions on coal,
I'd like to quote just the opening sentence of an article by
Malvena Farcasiu appearing in the January 1977 issue of Fuel.
She is with the Duane Whitehurst team looking at coal
liquids at Mobil Research in Princeton. Malvena writes,
"There exists surprising lack of fundamental understanding
of the chemical structure of coal." This is very true; we have
been learning a great deal just in recent years. The reason
for this state of affairs seems to be that the classical work on
coal chemistry concentrated upon products derived from slow
and often rather drastic treatments of coal. The material had
been overcooked, it had been highly aromatized, highly ringed
up into polynuclear aromatics. I certainly do not want to
throw any brick bats at the work of the coal chemists. This
was a small lonely community of people for many years, with
very, very little outside interest in their work and very, very
inadequate support. The classic coal chemists, however, tend
to look at tar and say, "Okay, that represents the parent
material, coa1." We are now learning that this is not so,
because much more attention is now being paid to the early
products of the reaction of coal before it has time to
overcook.
I would like just to mention Tracy Ettinger and his team at
FMC in the mid '60s, who did some work; Richard Neville of
Exxon, a pioneer; Alan Sass and his group at Occidental,
working with flash carbonization; the University of Utah
people; the team now headed by Bob Graff at City College in
New York; and of course Duane Whitehurst and his group.
The picture that has emerged for donor solvent coallique-
faction I have tried to represent in Figure 4. There are some
very rapid reactions when coal is brought to roughly 400
0
to
450C in the presence of a donor solvent or even just in the
presence of almost any aromatic oil, an anthracene oil with
even no real donor hydrogen capability. The coal falls
apart into a hierarchy of chemical species ranging from very
small amount of nonpolar hydrocarbons, which we can call
Fig. 4. Coal liquefaction. Fig. 6
38 Squires
Asphaltene fractions:
3. Polar aromatics
4. Simple phenols
5. Basic nitrogen heterocyclics
Fig. 7
Asphaltol fractions:
5. Basic nitrogen heterocyclics
6. Highly-functional molecules, greater than
10% heteroatoms
7. Polyphenols
8. Increasing oxygen content and
increasing basicity of nitrogen
9. Like 8, only more so
10. Non-eluted, unknown materials
Fig. 8
Oil fractions
DECREASING
Asphaltene fractions
AROMATICITY
Asphaltol fractions
Note: Products (even at early times) are
more aromatic than the initial coal.
Fig. 9
tainly has no monomeric unit. 111 call it a
with d6mams tllalare hela logeThetoy lhese fragIle SCIssue
bonds. Some very interesting things are coming from this
work. Paradoxically, more complex fractions are less aro-
matic, and a very pretty thing that comes out of the work
is that even at early times the fragments are more aromatic
than the initial coal, displaying the shift of hydroaromatic
hydrogen over onto the chain-stopping type of chemistries
as the thing unzips.
CANDIDATE SCISSILE BOND IN
DONOR SOLVENT LIQUEFACTION:
"Reaction Il':
Rupture of hydrogen bridge,
e.g. between phenolic H and phenolic 0 or pyridinic N,
occurring between about 250
0
and 330C.
Fig. to
CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATlVES
CANDIDATE SCISSILE BOND IN
DONOR SOLVENT LIQUEFACTION:
"Reaction 11
11
:
Splitting of open ether bond,
RIOR
Z
= RI O' + . R
Z

followed by hydrogen transfer to give RIOH + HR

Z
'
occurring between about 340
0
and 400C.
Fig. 11
CANDIDATE SCISSILE BOND IN
DONOR SOLVENT LIQUEFACTION:
"Reaction 111":
Splitting of benzyl-benzyl carbon bond,
followed by hydrogen transfer,
occurring beyond about 400
0
C.
Fig. 12
There has been a lot of discussion of these scissile bonds in
the past 15 months, and nearly everyone agrees upon what
I show in these Figures (10 to 12): first breaking hydrogen
bridges, then splitting open ether bonds at a somewhat higher
temperature, and then finally starting to break structures
at temperatures beyond about 400 degrees, and it is the
rupture of this type of structure that begins to lead to gas
formation and a rapidly increased regressive reaction.
Let me now say a few words about the flash hydrogenation
work mentioned earlier. A very tiny coal sample is put on
the interior of a stainless steel pipe, which is then heated
electrically, and the products are looked at by gas chromatog-
raphy or by mass spectroscopy. The point is that one can
control in this experiment the residence time of both the coal
and the vapor product. When one turns the electric current
off, the coal is air cooled very quickly. And also the hy-
drogen flow and the length of this zone govern the vapor
product residence time. At 6/10 of a second one gets
data like Figure 13, showing that beyond about 800 degrees
ILLINOIS NO.6 COAL
IlOO'c
0.6 SEC. VAPOR RESIOENCE TIME
10 SEC. CONTACT TIME
6&OC/SEC. HEATING RATE
100 I

PlISSIJRE(A1U)
Fig. 13
COAL
Squires 39
Fig. IS
Pressure also has a very interesting role to play. At very
low pressure one gets very large yields of liquid, but these
are heavy liquids and tend to be highly aromatized; lots of
regressive reaction has a1ready occurred. You get a lot of
liquid at low pressure, atmospheric pressure, because the
material is ejected from the interior of the coal sample just by
the volume flow of this large amount of vapor that evolves.
But as that flow decreases because of pressure, then the total
liquid yield comes down very strikingly to a minimum and
begins to go up again. The dotted line is conjectural. The
City College data have not gone beyond 100 atmospheres.
If we are talking about research needs, very little work has
been done on modeling the mass effects-the mass flow effects
and the mass transfer effects-of coa1 carbonization or of coal
hydropyrolysis of this type, and this is very clearly a job that
someone needs to do. Aerospace scientists using a computer
program for the reentry shield of a space vehicle have made a
first stab at this.
If we go on up in vapor residence time, and now this is data
for 800C, then the light oils are converted half to BTX and
half to methane. But there is a very interesting conjecture that
can be made on the basis of the City College data, and this
is a1so I think implicit in some of the data from other groups
that have carried this work further, notably I think the data
from Rocketdyne. It does appear that the mechanism of the
reaction in flash hydrogenation is very similar to that in Figure
4-an a1most instant unzipping of the macromolecule by the
rupture of the scissile bonds undoubtedly forming fragments
of molecular weight in roughly the range 300 to 900, followed
then by hydrocracking of this vapor. There is an old saying
in the petroleum industry going right back to Dubs cracker
days: Carbon begets carbon. If you can get that vapor away
from the carbon and not convert any more of the carbon to
methane, keep the conversion to methane small, get a high
conversion to liquids, and hydrocrack those liquids to light
species, on paper it looks as though one could put together a
process where one makes no net methane. Now I know the
gas industry will not love me for saying this, but it would
be certainly very nice to be able to put coal into a magic black
box and get out a low-sulfur char and benzene and not add
anything; that is, not have any net hydrogen consumption, not
have to gasify any of that char with steam and oxygen. The
hydrogen of course would come from steam methane
reforming.
I am horrified at the capita1 costs of some of these coa1
conversion technologies mentioned by other speakers. I think
we need to get just as clever as we can to find ways to take
the capita1 cost down. Steam oxygen gasification of char is
not a cheap process to build; steam methane is. The idea
therefore would be to use steam methane here and just use
that hydrogen to convert part of the coal to benzene.
If we are to do anything like this, use any unit operation
involving flash hydrogenation, we pose to the chemical engi-
neer the need for a reactor design that is probably just as diffi-
cult as anything I can think of. If you have coal throughputs
on a scale of ten thousand tons a day and need a solid
residence time of a few seconds, then you of course have a
reaction space of only a few cubic feet, and this takes some
doing. There is still a lot for the chemical engineer to do to
improve or develop new unit operations involving the handling
of solids. We still have much to learn about fluidized beds,
and I would implore the continuation of the trend toward
larger scale experimentation in universities, notably at
Oregon State, City College, Bradford and Aston Universities in
England.
Many types of coal processing are going to need dust-
collecting equipment, and research in this area certainly needs
expanding. This is phenomenologica1 research; it is difficult
research; it will not be popular with the Ph.D. students, who
would rather sit on their tails and massage a computer pro-
gram. But we need more of it, and I would urge this upon our
funding agencies. I think the rewards will be great.
We still, as I indicated, know very little about the details of
coal chemistry. Coals differ greatly from one another. We
1-
B5
.
TOTAL
LIQUIDS
I I
75 BO
WEIGHT % C(DMMF)
Fig. 14
e-e---e_e_ -
/' .
./
",. -
BTX
l............. POTENTiAl
-- ..-
15 ; ...>......:
10 c..;---.----.......... 0
.c
".
Um
2.
'0
..
BOOI-

750-
CARBON
CONVERSION 20
(%1
TEMPERATURE
OF
MAXIMUM
CARBON
CONVERSION
TOBTX (%)
10
one is making nothing but BTX, ethane, methane, and char.
The maximum BTX production here is about 800C. The
coa1 used was an Illinois coa1.
There are some eight or nine additional coa1s; actua1ly there
are two coals here, two lignites represented by this one point,
and nine coals now have been characterized at 6/
10
of a
second. Figure 14 is the maximum carbon conversion to BTX;
Figure 15 is rather interesting, a correlation showing that the
direct production of BTX at 6110 of a second varies with
rank according to the bottom curve. The total liquids vary
according to the top curve. If other coa1s behave the way
lllinois coal behaved, with an increase in vapor residence
time of only 6110 of a second (10 seconds on the coa1, 6/
10
of a second on the vapor), then we should expect to get this
much BTX in this rank range, and that's beginning to look
quite interesting.
40 Squires CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
have been looking at metals in coal liquids-actually organi-
cally bound metals in chromatograph fractions of coal liquids.
I am talking about material that has gone into a 50 Angstrom
prove in viobeads and come out again. And this mate-
rial has metals in it, and these metals from five different coals
are strikingly different from one coal to another.
All of this leads me to my last point. We need far more ana-
lytical clout in coal science. There have been far too many
papers on coal where results are reported for one coal. One
would like to have seen those analyses duplicated on at least
three or four more coals, preferably from different provinces,
and it may well be that for coal science the large automated
analytical setup combining a number of analytical techniques
that tie into a computer is the equivalent of the aerospace en-
gineer's wind tunnel or the nuclear physicist's particle
accelerator.
COAL Bowman
DISCUSSORS
41
N. E. Jentz, Chief Process Engineer at the Ralph M. Parsons
Company in Pasadena, California, directs process design for
coal conversion and has many publications in the field.
Dr. W. H. Bowman, III, Senior Consulting Engineer at Amoco
Chemicals Corporation, Naperville, Illinois, is involved with
technological forecasting and planning.
H. F. Feldmann is the Manager of the Coal Conversion Pro-
gram Office of Battelle-Columbus Laboratories, where he is
responsible for research programs to develop technology for
the economic conversion of coal to cleaner and more conveni-
ent energy forms. Earlier he was with the Bureau of Mines.
w. H. BOWMAN, III
From our own investigations and analysis, I would certainly
like to underscore some of the comments made earlier. The
immediate future of coal-derived chemicals is certainly not
going to be as a chemical operation; it is going to be an adjunct
of a fuel operation. We simply do not have the kind of tech-
nology required today for a stand-alone coal-based chemical
operation. It costs money. It costs so much capital that no-
body in his right mind would invest in it. I do not fmd this at
all unusual. If we look at our current petrochemical business,
we see that it exists only because there is a large liquid-
petroleum-based fuel industry. If any of you have looked at
the recurring concept of the chemical refmery, I think you'll
agree that we always end with, "Gee, if we only produced a
couple of tens of billion pounds a year of ethylene, why
maybe we could make a go of it, but we're certainly not going
to do it at our current market size." And I do not really ex-
pect it to come with coal either.
I think also it is true, as Mr. Dosher said, that if we do get
into a drastic period of shortage in crude, the petrochemical
industry, as small as it may be in terms of fuel consumption, is
not going to be allowed to flourish.
There are some very good examples, if you look back a few
years, of several companies that were wise enough to antici-
pate the shortage of natural gas and make arrangements for
getting it outside the normal routes. But political pressure
caused them to shut down. Even though they had gas to run
during the winter, they were not able to use it. They used
very legitimate routes; some of them drilled small wells. It
would have been very expensive gas but it could have kept
them going. But the public is very demanding and quite insis-
tent that nobody is going to flourish if the whole group does
not. So I think we must dismiss the idea that we are going to
be able to get along because we are small in terms of the total
fuel area.
What to do about this? One course is that we in the chemi-
cal industry can to some extent develop close relations with
fuel or energy sources. Each will have to look at his own posi-
tion and decide whether it is desirable to tie up with a power
company or a gas company, for example, that might be going
into development and to piggyback on their efforts and extract
a part of their product for his own use. We are beginning to
see joint ventures between chemical and petroleum companies,
and it is quite possible that these may expand.
Second, we can cut out roughly half of our consumption of
crude. We have to go to other than crude- or natural-gas-
based sources of heat. It is very obvious that even petroleum
companies are now looking at using coal as a basis of heat in
their refmeries. Two years ago I think anybody would have
thought I had lost my mind for saying such a thing. But it has
to come. I believe that these steps will be recognized and re-
42 Feldmann CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
spected and that we will get some credit for it over a long
period of time. It will be tough for a while; coal is a nasty
material to burn.
Another area where we desperately need research is coal
chemistry. Current work is, I think, pretty bad. Much research
has not been possible in the past; the interesting things in coal
chemistry are difficult to analyze. Rocket Dyne workers, for
example, argue that the interesting things happen probably in
about 10 milliseconds. We will have a very, very difficult time
analyzing these very short lived products and finding out what
they are. They also happen under very difficult conditions to
handle when you are working at temperatures of 2000F. and
pressures of at least 100 atmospheres, and I suspect much
more interesting things may happen up in the 200- and 300-
atmosphere region. The analytical difficulties are going to be
extraordinary.
And another area that has been grossly neglected in the re-
search area is modeling. An examination of the types of re-
search that are going on today shows very intensive studies in
very small areas of coal chemistry. We need people that can
examine the whole phenomenon of heating the coal particles,
the chemical reactions that take place, the transport of the
products away from the coal particle, and whatever goes on
after that, which may be the easy part of it. There are people
that have talked about making a stab at it. So far either the
job has been extremely difficult and I think this is true, or
they have been unable to achieve enough funding. But for
whatever reasons, there is very little work on this at the pres-
ent time. It needs doing. The little stabs at it suggest that
very important results could come out of it.
H. F. FELDMANN
The production costs of coal (and I underline the word cost
here) as opposed to prices is much greater than the production
cost of Mideast oil. The plant investment costs are much
greater for coal than they are for petroleum, they are greater
for petroleum than they are for naphtha, and they are greater
for naphtha than they are for natural gas. These facts mean in-
creased risks of competition, especially because there is much
less flexibility for chemicals from coal to meet the price com-
petition. The price of these chemicals is much, much closer to
the cost than it would be for the same thing prepared from oil.
What does one do about this? Reduce investment cost through
Rand D-this is a motherhood type of thing of course. Utilize
coal for heat to increase the output of products of plants uti-
lizing natural gas and petroleum, and everybody brought this
point up. And utilizing the by-products of synthetic fuel plants
is another obvious way to supplement declining chemical feed-
stocks. Another possibility is to coal-produce syngas or distil-
lates in synthetic fuel plants and sell these across the fence to
chemical plants.
When one talks about joint ventures between an energy com-
pany and a chemical company, as one of the speakers did, the
energy that seems to have the most promise is SNG, and the
reason is that compared, for example, to a coal liquefaction
plant, SNG can make a utility type of fuel, a heavy SRC type
of product. But then you are faced with looking at what is the
competitiveness of this product versus, say, electricity gener-
ated from coal using conventional stack gas scrubbing, and
here the economics seems to be loaded against using an SRC
product in a conventional power plant. You start to go to-
ward the distillate range, producing more distillate type of ma-
terials. But if you are producing more distillate materials, then
you run into problems of competition with the Mideast
petroleum.
One of the economic advantages for integrating an SNG with
a chemical plant is the much longer depreciation time. First of
all, the investment in these plants will be very high; so the
longer the depreciation time one can reasonably take, the bet-
ter off one is going to be. One has a depreciation time of 20
to 30 years for a utility type of operation, which is advanta-
geous. One has the economy of scale. The utility rate of re-
turn on a portion of the investment is also attractive. In other
words, if you look at one of these joint venture plants, what
you will really have is a very expensive front end of the plant,
the part of the plant that handles the solid, the coal crushing,
the gasification equipment, and if one can produce mainly a
utility type of fuel, then one can take longer depreciation and
lower rates of return.
Another advantage of course is that there are a lot of off-site
facilities with such plants, and these can be shared between the
chemical venture and the SNG plant. Then, too, the chemical
process can still deal with a light feedstock. I am not talking
about using the SNG produced to feed the chemical fuel plant.
There is also the availability of cheap by-products; for exam-
ple, there is sulfur, and in many cases, there is char that could
be used as a fuel to provide the heat for the chemical plant.
Another advantage that such an arrangement has is the ability
to adapt to the changing market conditions by changing the
product mix.
And then another logical question is what kind of SNG plant
would be best suited to SNG chemical-coal production? There
are three types of processes that are commercial: there are
Lurgi, Kopper-Totsek, Winkler; there are four or five second-
generation processes that are now being developed, and the
driving force behind these processes is both higher throughputs
through the gasifier, so that one may reduce the number of
gasifiers, and an increase in the amount of methane that is
formed directly, so that less methanation has to be carried out.
The other process could probably be called a third-generation
process, as this is a direct hydrogasification, where one uses
hydrogen to hydrogasify the coal and make a gas that consists
mainly of methane. The problem, as I see it, is that the plant
would produce either a synthesis gas or a hydrogen stream for
the chemical plant.
If one is going to sell the synthesis gas stream to a chemical
plant, then the Lurgi process is not as desirable because there
is a considerable amount of methane in the gas, and while that
is great for making SNG, it is not very desirable for synthesis
that will be used to make, for example, ammonia. The Kopper-
Totsek, on the other hand, is not too well suited for SNG types
of plants because it does not produce any methane directly.
All the second-generation processes have tried to produce
methane-rich gas and the syngas and the methane are copro-
duced in the same gasification system. So using that gas for
COAL Feldmann
43
AIR
COAL---""I
DIRECT
HYDROGASIFICATION
OXYGEN
ASH
OXYGEN
PLANT
NZ
HYDROCARBON LIQUID PRODUCTS
HZ FOR
HYDROGASIFICATION
WATER GAS SHIFT
METHANATION
SULFUR
RECOVERY
COZ-HZS
REMOVAL
Z FOR NH
3
SYNTHESIS
NH NH
SYNTriESIS 3
-
SULFUR
=
SNG!NH
3
VIA DIRECT HYDROGASIFICATION
Fig. 1
many synthesis operations is not desirable. At Battelle we are
developing a direct hydrogasification process that seems to
have a lot of application to this kind of thing.
Some of the features that I think make this kind of
plant desirable follow (Figure 1). First, as I mentioned, the
process is direct hydrogasification, coal fed with hydrogen.
The char is fed to a gasifier, in which the synthesis gas is pro-
duced. Unique to this process is that the synthesis gas is puri-
fied water gas, shifted from the CO
2
H
2
S removal to produce
a hydrogen stream. The hydrogen stream can be split. At this
point one can control the conversion in the hydrogasifier. If
enough syngas is produced to produce the hydrogen to hydro-
gasify the coal, the constraint here is that this gas be an accept-
able SNG. In other words, the gas must be at least 950 B.t.u.,
which means that the hydrogen conversion has to be high.
One cannot have excess hydrogen in the gas. The additional
hydrogen then would be fed in this case to an ammonia syn-
thesis plant. In this case the front end of the ammonia synthe-
sis plant could be eliminated because the gas purification can
be done in the SNG plant and just the hydrogen streams sold
to the ammonia producer. If one used conventional steam
oxygen gasification to produce the synthesis gas, he would
have a nitrogen by-product, and a nitrogen by-product can also
be used for ammonia synthesis.
This gives a considerable amount offlexibility in an integrated
operation between ammonia synthesis and SNG. Also hydro-
carbon liquids are produced by this process. But the key dif-
ference is that the gasification and hydrogasification are carried
out in separate vessels and that pure hydrogen or c1ose-to-pure
hydrogen is used for hydrogasification.
The advantages are that in direct hydrogasification only
hydrogen is an intermediate product. Other processes produce
a mixture of methane and syngas. The methanation require-
ments are very low on the SNG side, the oxygen requirements
are minimized, and the oxygen plant produces the needed
nitrogen.
In this type of system only the ammonia synthesis would
need to be financed as a chemical venture; utility fmancing can
be used for the gasification, the gas purification system, the
off sites, etc. The ammonia system in this case would be much
simpler because no reformer or gas purification would be
needed.
44 Jentz CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
While there would be a certain amount of risk in this, the
risk would certainly be low; for example, if the bottom fell
out of the ammonia prices, then that would be the loss, loss in
the ammonia synthesis part of the plant. The extra hydrogen
would then be used to gasify additional coal, and one would
have to increase the size of the methanation plant. I think this
is one special kind of system that seems to have certain advan-
tages for the production of both SNG and a petrochemical
feedstock, in this case hydrogen.
Recently during some work with catalyzed hydrogasification
of Eastern coals, out of a ton of illinois coal we got, on the
basis of one of the hydrogasifications runs, about 14 thousand
cubic feet of SNG, about 180 lb. of hydrocarbon liquids, and
about 0.24 ton of ammonia. Taking the hydrocarbon liquids
as about $2/million B.t.u., one gets $3.60 for the revenue on
the hydrocarbon liquids, the SNG was about $46 on the basis
of $3.50/million Rt.'!., and the ammonia at $100 a ton was
worth $24. So one can see that the ammonia by-product can
produce a significant revenue contribution to such an integrated
operation.
N.E.JENTZ
I agree with Mr. Dosher that if coal is to be required in a
volume position in 1990, the sense of urgency is going to have
to be built into it today. Since both the chemical and the
fuels industries are going to share in that demand, I think they
should also share in that encouragement.
I heard some comment earlier that suggested that the liquid
from both the shale oil and the coal liquefaction operations
could be handled by other refineries, petroleum refineries.
Anything I have seen so far has indicated-and this is based
upon the SRC technology, coed technology, and so on-that
these liquids are far different from anything the petroleum re-
fineries are capable of handling. So if this is the route by
which these liquids are going to find their way to market, the
petroleum business is going to have to get itself geared to ac-
cept these materials.
As for the character of the products, like naphtha distillates,
the data I have seen, again derived from the liquefaction of
coal, have indicated that this material formed directly out of
coal is highly aromatic in nature and retains the ring form after
relatively severe hydrogenation. This is not the kind of mate-
rial that I think you would desire for an ethylene-cracking
plant feedstock. The kind of material you are looking for is
something that comes out of the carbon monoxide hydrogen
synthesis route. This has a better chance of being the highly
desirable paraffmic type of material that would be an ideal
cracking-plant stock.
DISCUSSION
Sandy Quinn (DuPont): I would like to address my ques-
tion to Mr. Dosher.
The investments and product costs you gave for methanol,
ammonia and some of the low Btu gas and high Btu gas were
based on what kind of fmancing? More generally, what is the
effect of financing on the final product cost of these types of
ventures?
J. R. Dosher: All of the economics I gave were based upon
taking a 20 percent simple rate of return before taxes as about
the equivalent of 15 percent DCF. It is not based upon a util-
ity rate of return, which I do not think any chemical or oil
company is going to approach anyway.
John Crecca (Owens): This is a_general question, but we are
talking about 1990-1995. Does this country have the intra-
structure to support these coal operations? I am thinking of
transportation. Do you do it in Wyoming or Montana? Do
you bring it to Kansas City? And if you do do it out there,
what do you do with the state with 3 or 4 hundred thousand
population? Can they accept these plants?
J. R. Dosher: My feeling is that this is where the urgency
comes in. I think I would disagree with Dr. Squires about the
drying up of fuel oil demand. Everything that we see says the
infrastructure is not there. With all the delays we have had in
the development of alternate resources, fuel demands will in-
crease at a fairly rapid rate right through the early '90s. If we
start right now doing everything we can, we just might turn
around by 1995. We don't, I believe, have the infrastructure
to do almost any of it in sufficient quantities to make a dent
in what is already a damn serious trend.
COAL Squires
WORKSHOP
A. M. SQUIRES, CHAIRMAN
The workshop was divided into three groups, headed by A.M. Squires,
H. G. Davis, and J. R. Dosher, who summarized their groups' findings
and were followed by discussion from the floor. Where possible the
discussors are identified.
45
A. M. Squires: Waldo Leggett made a contribution by point-
ing out that there are really two scenarios for the future. One
says that all will be well. Scenario Two is that there is going to
be a series ofdisasters in the fairly near future. He pointed out
that some people seemed to be speaking according to Scenario
One. They apparently don't believe that we are facing a series
of disasters. My group, at least, settled fairly quickly that
Scenario Two is the interesting o n e ~ It is the one that requires
some deep thought ifwe are to recapture something of the kind
of robustness and flexibility of the economy that since the
Industrial Revolution, since the dawn of the Age of Coal in
the early 1700's, our Westem culture has enjoyed. Suddenly
we are off balance; I think we all sense this. How do we
recapture the security of the flexibility that we enjoyed up
until1973?
I propose that the discussions of this afternoon be made in
the context of Scenario Two, and that will certainly make for
more difficult questions.
There is a general feeling that coal substitution for the gas
and oil that are now being burned is a good idea. Where the
gas and oil of course is better than coal is as chemical feed-
stocks. And, of course, this substitution can be done in several
ways. One way is by direct combustion. I believe that fluid-
i z e d ~ b e d combustion is at the point of take-off. Uyou like, I
may speak longer to that point later on. The other possibility
is substitute fuels derived from coal which are not themselves
as good chemical feedstocks as gas and oil but that can be
burned. And, ofcourse, there is lowB. t.u. gas; we heard some-
thing about methyl fuel for gas turbines. There are solvent-
refmed coal and various other possibilities. But, with this con-
cept of coal substitution, what assurance is there that oil and
gas freed by the gas substitution will be reserved for chemical
feedstocks? My group perceived this as a political question.
Most seem to favor some sort of protection of feedstocks, and
John Crawley at one point made a rather impassioned plea
for protection of this kind.
There is a feeling that economics is not yet favorable for a
stand-alone plant for chemicals from coal; the technology is
still pretty uncertain and may not settle down for some time.
On the other hand, should there not be some such plant under
either utility fmancing or some kind of joint venture between
the gas and chemical companies, simply in order to gain ex-
perience in view of the very long lead time of the technologies
that we're talking about?
At least one person in our group argued that all present-day
gasification technology is poor and that all gasification projects,
at least, ought to be quashed forthwith.
On the other hand, we heard a, to me, convincing exposition
of a project in North Dakota to provide methyl fuel for gas
turbines. This would be based on Texaco's partial oxidation
of lignite at high pressure. There were very interesting by-
product implications: there would be synthesis gas in this plant
on a vast scale, some of which could be plucked out for am-
monia synthesis, and in the methyl fuel products one could
obtain very readily a small by-product stream of pure chemical
methanol.
Further to the point of building plants to get experience,
there was some discussion as to whether or not SNG plants
might be justified right nowto provide an alternative to electric
heat for new homes. I put up an argument against this based
on my perception of the district heating technology, partic-
ularly of Sweden. And you may want to hear a little more
46 Davis CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
about that as a way of obtaining heat for homes in cities and
even in towns as small, I think, as Blacksburg, Virginia, in the
form of hot water from direct coal combustion more cheaply
than from either electricity or SNG.
Waldo Leggett gave a rundown on the fmancing and the time
scale for the work on the Exxon donor solvent liquefaction
process.
John Ryan made a plea for processes with lower capital costs,
and he had some very interesting remarks to make about pos-
sibly better tailoring our end products to our initial resources.
Hubert G. Davis: I tried to organize what came out in our
discussion into an outline, and I also identified a few people
who might speak more particularly to matters that I will cover.
The first thing that I wrote down was that there was con-
siderable discussion ofwhat the time table might be. We tended
to buy the pessimistic scenario, mostly because we did not have
that wild confidence that the more optimistic scenarios that
we heard could be really counted upon.
So what is the timetable? There seemed to be a feeling that
the conversion partly from gas to oil but, in general, from oil
and gas to coal was really beginning to be important and in
the next one to five years would be very strong. We saw some
great problems in connection with this. One was assuring the
coal supply, and several people spoke on transportation, the
development of new mines, labor-management difficulties,
things of this sort.
The second problem which was brought out, I think by Mr.
Von Tress of Dow, was the tremendous number of railroad cars
and steel which would be needed, very soon after we have been
shutting down steel mills because steel is in oversupply. This
seems to be one of our characteristic out-of-phase situations
that somebody should do something about. We really were
not quite sure who should do what.
The use of coal or coal conversion products as feedstock we
felt was somewhere along the line, but we thought that by
1985 some of the synthesis gas stuff might be going along the
curve. Texaco spoke of getting into this, perhaps for a fuel in
particular cases. But then when that is available as fuel, it
would also be a rawmaterial, and we might be making, perhaps
not the big things like ammonia, but perhaps other things like
the ethylene glycol my company is working on.
And we thought that pyrolysis, used to remove the liquids
that are easily available from the coal and get them into the
fuel supply, or hydrogenation would come along somewhat
later. The liquids would tend to get into the crude oil stream,
but they would be different materials from the crudes. They
would be appropriate, perhaps, not for making aliphatic
products but for making certain aromatic materials either on
their way to the stream or perhaps after they are in the stream
but somewhat segregated from other things.
Other things would come along as by-products of these new
fuel industries. But I think we are looking past 1985 for any
significant amount of these, perhaps well into the 1990's.
Another idea is catalyzed gasification with water of coal
under conditions where the reaction was thermally neutral.
This is for making methane, not hydrogen and CO. In the
Hoffman process, the catalyst is not only an alkaline material
but also a metal, nickel if you want to make methane, perhaps
iron or some other metal if you want to make higher hydro-
carbons.
The interesting thing from the chemical industry point of
view is this possibility of making ethane, propane, butane.
And we suggest at this point that this might be something
that one would like to look into.
Dwayne Nichols of West Virginia University talked a little
bit about his work on the pneumatic transfer with low-B. t.U.
or medium-B. t.u. gas from powdered coal. This is a dilute-phase
transfer. However, we calculated that with low-B. t.u. gas you
might be carrying a couple of hundred pounds per thousand
cubic feet of gas. So on a B.t.u. basis you would be getting
most of your B. t.u. transfer to solid coal, and only a reasonable
fraction of it as a gasification target, which could be an in-
dustrial gas. This could also be done with ox.ygen to make a
medium-B. t.u. gas, which could be a syn gas. Again, this would
be a means of getting a synthesis gas, useful for chemicals,
from coal and one which could be usable for whatever one used
to use coal for, at the point where it is needed. All this
without carrying it with badly needed water, which, even when
it is available, various people pointed out, could run into poli-
tical difficulties.
Flash pyrolysis we identified as something that was promising
and probably should be worked on better.
The productivity of coal mines is getting to be more and more
a problem as we get to more difficult seams, and as health and
other problems come up. Certainly it is something that should
be worked on.
We spoke about having industrial gas centers; about cogenera-
tion, which you would approach through district heating, I'm
sure; and of the need for better, more reliable regenerative and
nonregenerative stack cleaning processes.
The next topic once we got onto we almost never got off,
and that was communications and public relations. We felt that
the AIChE itself could do more to promote communication to
the public and knowledge of the problems that are very clear
to us but obviously are not clear to many other people.
And we spoke about the terrible things that price regulation
is doing to the industry. And Bob Marinelli of DOE said it just
is not getting over to the public at all. And we need to do
more. Mr. Von Tress, of Dow, spoke of the organization out-
side of the company offices of an employees group at Dow
and suggested that other companies should quite legally suggest
to their employees that they organize such things, which can
have influence on the public and on government.
We need a better mechanism for contact between govern-
ment administrators and knowledgable industry people. People
like us should take more active roles in talking, writing to our
congressmen, etc. We should not write form letters, but really
persuasive ones that tell what we know. Even though what we
know sometimes may not be correct a year from now, why we
still should talk.
Then we discussed what should the government do. There
seemed to be a very strong feeling in our group that what the
government should do is to stop taking money away from in-
dustry and feeding it bacl{'in very unproductive ways. It should
allow that money to remain in industry, perhaps by preferred
tax laws or some other ways, so that industry may get on with
COAL Dosher 47
the job of doing things with coal, with biomass, or whatever.
on that at great length.
We certainly need to coordinate the regulators and the regula-
tions, and government needs to set a climate that will permit
planning that can be good this year, next year, and ten years
from now. That may be impossible, but it certainly would be
a lovely thing to think about. Perhaps government should
promote more basic R and D. There seems to be some doubt
that industry really does the kind of Rand Dwhich most
people would call truly basic.
J. R. Dosher: The group that I was with had an interest more
along economic lines than the pure technological lines. And
we had, I think, a real dilemma. The group that was there
was highly biased in favor of the free enterprise system; how-
ever, all of us-and I think we had quite a number of people
from different oil and chemical companies-felt that under
present conditions other than burning coals under boilers no-
body is really doing anything right now or has immediate plans
for doing anything, about the development of altemative feed-
stock situations. It is obvious that under present conditions,
present world oil prices it is not economic to look for substi-
tutes. And I think the consensus of our group is that it is not
likely to be economic in less than five, and maybe as long as
ten, years. That was one problem we came up with.
There was a great concern on all our parts, I think, that this
bad scenario is the one that is going to apply, and it is going to
apply sometime down the road, maybe late eighties, early
nineties. The only way we can minimize the impact of this at
some point considerably in the future is to get on with some-
thing now. At the same time, everyone knows that it is not
economic now.
And then all we free-enterprisers got to talking about the
creation of artificial incentives to get this off the ground under
present economics. I personally think this is the big dilemma
that we have in the whole problem-how we are going to get it
started without letting the government get in the door com-
pletely. The consensus was that there is going to have to be some
incentives from the government side, but we hope they will
tamper with the free enterprise market relationships as little as
possible.
One proposal that was brought up was to put tax on imports.
And we also talked quite a bit about what an effective chem-
ical industry does. Again, we had a dilemma. We questioned
that the petrochemical in.dustry was really going to get too
much preferential treatment. The general consensus, I think,
was that the more that can be done to solve the general energy
problem, the less the petrochemical industry was going to be
affected, and therefore the better off it would be. But on the
other side I think most of us were quite concerned that the
general energy situation is not going to be solved enough to
prevent this feedstock problem. So maybe when all is said and
done the petrochemical industry is going to have to take two
actions: do everything it can to contribute to the solution of
the energy problem, but at the same time take a position to
protect its interests in obtaining feedstocks.
In the technical sessions there was quite a bit of discussion
about the idea of the joint venture, with a utility plant feeding
synthesis gas out to utility operations. And that idea was
discussed quite a bit by our group. There are pluses and mi-
nuses, and we felt the obvious big plus is that you get the bene-
fits of scale-huge plant built for SNG, with additional size
tacked on for the chemical operation. We would hope that we
get the benefit of utility economics, I think there was a great
question in some of our minds that the FPC and other people
would really let the chemical companies have full advantage
of these economics.
One of the disadvantages that we saw was an additional layer
of regulation that would have to be gone through in order to
get a project off the ground. You go through the EPA, FTC,
and at the end you have the FPC added on top of everything.
We did feel this idea might be a way of creating this artificial
economic environment to get some of this going. And some
type of ground rules to dearly define how these projects might
be undertaken. Quick establishment of these ground rules
could help get something off the ground.
There was a lot brought up on this SASOL plant over in
South Africa and how there, where the people perceive the en-
ergy problem to be very much their whole future, they have an
internal security problem that they recognize they are going to
have to take care of. In that situation they are taking some-
thing like a $1 to 2 billion investment to develop a chemical
industry fuel and everything from coal. There was a lot of
discussion in our group as to why we cannot do the same. We
discussed the balance-of-trade problem, and there was a great
deal of concern about that. It was also mentioned that in ef-
fect the price of oil is not where it is due to market forces, but
due to political forces. A cartel has created this situation; so
48 Sawyer CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
I think there is a lot of feeling among some of our people that
from an internal security point of view we should be doing
something along the SASOL lines, to build up our own energy
and reduce our dependence on these overseas supplies.
Looking specifically at coal and the impacts we could foresee
on the chemical industry, I think there was consensus that the
first stage will be burning. Anumber of people from various
companies mentioned that their people are starting to move
fairly rapidly on burning additional coal inside existing plants.
And almost all new plants are considered to be coal-based. I
think the consensus, again, was that low or intermediate-B.t.u.
gas would be the most likely next use of coal. Plants are being
built in areas where the gas could be distributed over fairly
short distances-industrial parks and places like this or con-
centrated areas like the Houston Ship Channel, Baton Rouge,
and places of this kind.
Our group was not very bullish that coalliquefication would
ever have any major impact. They thought that shale oil was a
cheaper source of liqUids and that most of the other benefits
that one could bring up in favor of coal liquids did not seem to
have enough economic incentives to offset the higher costs that
coal liquids appear to have.
One of the things that we think should be looked at in this
regard is the whole aromatics balance. I know that a number
of people who are pushing coal liquids are pushing the idea of
the high aromaticity of these liquids and of the recovery of
large amounts ofBTXand naphthalenes and things of this kind.
There was pretty good agreement in our group that some
synthesis gas chemistry would probably displace some of the
ethylene demand, but that for well past the year 2,000 ethy-
lene would be made by the cracking of liquids, derived either
from crude petroleum or shale. If you crack these liquids to
make ethylene, you are going to get a lot of co-product ben-
zene; in fact, you are going to get co-product benzene from
some of the coal gasification projects. And so there is a
question, at least in my mind, as to whether the remaining
demand for benzene is really going to support a lot ofliquefac-
tion projects that have a lot of their economics keyed to the
concentrated aromaticity nature of the coal liquids.
In looking at direct chemical applications of coals, I think
we felt that the synthesis gas route appeared to be the most
promising, not only for just methanol and ammonia but for
other chemicals that in effect would displace demands for
ethylene and such chemicals as the ethanols, acid aldehydes,
etc.
Anumber ofpeople from the chemical companies mentioned
that there are people working this route, that it looked promis-
ing. The technology, they felt, was on the borderline of being
commercial in present conditions. I think there was one point
made that if a chemical company is operating this way-having
control of its own coal, using that coal to make synthesis gas,
and then producing chemicals-when and if the petroleum
shortages occur the allocations problems are not going to be
something to be concerned with. Such a company will be in a
truly basic position, and this will be highly worthwhile.
One other point, haVing to do with a position for AIChE and
for us as individuals, a lot of discussion occurred in our group
about the nuclear industry, which in effect has been virtually
shut down as far as newplants are concerned. This is something
that is going to put a further demand on oil to make up the
difference. Nuclear energy would be one of the areas as far as
overall energy policy is concerned that our group seemed to
feel should be reemphasized as opposed to deemphasized, as is
the Carter policy.
I might add that all our groups seem to be in agreement that
syngas is going to come sooner than liquefaction.
A. M. Squires: Yes, that does seem to be the consensus.
J. W. Sawyer (Resources for the Future): We briefly dis-
cussed howthe market forces will solve the energy crises, and the
general decision we came is that you need an artificial incentive
because foreign oil at the moment is the cheapest source of
B. t.U that you can get. Hence, ifthe government starts regulat-
ing, no matter what they do it always tends to work out that
foreign oil is the substitute fuel next placed in use.
Our group were almost all free-market people and opposed
to government intervention, by and large. I suggested that
perhaps the most efficient sort ofgovernment intervention you
could have to solve this particular dilemma was simply one tax,
namely onimported crude. An alternative to that, which would
have about the same effects, would be to limit the supply of
imported crude that would be let in in any given year.
Mr. Perry, if I understood himcorrectly, pointed out that like
all other schemes of this sort it puts in market distortions; in
particular would make materials produced from petrochemicals
in other nations more competitive than they would be in a
totally free market world. Hence, it is obviously not an ideal
solution. I think this is the sort of thing that tended to plague
us this morning. Since we were free market people, we did
object to playing with the control mechanism. Our favorite
control mechanism was the free market. We were particularly
sensitive to the fact that almost anything one did in terms of
regulation or taxation or whatever, did misallocate resources.
Another, quite unrelated point is that it is almost embarras-
sing being here if you are from Washington, D.C. There is an
understandable hostility to government, while I am not in-
volved in government, I am in an organization that essentially
studies the allocation of resources, tries to study the problems,
what can be done about them, and what the difficulties are.
And in line with a question that was just briefly brought up
about what AIChE might do, I would suggest that the energy
policy issue may be only a symptom of alarger problem, namely
a decision-making paralysis of the U.S. government. Just for
the record, I'd like to suggest that those people who are think-
ing about how AIChE might approach the communications
problem with the U.S. government might well look into a
couple of books which have recently been written.
One is by, I believe, a sociologist named Morris Genowitz, at
the University of Chicago. It is much the simpler of the two
books that I'm going to recommend. He suggests very strongly
that indeed in this country we have reached a political crisis of
very large proportions. Policy making has become infmitely
complicated. The easiest solution, if you are a legislator, is to
do almost nothing.
The same theme has been elaborated by Daniel Bell in a book
called "The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism," in which
he brings out the same thesis but in a much more complicated
COAL Stiles
49
fashion. Bell is an extremely articulate and well-read man. He
goes back to about 1700 and the cultural attitudes that Adam
Smith had. Capitalism became a great success because of those
cultural attitudes. Because capitalism was so successful, says
Bell, we have lost those very cultural attitudes-ideas like a
penny saved is a penny earned. He points out that we over-
spend; whereas Adam Smith in his culture tended to oversave.
And Bell goes along with the argument until you begin to see
that in fact the U.S. government itself is faced with a decision-
making problem which it does not quite know how to meet.
David Damon (Consolidated Natural Gas): To what extent
can feedstock planning be relied on to modify the decision-
making process in Washington? We talk about the importance
of political influence, but when it really comes down to feed-
stock planning, are you going to rely on, "Well, we're going to
modify this kind of policy in Washington, and that'll ftx it"?
Before we go on, my suggestion is that this is a question that
we should decide as a ground rule for further discussion.
J. R. Dosher: I would make only one statement on that. I
think what we are doing now is trying to plan in a lack-of-
decision-making environment. Unfortunately, there is only
one type of organization that comes out ahead in this, and
that is consulting companies.
Larry Mohr (Mobil Chemical): I think the petrochemical
industry as I see it, the part makes oleftns and aromatics, is
going to be based largely on heavy-liquid feedstocks in the
future. By 1985 I think we will be making most of our oletins
and aromatics out of naphtha and gas oil fractions. I think
we'll be in a very good position to compete with energy uses
for the same materials.
I don't really see a great need for priority treatment of the
petrochemical industry. I would hope that we would solve our
energy problems in some fashion that would not leave us with
a set of allocation controls and that we would have essentially
free market for these streams. Under these circumstances I
would imagine that the petrochemical industry could take care
of itself.
H. G. Davis: I think our group would agree with that, but
we had the fear that we would not be allowed to have a free
market and that we had better not totally plan on that sort of
thing because when people run out of fuel to heat their homes,
that might have ftrst priority. When people cannot get around
as much as they would like in their automobiles, that might
have second priority. And some of the things that the chemi-
cal industry makes might be pretty far down the totem pole;
so allocations very likely would come in. And then we might
suddenly be faced with having to get our stuff somewhere
else. You can't really plan for this without taking the more
pessimistic view that what you are saying won't work out.
Larry Mohr: Well, if there are allocation controls, I'm on
your side.
J. R. Dosher: By our calculations, of the 7 percent in 1990
of the petroleum fed to refmeries, 7 percent will end up not
as feedstock but as benzene, ethylene, propolene, things of this
kind. Now, that's getting to be a sizable fraction. It occurs
during a circumstance that we foresee where demands for pe-
troleum are going to be continuing to increase due to the lack
of development of alternative supplies.
Uyou carry it a little further, by the year 2,000, I think you
will probably see the petroleum demands actually decrease
somewhat as we fmally get some energy policy. Petrochemicals
will continue to grow, and maybe that ftgure I could see in
another ten years would be doubled. If you talk about how
much, then, ofthe petroleumhas to go to feedstocks, say when
you are getting some fairly low Yields, you could be talking
about a very sizable chunk of the total oil being refmed in the
United States going into feedstock uses. I am just throwing
this out against the argument that a number of people have
put out about this small percent of total petroleum. I think
it is a fraction that will continue to grow over time and grow
to be a fairly substantial portion of the total petroleum being
processed in this country.
I think one of the speakers gave something in the neighbor-
hood of 3 percent in 1990. We expect it to be 7 percent, end-
ing up not as feedstock but as the fmished, primary petro-
chemical. Petrochemical demands grow; more and more of it
is coming out of petroleum as opposed to gas. And petroleum
demands will be growing a little slower; so it is just a bigger
and bigger portion. I could see that ftgure doubling in the period
of 1990 to 2000. Over time petrochemical feedstocks will be-
come a very sizable portion of the petroleum being processed.
And I think we will be reducing the amount of petroleum that
goes into what we'll call nonpriority uses, like residual fuel oil.
So you are going to start to compete with the some pretty high
priority items-transportation fuels, home heating fuels, jet
fuel, things of this kind. I think it is going to be a little harder
to convince people that petrochemical feedstocks are more
important than other fuel. Ifwe do get into a shortage situa-
tion, you are going to have a pretty tough row to hoe to make
sure that the petroleum allocated to the petrochemical in-
dustry is adequate.
Gerry Clancy (proCon): Along that same line I think it
comes back to some of the things that you were saying a little
earlier, John. While this worst scenario might not occur, there
had better be some contingency planning now. And that con-
tingency planning probably had better include preliminary
developmental work of some kind.
If we take fuels for the petrochemical industry and include
not only the ones that you talked about but the feedstocks for
ammonia and methanol, and take something like an 8 percent
compounding, we increase the current 7 or 8 percent, or what-
ever it is, including the fuels, up to something like 17 percent
of total energy in a matter of 15 years. Now, putting that on
a petroleum base as opposed to total energy, we start reaching
numbers like 40 percent. That is an extreme case, I'm sure.
But the problem could be real, and there should be some con-
tingency planning.
Al Stiles (University of Delaware): I am very pleased to hear
that the tendency is toward thinking of CO and hydrogen. I
have felt that way for 40 years now, and I would like to suggest
that what urging can be done be directed toward underground
coal gasiftcation, which is being done out in Hannah, Wyoming.
This effort showed be stimulated and urged as much as we
possibly can, because that is going to get us off the list of the
union coal miners. We don't want to be at the mercy of the
Arabs; neither do we want to be at the mercy of the coal miners.
50 Squires CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
It is very easy to make methane. It is almost as easy to make
methanol. But once you get CO and hydrogen, you can make
almost everything. You are right on the threshold of a tre-
mendous capability in the chemical field.
Carl Brown (Southern Union): In addressing the question of
a utility joint venture with the chemical industry, I think there
are basically two questions. One is the idea of imposing a
utility financial structure on a chemical plant. And then there
is also the idea of the joint venture.
I shall address the idea of the utility fmancial structure first,
and I think the conclusions I draw will be applicable to the
joint venture also. When you are talking about utility fmancial
structure, you are really hoping that with a lower capital cost
the end price of the product will be competitive with more
conventional feedstock chemicals. Two aids that were men-
tioned earlier would be a longer depreciation period and a
lower rate of return. We have to remember that a utility com-
pany has alonger depreciation period and a lower rate of return
because the investor has less risk in a utility company; he does
not need to get his money back through depreciation nearly
so quickly. And as there is less risk of failure, his rate of return
can be lower.
But I fail to see how one can impose a utility structure on
what is basically a risk venture without the other side, that is
controlled prices and controlled sales of the product. Is that
what you really want? That's the question.
In the utility company your customer is more or less locked
up. But I presume that in this industry he is not, that there is
competition from oil and gas feedstock chemical plants. If,
therefore, you did not have a low enough price to compete,
you would be forced to have a government subsidy for your
lower prices. That would be the only way that you could get
the return, even the utility rate return, through the plant. If
government subsidy is what is necessary to bring about this
transition to coal-feedstocks chemical plants, and someone
smarter than myself determines that this is in the national in-
terest, then so be it.
But as for the idea of a joint venture, the economies of scale,
the lower rate ofreturn, the longer term depreciation-all could
result in a product that was competitive in price. I have to ask,
as was brought out in our discussion, does this not mean that
the customer for the synthetic natural gas from the other side
of the joint venture, is he not really subsidizing himself instead
of the government's subsidizing him? Is he not really subsidiz-
ing the product? If that is the case, you are going to run into
all kinds ofproblems with the FPC and with customers who say
that they have no interest in the chemical industry and there-
fore do not think that they ought to subsidize that product
throught the price they are paying for the gas that comes from
the plant.
Now, in general I believe that these coal-gasification plants
have a hard enough problemselling their product at a reasonable
price without being saddled with an additional basically un-
economic decision on the size that will raise its price even more
to the ultimate customer.
I guess in conclusion I would say that to falsely impose a risk-
less type of fmancing on what is basically a risk venture can
not happen. I don't think you can do that except through
government subsidy, which I personally do not believe is in the
best long-term interests of everyone. It may have some value
in the short run. Maybe a conference like this is set up to
determine whether it does.
Herman Feldmann (Battelle-Columbus): I think there are a
couple of things that have to be considered. First of all, the
risk. There are two kinds of risk, the marketing risk and the
technical risk. The first plant I think would need something
like a loan guarantee on the part of the government to ensure
that the plant is operational. That is for first-time operation.
As far as technical risk is concerned, I cannot see anything of a
subsidy nature from the utility customers. I pointed out one
particular process that produces a hydrogen by-product and
would take advantage I think, of, the natural integration of
these two systems, the by-product nitrogen, the hydrogen, the
fact that the really costly ends and the uncertain parts of the
plant, that is the solids-handling part, the gasifying, the coal
purifying the gas, could be included with the utility financing.
The ammonia plant could be constructed, for example, with
lower capital investment because you would not need
the part of the plant. You would need just the synthesis
reactor.
The real question is is this a subsidy? And that would be
determined by an economic analysis of the plant. We might say
here is one way we can operate the plant. We can increase the
methanation requirement to the plant and produce additional
methane. This will result in our having to charge the consumer
a certain price for this SNG. Or we can take this hydrogen and
we can sell it across the fence to an ammonia producer. What
will the price of SNG be under these conditions with the am-
monia selling at what the goingmarket price is? If that kind of
operation turns out to give the SNG customer a cost break,
then I think you can hardly say that he is subsidizing an am-
monia plant. You are simply taking advantage of a natural by-
product situation, as I think every industry does.
J. R. Dosher: I'd like to throw in two other points having to
do with this utility joint venture concept. One of them is that
the prime purpose of the utility, in whatever guarantees it gets,
is to put the consumer first. Therefore there would probably
be some degree of interruptability on, say, just the pure syn-
thesis gas that would be produced. In other words, if they had
to go back and keep that material and to gasify it further, into
methane, they would more than likely have to do this at the
expense of the chemical producer. The other point was that in
order to have the same risk that the utility company is used to
dealing with, the chemical company is going to have to do
something on a take-or-pay basis, in order to reduce the risk to
the level that would justify the utility fmancing.
I think that in general a lot of our people thought this was
still a way of getting all of this going. But we know there are
problems.
A. M. Squires: What I seem to be hearing is that part of the
process could be financed by the utility financing, and still give
the chemical company some kind of a cross break. As Herman
points out, if the synthesis gas being sold is a minor part of the
synthesis gas that is being produced, and I think this is your
point, then that synthesis gas can probably be sold, to the
chemical company at a good price.
COAL Brown 51
D. A. Damon (CNG Energy Co.): The first few attempts to
develop a coal-based chemical feedstock-I'm talking primarily
of synthesis gas now-is such a significant investment, a large
project, that I don't think you should necessarily confine
yourself to the conventional methods that we have been dis-
cussing here. I don't have anything specific to propose, but I
asked the chemical companies might not there be a surety of
raw feedstock availability from a coal-fed plant? Might not
there be some specific situations where there can be a good
synergism for a utility's supplying a syngas over the fence,
perhaps even on a stand-alone basis? This could reflect back
to the utilities, which eventually might be wanting to put some
SNG from coal in their lines, getting more syngas experience
along the way.
A. M. Squires: I think these are very good points. It's a case
for alertness. If an SNG plant is going in, surely a chemical
company would fmd it advantageous even just as defensive R
and D to buy into a little of that synthesis gas and play with it.
Dave Damon: That's part ofit. Take the small chemical
companies, if they are in a feedstock pinch, they cannot afford
the cost of putting in a coal-based front end. Well, here's an
opportunity for them, if the right situation exists, to avoid
putting in the coal front end and still have the feedstock bene-
fits: capital dollars versus feedstock dollars.
Sandy Quinn (DuPont): I am going to address myself to
natural gas substitute feedstocks first, mainly because I be-
lieve, and a lot of people believe, that that is where we are
going to have a shortage first.
All the evaluations that I have looked at show that medium-
B.t.u. gas is the most competitive alternative to natural gas for
both feedstocks and fuel use. It is an excellent fuel. It does
not have to be sold exclusively for feedstock, provided some
criteria are met. These criteria are based mainly on the
economy of scale and the method of fmancing the plant.
This is what gets back to this utility venture. I doubt that
any chemical company is going to build a new plant beside a
utility, basing its whole supply on synthesis gas. However, I
think chemical companies would be willing to take a part
of that gas under the right situation and make a feedstock
of it to augment their supply.
The synthesis gas can go now to methanol, ammonia; as
mentioned previously it is a building block to numerous
things. Our company is researching in this area, other com-
panies are, as well. But this idea ofthe joint venture or the
piggybacking or whatever you want to call it offers financing
advantages to make medium B.t.u. gas even more attractive.
It appears to me to be a viable solution or starting block to
get alternative feedstocks off the ground. Importantly,
it does not have to be made just for the chemical company.
It is an excellent fuel for any industry to replace natural
gas in existing gas-fired boilers. For relatively small boilers
it appears to be the best alternative.
Carl Brown: I think if you could develop a situation where a
chemical company would be willing to pay the full cost of
B.t.u. produced by a coal gasification plant, and by doing
so make it economic-in other words, if the company were
willing to pay the higher cost (because it is going to be higher
a cost) of a substantial portion of the gas-it would make a
coal gasification plant walk that will not walk today, for eco-
nomic reasons. Then I suppose that a joint venture might
have some validity. But I have not heard enough yet that
would convince me that a chemical company would be willing
to pay this higher price for these feedstocks when there
does not seem to be enough interest in this higher priced
product from everyone else to result in the building of the
coal gasification plant.
I realize that there are a lot more problems than just price.
For one thing, a utility company like ours is fairly small,
and so it is totally beyond likelihood for us to build a plant.
We have a plant right now, a $200 million coal-gasification
plant, but five times that? There is no way that small util-
ities, at least, can afford the capital investment to increase
the size of their companies five times.
The utilities, as I say, do have access to preferential fi-
nancing, but simply because the things they put their money
in are low risk. No one has convinced me yet that if they
substantially altered the risk, free investors-not the govern-
ment, but free investors-would be willing to invest in a
risk venture at a utility rate of return. And I think that is
the key point.
S2 Davis CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
If you're going to build in government guarantees, gov-
ernment subsidies, that is a different question from a utility
financial structure. When we make nonutility investments,
and we do make some, we require the same returns, the
same structure, the same depreciation rates that you do,
simply because our risk capital has to have a high return.
J. R. Dosher: I think one thing that comes out is that almost
all the alternatives to the use of petroleum involve huge
amounts of capital. And I think even for the very biggest
companies, these amounts of capital are going to be more
than anyone company wants to swallow. I have had a heck of
a lot of experience as a consultant in dealing with joint ven-
tures, and you can count on three fingers the joint ventures
that have really worked in this country, inside the chemical
industry or the oil industry. And I can not even name which
three they are. I think an attitude that people had better
develop is that about the best they can hope for in these
joint ventures is not that they are going to get a break but
that they are going to spread the risk. And it is going to have
to be spread, or nobody is going to do anything.
Jackson Yu (Bechtel): I'm sure a number of you know
that SASOL in South Africa has been running a synthetic
chemical plant for some time. That is SASOL I. And in
the past few years they have been in the process of build-
ing SASOL II, which is a sizable chemical facility from coal.
And several billion dollars are involved in the venture.
Granted, there are considerable amounts of subsidy from
the government in South Africa to put this venture together,
but I think that, as Mr. Feldman indicated, on any new tech-
nology there are two risks involved, the technical risk and
the financial risk. I think that because SASOL has been
running this kind of operation, the technical risk becomes
much lower and that, therefore, the only risk that remains
is the fmancial risk.
As John also mentioned, these projects are so large that
probably individual companies would not have sufficient
funds to support such a project and that a joint venture
would have to be put together. There are successful joint
ventures of the size of the SASOL plant. As a good example,
several years ago several companies got together to get oil
out of tar sands in Canada. There, too, it was a very risky
operation and it was privately financed. They were not
making money for quite a few years, as I understand, but
now they are getting to a point where the venture is making
money.
If we do not do something right now, if we decide, say
eight years from now, to build a new plant, it will not just
happen overnight. In Bechtel we do a lot of power plant
construction. As a general rule, we're talking about ten
years from the inception of a plant until the electricity comes
out the other side. On that basis, and we are talking about
large enough plants, people should be starting to think about
the joint venture, possibly with DOE as one of the partners
to supply some of the money. The Department of Energy
has a fantastic budget. Why can not some of that money be
put into a joint venture of this kind?
Along this line, Ralph M. Parsons was commissioned by
ERDA to do a conceptual design of a Fischer-Tropsch syn-
thesis plant. Maybe Mr. Jentz can enlighten us a little more
on that. As I understand, there are some twenty-plus chem-
icals that come out from the chemical plant.
Norman Jentz: I am entirely in favor of the use of Fischer-
Tropsch for chemical feedstocks, as I have already stated.
The reference, I believe, is to a conceptual design that we
put together and that has now been issued and is available
in the public domain.
Had someone mentioned Fischer-Tropsch to me three,
four, five years ago, I would probably have been far less
enthusiastic than I am now. Recognize that good, solid
chemical engineering for all of these big projects can do won-
ders to increase the utility and efficiency of energy.
Duane Nichols (West Virginia University): I think the
technical feasibility of the Fischer-Tropsch process is very
well established. I, too, have looked at its economics in a
preliminary-cost way. And I think that the costs for making
a petroleum type of fuel are clearly beyond anything that
we want to get involved in. As far as the thermal efficiency of
the overall process is concerned, we don't have a very good
number on that either; I think that it is below 50 percent.
If we want to make syngas or petroleum feedstock, then
there may not be a need to go to a Fischer-Tropsch catalyst
to make what you might think of as a wide distribution of
product, but rather to take some more specific route with
the synthesis gas or to make an intermediate B.t.u. fuel.
Norman Jentz: Just as a matter of clarification, when I
mentioned efficient use of energy, I did not have in mind
anything less than 50 percent. As a matter of fact, our re-
port was that it was something more like 70 percent.
Duane Nichols: lhave an article on cost from the Fischer-
Tropsch process in the Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Model-
ing Simulation Conference. It talks about a gasoline-type of
fuel being produced from Fischer-Tropsch in 1976 dollars
of 54 cents a gallon at the refinery, or at the plant.
Norman Jentz: Just off the top of my head, for a 30,000-
ton-a-day coal-feed operation which comes out with 250
billion B.t.u./day each of syngas and liquids, the cost is about
$1.5 billion dollars capital.
H. G. Davis: It costs a fantastic amount of money for a coal
conversion plant. I seem to have seen numbers like half a
billion dollars to build an ethylene plant from even ethane.
Then I go back to Dick Perry's $10 billion in ERDA. If
some of that money was left in industry, perhaps you could
build some of these things. The lead time of ten years would
not be too bad. We could spread this $1 billion or $2 billion
or whatever over several years. It could be done if the money
were there.
The other comment that I have heard made is that if you
could change the government philosophy on coal conversion
so that coal conversion was looked at in much the way ex-
ploration-well-digging, finding new oil and gas-is, from a
taxation point of view, you could write this thing off. I
don't know anything about taxation, but certainly a taxation
incentive would be a better way to get something done than
removing $10 million from industry and then giving it back
through the 10,000 or 20,000 bureaucrats that we now have
in the Department of Energy.
COAL Leggett S3
J. W. Sawyer (Resources for the Future): My training is in
chemical engineering and systems engineering; I am not an
economist. But I work in an organization where I am sur-
rounded by economists. And there is excellent justification
within a free market system for some sort of subsidy, by one
means or another, of R&D. I will not go into the justifica-
tion for it, but it makes a lot of sense even to a layman who
has not studied economics.
It seems to me that if a scheme such as you are talking
about were to be put forth, a special tax writeoff should be on
the R&D portion of this industry and not on later plants.
In other words, once the technology has been fully demon-
strated, then it is very difficult for a free-market economist
to advocate any special tax treatment of that industry.
H. G. Davis: All I'm saying is we already put terrific market
distortions into this whole thing by the way we do our taxes.
The distortions now are in favor of exploration, the digging
of oil and gas wells. They are not in favor of oil shale conver-
sion, coal conversion, and so on. The distortions could be
just as well written the other way. And maybe that is how
you get things going. Instead of taking money away from
industry and then trying to feed it back, dribbling it out in
various ways, you leave it in with some kind of proviso for
getting some of these things off the ground before it is way
too late. We talk about not knowing what is going to happen
in the late eighties and nineties-and that is not so far away
but what you have to think about it now, because you need
these 10-year, IS-year lead times.
J. W. Sawyer: Yes, if you give these special treatments in
the beginning of an industry, there is a good free market
justification for it. To continue it, as we have in, say oil
exploration, is not justified by free market economics. So
what I am suggesting is that if this group were to advocate
such a thing, it would have the blessing of the economic
community if we said that we are advocating a subsidy for
the initial demonstration of the technologies.
Bill Von Tress (Dow Chemical Co.): I really came here
with more questions than I have answers. Everybody knows
that we at Dow are very energy intensive because we make
lots of chlorine and lots of magnesium. We, along with most
of the other companies, are looking to coal and lignite as
boiler fuels. We have a successful program for energy con-
servation that is helping us about in the range of 15 to 20
percent. We also have an energy accounting system. We are
betting on petroleum for our near future needs in chemical
feedstocks.
What has not been mentioned too much here is the matter
of mining and transportation. It looks as though in the mid-
eighties everybody is going to have to start moving toward
coal mining. Suddenly everybody is going to be wanting
unit trains, locomotives, trackage, mining equipment, and
capital dollars. I am concerned whether capabilities for steel,
shop space, right-of-ways, and money supplies will be
stretched to the limit, reminiscent of what we had in 1974,
when everybody wanted to build a steel tank for holding
petroleum.
Jack Olson (Exxon): There is going to be a problem in
timing, and it is going to be a matter of getting things to-
gether at the time that we need them. The consensus of our
group was that perhaps about 1985 we can cut down in fuels
to the chemical feedstocks, and I think probably refinery
fuels too, in the same sense, could be cut back to covering
maybe all the new capacity and maybe a small portion of what
has already gone into these fuels. It is going to take a lot of
dollars to do that. But if we do that, we are going to be
putting those dollars in at the same time that foreign oil is
not coming into the United States. There are going to be
tanker surpluses, there are going to be foreign oil surpluses,
gluts of crude oil everywhere. And there are going to be
lots of questions about whether we were really right in doing
this. I see lots of questions in the average person's mind about
our credibility in this respect. My other comment is kind of
related to that. Back when I was doing my research work in
Montana, we were trying to get people to use the coal in
Eastern Montana, and they finally did use it. Now the people
ill Montana are trying to get people to quit building-"Do not
build anything more out there; we do not want to sell any
more coal." So there is going to be a political issue in the
same sense.
Jackson Yu (Bechtel): In regard to the transportation
problem, not only do we have limitations in terms of the
equipment; there are legislative problems that we have to
solve. Recently I was in a meeting in the Rocky Mountains
area where a number of people are proposing putting in state
regulations that prevent unit trains from moving out of those
states with coal because they say, "Why should we dirty up
our state with all these unit trains when we don't get any
benefits from them?" We as a group have to convince people
on both the state and the Federal1evels, so that we can go
ahead with some of the projects.
Waldo Leggett: Mr. Yu touched on a comment that I am
appalled has not been brought up before, and that is the
54 Nichols CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
environmental problems associated with coal, which is nor-
mally thought of as the dirty fuel. I think this is going to be
one of the significant issues that relate to the use of coal.
Some shale oil projects that should be moving forth were
called to a halt for well over a year. I think that we have
seen signs all around us that acceptance of coal and other
alternative energy sources can be stymied by environmental
issues. So far, in this meeting, I have not really heard much
discussion of environmental issues.
You look at some of these new processes, pioneer plants,
demonstration plants, and so forth, that are trying to prove
new technology. These plants essentially have the same
environmental requirements as a mature plant-a mature re-
fmery or a mature chemical plant. And they are judged by
essentially the same standards.
To me it would make a lot of sense if you are talking about
putting in some new technology, especially at the cost of
billions of dollars that we are talking about, to give the early
plants maybe a different set of standards with some sort of
clock running on them that would phase them into the reg-
ular environmental laws at a later date or by st.eps or some-
thing like that.
I realize that this is a little bit different from the topics that
we were discussing, but I'd like to hear some discussion on it.
H. G. Davis: We had quite a bit of discussion on this under
the general topic of relations to government. We covered a
list of things which we thought were promising and which
might change the future. One of these is the use of steam,
instead of oxygen and steam, directly to make paraffinic com-
pounds, methane, and also higher compounds, from coal
or from coal char for that matter. All three gentlemen from
King Wilkinson, Inc., spoke on this. The particular process
they spoke on is the Hoffman Process.
Ed Hoffman (Unit Energy Consultant, Laramie,
Wyoming): I am associated with King Wilkinson, Inc., here
in Houston, putting together a joint venture, or consortium,
to further scale up and commercialize this so-called Hoffman
Process or direct methanation or direct conversion process.
This is a private effort, and we have quite a bit of enthusi-
astic interest already. We are in the preliminary stages. And I
might mention that with nickel catalyst, as you commented,
methane is produced in this one-stage operation; with iron
catalyst it is also possible to make methane plus methane
LPG and materials in the gasoline boiling range.
The work is an outgrowth or continuation of studies I
originated at the University of Wyoming. They were in
part supported by.the old Office of Coal Research and have
been dormant for several years, though the interest has con-
tinued. There was a waiting period for me to try to put
things together and get something started, and this has now
commenced in association with King &Wilkinson. Their back-
ground has been in refmeries, petrochemical plants, offshore
drilling. They recently have established a coal service divi-
sion, and all signs are looking favorable.
Incidentally, the advantage of a one-stage operation such as
this is a savings in overall efficiency. When you go the custom-
ary route, which usually involves three stages, your thermo-
dynamic efficiency drops off. But a one-stage operation,
an autothermal operation you might call it, would have an
efficiency of one-fourth to one-third greater than the con-
ventional route. And this translates into a comparable savings
in the original capital investment and the cost of the gas.
I might cite a couple of articles that appear in an A.C.S.
symposium on fuels. (That is the Division of Fuels.) The
results of this work were described at meetings in 1970 and
1971. And, of course, a prospectus is being prepared at
King & Wilkinson which gives much of this background and
more on the general features of the project. There is also
more proprietary information that we are not making avail-
able for release.
On the matter of financing, it is much easier to go to pri-
vate industry for funds, because the motivations are much
more clear-cut. Industry is looking for self-preservation and
of course to tum a profit. But with the government, the
workings are much more diffuse.
On projects that I have tried to get going or have been
associated with I have run into the difficulties of getting an
audience in government circles many times. Government
agents think differently from the way people do in grivate
industry. A lot oflobbying and a lot of contact work is
necessary. Unless you are a large organization that has these
resources at hand, it is difficult to get started with
Washington.
Duane Nichols: We have just initiated phase II of a study
called, "Coal and Gas Pipeline Feasibility Study." The pur-
pose is to consider coals which might be cleaned into three
fractions: first, a clean-coal fraction that perhaps itself could
meet new-source performance standards; second, a middling
product having sufficient carbon content so that it could be
gasified to low or intermediate B.t.u. gas; and, finally, a
refuse stream.
The gas could then be used to pneumatically transport
the clean coal. And the purpose would be to transport this
at elevated pressures. We are now working at an initial pres-
sure of 500 Ib./sq.in. simply because that looks like a good
output pressure from gasification. It would not require
initial pressurization for the pipeline system.
With this approach one can achieve, according to some of
the calculations, really impressive distances of transport.
We know that if we transport coal in water, we must contend
with a number of serious problems, among them the supply
of water as well as the dewatering problem at the end. And
more than that, we are paying for transporting about 50
percent of the weight in material we do not necessarily need
to transport, that is, the water.
In a pneumatic system both products have substantial
fuel values. And so in spite of the fact that there are some
technical problems that have to be faced, there are tremendous
advantages. The present thinking is that even those coals
that cannot be cleaned themselves to new-source performance
standards could still be utilized because the fuel and gas
together might well have sufficiently low sulfur per million
B.t.u. as to be acceptable for new-source utilization.
One reason for mentioning this at this particular meeting
is that the intermediate fuel gas would simply be a carbon
monoxide-hydrogen mixture and, again, could be thought of
COAL Marinelli 55
as a feedstock or a fuel, either one. The calculations to date
have indicated that in a 14- to 16-inch pipe, one can trans-
port 2,500 to 4,000 tons of coal a day and about 80 million
standard cubic feet of gas. If one wished to transport even
larger quantities, larger pipe sizes would be required.
Saltation in large-diameter pipes is not sufficiently well
understood to give us any kind of confidence in working
with them; so I am hoping that some one will support work
in larger diameter pipes on saltation velocities and pressure
drops, not only of course for utilization in the direct fuels
arena, but also for the chemical process industries in general.
This is one of the basic research areas where some significant
needs exist.
It turns out that any time we have a distribution of par-
ticle sizes in pipeline flow, we have considerable difficulty
in coming up with a design procedure that gives us great
confidence. Those companies that have designed coal-water
slurry systems realize the problems of doing the pressure
drop calculations for the coal distributed in the water system.
I will just say here that the situation regarding pressure drop
calculations of the distribution of particles in gaseous systems
is probably even less well understood.
H. G. Davis: Even in taking small amounts of coal 60 feet
through a heat exchanger and across a room we had some
saltation problems in our power plant. I can understand
your situation.
Charles Spear (King-Wilkinson): I detected in Professor
Nichols' comments the subject of environmental gamesman-
ship that I thought I'd like to bring up, in response also to
Mr. Leggett's call for consideration of the subject. It appears
that the lawmakers and their creatures in Washington bureaus
will playa sort of bean bag game with us and keep the target
moving fast enough so that we can never hit it. If we are
successful in devising a transport system for a low-sulfur and
high-sulfur fuel together, I am afraid that we shall be assessed
with an absolute limit which is no higher than the sulfur
content of the low-sulfur component. This is the betting of
the electric power industry, among others-that there will be
a steady pressure on sulfur limits and a steady reduction in
the allowable sulfur content of new-source fuels. Any hopes
for averaging are to be dashed.
Roger Gaire (Foster Wheeler): In a related area quite a bit
of work is being done on coal-oil slurries and the concept of
retrofitting natural-gas-type fired boilers with this kind of
mixture. I do not knowwhether it is going to end the same
way as with the sulfur limitation, but this is also another
area for further improvement in the technology, particularly
burner control. And I have a feeling that for the short term
the retrofitting of natural-gas-type boilers will probably have
a place, too. Several ERDA contracts have been issued along
these lines.
Tony Roeger (Texas Eastern): Last week ERDA eliminated
the retrofitting operation to natural-gas-fired boilers with
coal-oil slurry mixtures.
H. G. Davis: Well, perhaps we'd better get on.
Robert Marinelli: (ERDA, Div. of Basic Energy Sciences):
I guess I was here largely to try to get some information, how
people felt about coal in particular and how it is going to be
utilized in the future. I was not prepared for some of the
things that have been said in terms of the attitude that per-
vades the meeting, but at the same time two things have
emerged. One, it is clear that coal is going to be utilized in
one form or another, fairly soon. The sooner the better.
If one puts it in terms of steps of utilization, the first step
will be, say, direct heat combustion as a source of energy,
followed, let us say, by using this and gasifying it to produce
synthesis gas, which can be used as a fuel directly, upgraded to
maybe a higher B.t.u. gas fuel, or used as a chemical feed-
stock. Since I have been with ERDA such a short time, I
guess I really do not care so much what means of solution
one finds as long as one is found. I feel that one way or
another the government is going to playa role; it is just a
question of what role. Some people would advocate that
government should playa role through tax incentives, so
that utilization might proceed. Others would advocate,
from what I have been sitting here hearing, that the govern-
ment finance part of some sort of joint venture operations
so that coal might be utilized.
I guess I would emphasize the need for some basic research
that maybe would be best financed by government operation.
I am impressed by the fact that we must move quickly, but
we probably will not be fast enough.
H. G. Davis: We spent a great deal of our time discussing the
fact that there are competing government regulations which
pull us in various ways and which change rapidly from week to
week, sometimes even day to day, and so planning becomes
very difficult. You had some thoughts about how we might at
least get to the proper administrative people in DOE with ideas
that don't seem to be generally known and yet which are so
comlhon among our group that they may be said to be generally
known here. That was one of the matters I hoped you would
speak on.
Robert Marinelli: I guess the only comment I could make
about that is that even from my limited experience it is clear
that, let us say in basic energy sciences, the primary budget is
in support ofbasic research. The next biggest expenditure is
sponsoring'conferences that discuss one aspect or another of
basic research. I attended an ERDA-sponsored conference re-
cently in Pittsburgh which was a conference of university
principal investigators who were funded by Fossil Energy to
do research in coal chemistry.
I feel that maybe it would be pertinent to try to get together
a more diverse grouping of people that would include some
people from industry, some people from universities, some
people from government, etc., so that the broad issue of how
coal utilization can proceed may be addressed meaningfully.
It seems to me that the discussions that are held here are useful
and have certain impact and bring out certain points. But
somehow you have to put the whole thing together if you are
going to make any real progress, and I guess I am not sure that
that is being done.
I guess I would feel that maybe a way to start would be to
try to have some conferences of concerned groups, hopefully
reasonably small ones, so that the meaningful interchanges
could occur. And I guess I would also be interested if others feel
that that might not be appropriate.
56 Weissman CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
Norman Jentz: It seemed obvious in our group that there
was a serious need ofpublic relations from our group to get our
message across to everyone concerned. To start with, it ap-
peared to us that we should start an education program to
clearly outline our position with all our AIChE members.
Second, we want to get our members frred up enough to where
they will write letters to their congressmen as individual citizens.
The letter, well and clearly stated, directed to the legislator,
can be a very effective tool. The form letter is to be avoided.
We also want to get speakers from our group to address the
civic groups within our local communities, because, while we
know that certain aspects of our business are serious, the man
and woman in the street do not seem to get this message. And
in order to gain sympathy and support for what is eventually
going to be a necessity for each and every citizen in this land,
we need to get our message to them. And I see no better way
than to go ahead and have each of us take on that responsibility.
Ram Chandrasekhar (Foster Miller): No sooner did some-
body get on television and say something about this energy
crisis and its problem than, I think the very next day, the Wall
Street Journal put out an article saying the money is there and
there is enough natural gas for the next thousand years. Where
did they get their information and should not someone be talk-
ing to them?
Martin Hawley (Michigan State University): It seems to me
that we are all in this conference on coal assuming that the
petrochemical feedstock question is tied with the energy ques-
tion, and I believe that is a reasonable assumption. If we are
talking about the question of what would be the substance of
a letter that you would write to your Congressman, I can tell
you about a letter that I have written, and it is quite simple. I
think there is no question that we're embarking on a path
wherein we are converting from a petroleum-based energy econ-
omy to a coal-based energy economy. The question is how
can we make that transition in a smooth fashion? Or can we
make that transition smoothly?
It seems to me that what we want to do is gradually eliminate
the incentives for exploring for oil and petroleum and provide
incentives for coal utilization. That is the message that needs
to be given. I would like to recall with you an example of some
foolish legislation, relating to the environmental situation.
Not too long ago I participated in a panel wherein we were
looking at the question of coal utilization and sulfur removal
for the National Governors' Conference. Tax credits for scrub-
ber technology on coal-fired power plants were suggested. The
Treasury Department, however, was not interpreting wash-
ing the sulfur out of the coal as the application of scrubber
technology. Therefore it did not allow a tax credit. That is
ridiculous. I think we want to be careful when we make re-
commendations. I think what we would like to do is recognize
that the government is going to provide a situation which should
encourage or discourage various things. And I would like to
keep it that simple. I would think that we really ought to be
encouraging coal utilization and not encouraging petroleum uti-
lization as widely and sort oflet the chips fall where they may.
H. G. Davis: Ifyou take away the incentives for exploration,
I think the only thingyou will do is increase imports now. And
that would be very much opposed to what we are doing. I
agree to puttingincentives on coal utilization, but I do not quite
see taking away the incentives for exploration in this country,
which is very important.
Martin Hawley: I amnot sure I agree with you, because ifyou
do that, you'll raise the price of petroleum, and as a result I
think you will increase the incentive for developing coal at the
same time.
Walter Weissman: I would like to sum up the points that I
made this morning. I believe that we as chemical engineers
should emphasize the use of economics to guide the thinking
on this subject of chemical feedstock alternatives. And what
I mean here in particular is the use of relative economics, at
least for now, in helping us to sort out the various options that
we have in bringing coal in as an energy source or a feedstock
source.
In this context we have the direct conversion of coal to
chemicals on one hand, processes that make chemicals directly
from coal as a feed; and on the other we have the use of coal,
either directly or indirectly, to substitute for the oil and gas
that is now being burned so as to free such materials for feed-
stocks for chemicals.
I think that most of us agree that from an economic per-
spective direct coal burning, where practical, will be the first
way of getting more feedstocks for chemicals by substitution.
I think also it was mentioned that low-B.t.u. gas from coal is
another method which we will probably see coming in early
to free feedstocks for chemicals.
I personally believe that the jury is still out. I think we are
going to be seeing both coal being directly converted into
chemicals as well as coal being converted into, say, fuel liquids
and substituting for feedstocks for chemicals.
I firmly believe that decisions as to what is done by each
company in each situation in the future should be in the hands
of industry. I also think an open mind is going to be needed
here, receptivity to some of the things that research can bring
forward.
I hope that if we directly convert coal to chemicals we do so
because we chemical engineers see it as being economical rela-
tive to, say, converting coal into some home-heating form like
SNG. Or if we go the other way, we do so because it makes
sense from an economics viewpoint.
I think really that using coal as a raw material broadly in the
future to get the U.S. more on a coal basis than on an oil basis
COAL Bowman 57
is a very tough job if our standard of living in this country is to
be maintained, and I think it is going to be tough enough to do
that without at the same time being forced to do things in a
certain way by edicts. I also believe that the government is
going to recognize that and that it will move in the most eco-
nomic direction.
A. M. Squires: The next point is implicit in your suggestions.
That is, what is the assurance that coal and gas sprung by coal
substitutes can be preserved as chemical feedstocks? I would
like to call on John Crawley.
J. E. Crawley (DuPont): The petrochemical industry grew
so rapidly after World War II; we were able to make the chem-
icals that we had been making with coal as a feedstock much
more cheaply from the readily available natural gas and petro-
leumproducts. As a result, we built lots of plants (in the case of
DuPont about five of them in Texas) which are totally depen-
dent on natural gas and petroleum products for their fuels and
feeds.
We have an enormous amount of capital invested in these
plants, and retrofitting them to use some other form of feed-
stocks would be very difficult, in some cases impossible, and in
all cases impractical or uneconomic. This leads me to the con-
clusion that we should insist, as a part of our national energy
policy, that we preserve natural gas and petroleum for this
high-value end use. I dislike government control as much as
anybody else, but I think the Federal government is the only
agency that can administer a policy which will apply to all in-
dustry and all types of uses of energy.
It would be small comfort to DuPont's employees in Texas
if they, on a cold winter day, were assured of an ample supply
ofnatural gas to warmtheir houses but didn't have a job to pay
the gas bill at the end of the month. So this is the plea that I
would make, that during this transition period when we must
go to coal, which is going to require enormous amounts of
capital, we be assured of a way to keep our plants going. In
DuPont we will do our part in substituting coal as a means of
firing our boilers or process heating or whatever we can fmd
economical to implement.
Larry Mongan (DuPont): As coal gasification plants come in,
when and if they do, we have a considerable number of studies
that indicate that the economic potentialities of these plants
can be distinctly improved by recovering small to medium
amounts of feedstocks, particularly ethylene and benzene, per-
haps even to the extent that one might deliberately choose a
process to increase these, in order to end in a somewhat more
economic situation than otherwise.
Also, I have heard a considerable amount of criticism about
the EPA. And a lot of it is justified. They act as if every ounce
of sulfur that goes into the atmosphere is a disgrace. However,
I might warn us as chemical engineers that how we come across
to the public is as people who are devoted to putting every last
ounce of S02 into the atmosphere that we can get away with.
And this is extremely poor public relations. What is the answer?
The old laissez [aire attitude on sulfur was intolerable.
Whether the EPA has gone too far or not far enough, I think
the jury is still out on. What we need is a little debate and
maybe a little study on what is a tolerable amount of S02 in
the atmosphere. If we talk in those terms, I think we'll get a
lot further with public relations than with our old inimical
attitude toward the EPA. They are doing the best job they
can, and damning them isn't going to help a lot.
A.M. Squires: I would love to spend the next half hour on
sulfur and the EPA. But I think that perhaps we should not get
carried away with that subject. Let me call now on Mr. Bowman,
who will inject a note of controversy, perhaps.
Walker Bowman (Amoco Chemicals): I would like to divide
the next half century into two periods, the first the present up
to 1990 or thereabouts. During this period I would certainly
expect that we wouldhave petroleum available to us at increas-
ing but still tolerable prices. I think also during this period we
are going to have very, very little opportunity, because of the
time it takes to build plants and particularly to develop new
technologies, to make any sizable impact upon our total petro-
leum needs by going through the route of coal conversion.
There is, however, ample opportunity to reduce petroleum re-
quirements by improving our knowledge of the combustion of
coal. This, I think, can be done really in the guise of develop-
ment rather than research. We know a fair amount about the
components required to combust coal. I think we need to learn
a fair amount more about the systems involved. But there is
going to be plenty of opportunity to work on these things,
and this is, to my way of thinking, probably the highest priority
activity over the next ten to fifteen years.
After that I think we should start looking forward to what
we can do up until the year 2025 to shift principally from a
petroleum-fed fuel industry to a coal-fed one. Sometime about
that time, and everybody has his own date, we really are going
to be short of petroleum at almost any price.
I can see two possible routes to our feedstocks.
One that certainly looks very attractive and probably is the
most highly developed at the present time, is the use of syngas.
There is a cryingneed for newknowledge in the area of catalysts
reqUired to convert the syngas into useful products. And I
would certainly recommend that you look, for example, at
the work that is being done at Utah. They are looking at new
catalyst systems far. more impressive than what might be called
conventional Fischer-Tropsch. They are getting light hydro-
carbons, and I think that they have barely begun to scratch the
surface.
The next possible route-and this is much more debatable
than syngas-is going through liquefaction. I think we need to
learn an awful lot about the basic science in this area. At the
same time, we also need an enormous amount of component
development, hardware development. That has to be started
very fast. It is my hope that we really look on these initial
demonstration plants more as test platforms for components.
We do not know how to feed coal to these plants. I cannot
imagine anybody's going through the lockkopper route, which
is about the only developed technology today. If you look at
tIlls and imagine what it looks like at a thousand tons an hour,
I think you would run and hide.
The same thing can be said of slurry feed, which has a higher
potential. It is extremely expensive, if you look at the amount
of heat required to boil off the kind of water we are going to
need. That is a large part of our coal. There are ways around
it. Certainly some kind of multiple effect evaporation is a good
58 Wentworth CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
possibility. Certainly there are other carriers than water which
are much less demanding of heat. The technology is not easy.
And a lot of work needs doing. The same can be said of pro-
posals that we use some kind of extruder. It is interesting that
extruders for a single plant will involve larger capacity than is
installed in the whole U.S. today. Extruder people I have
talked to think I'm off my rocker when I suggest that we look
at extruders of the size that we will need. They say you cannot
build them. I do not agree with them, but I think it will probably
be extremely expensive.
If I might sum up some of the things that I see in the way of
research needs (and I think maybe this is a plea for some con-
sideration from NSF), we really need to know an awful lot
more about the hydropyrolysis operation. There is a little bit
that is beginning to come up, but it is pretty primitive, and I
really don't see much in the way of funding of research in this
area. And I do mean research here. There are some awfully
attractive proposals and speculations, but we don't know
whether they are right, wrong, way off base, or pretty close.
Another area is the hydrogen reactor product, separation in-
volved in hydropyrolysis work. We need a lot of effort there.
My own studies in this area have pretty well convinced me that
cryogenic separation is not feasible for the size of operation we
are talking about and the probable cost that we are talking about.
Whatever route we go, we are going to need a lot of hydrogen.
I cannot believe that the types of gasifiers that we knowof today
are going to be useful in the next century. Some technologies
that are being spoken of look interesting. At best they are lab-
oratory models today. We need to understand a lot more about
what happens when we heat coal rapidly, and I think we are
talking here about a lO-millisecond reaction time. It is re-
markable how much happens in that first 10 milliseconds.
Last-and this is a repeat of an earlier statement-I would
certainly like to encourage heavy effort in basic research in
the utilization of new catalyst systems and conceivably even
new reaction paths for the reaction of carbon monoxide and
hydrogen. There is speculation that the catalyst work today
has followed only a single-reaction path. Interesting as it may
be, perhaps there are other routes that need to be emphasized.
I am concerned that too much of our current effort is based
on the demonstration of technology which will not be used.
We need to emphasize combustion technology more than we
have, and we need to emphasize a more basic approach to our
development work, in essence betting that we are going to be
alive in the nineties, when these efforts will come into being.
It is risky; it is not so attractive as pointing to a large plant out
there in the boondocks, I concede. But I believe that from a
social standpoint we certainly get much higher return on our
investment.
Ted Wentworth (Wentworth Brothers Inc.): I have been
around a long time, having been formerly president of Yolk in
Cincinnati, which is a company that had a rather broad experi-
ence with processes in the chemical and petrochemical fields.
One of these processes, going back 30 years, produces chemical
grade methyl alcohol. My former company is in operation all
over the world, producing chemical-grade alcohol from feed-
stocks such as natural gas and butane, naphtha, and residual oils,
but coal, so far.
On February 1, 1970, DuPont placed its plant at Beaumont in
operation. And I am quite sure that the DuPont people will
attest that other than some minor mechanical problems it has
been a very successful plant. It produces some 2,500 tons and
is far and away the largest single-line plant in the world, by a
factor of at least two.
This is significant when you want to move from the world of
chemicals and the prices that they command to the world of
energy. Everyone knows that methanol, if it can be produced
at the right price, would be a beautiful fuel. In 1972 we
gathered together twenty-nine companies worldwide and sub
sidized a demonstration in New Orleans on a 50-megawatt
Foster-Wheeler B&Wboiler generating power for New Orleans
Public Service on chemical-grade methanol and the higher
alcohols that constitute what we call methyl fuel. We dem-
onstrated that from the environmental aspect, this was really
a super fuel. It bums cleaner than natural gas because the
NO
x
is appreciably lower. The utility world accepts this fuel,
if it can be produced at a price that would be comparable with
the price of petroleum-derived distillates, say the number one
fuel, which would be equivalent to a highly refmed distillate
beingused for gas turbines or with gas liquids-propane, butane.
My associates and I are convinced that with a combination
of scale plus a feedstock at a proper price it is possible to
produce an energy grade or a fuel grade of methanol in today's
dollars-I want to emphasize today's dollars-at about $3 a
million B.t.u. This is in complete contrast to some of the
remarks I have heard in some of these other talks, because a
million B.t.u. is about 15 gallons. We are talking about 20
cents a gallon at the plant.
In order to do this, you have to have a large reserve of a type
of coal-this is all coal-based, of course-that for economic
COAL Leggett 59
reasons or for environmental reasons cannot be burned directly.
We are not interested in coals of a quality suitable for direct
burning. In the U.S., in Canada, in Alaska, in other parts of the
world there are vast quantities of coal that because of location,
because oflow-B.t.u. value, because of high sulfur are not
suitable for direct burning. The first requirement for a project
in which we're going to produce this fuel, therefore, is the
availability of very large quantities in contiguous areas.
A project announced in the Wall Street Journal on Sep-
tember 16 is based on lignite in southwestern North Dakota.
Available for that project is half a billion tons, which is adequate
to produce 25,000 tons ofmethyl fuel a day. This is about equal
to the total world production ofchemical-grade methyl alcohol
in one project. The plant would consist of five modules, each
ofwhich would produce 5,000 tons a day. In other words, our
scale-up from the demonstrated DuPont capacity of 2,500 is
twofold. Actually, when we recognize that we are no longer
interested in opting for the highest selectivity and purity of
crude product, it is possible to produce that amount of alcohol
with essentially the same-size equipment that DuPont now
operates. You have to have twice as much syngas going in,
obviously, but you can convert at least twice as much per pass
because we are nowhere near a point where equilibriumis limit-
ing. I would say that for the first time in history a methanol
plant is being designed based on considerations of equilibrium
rather than considerations of selectivity.
The by-products that are formed are detrimental when you
want to use the product as a chemical. They include dimethyl
ether, drinking alcohol, ethanol, normal propranol, isobutanol-
all of these are beautiful fuels, and they enhance the methanol
as a fuel because all of them contain a lesser percentage of
oxygen than does methanol itself; therefore from the stand-
point of transportation and storage their addition is an advan-
tage.
In the New Orleans demonstration that I mentioned, we
purposely operated the plant first on pure chemical methanol
and then added 5 percent of these higher alcohols, which we had
to buy in the chemical market; then we added 10 percent to
show that there was no detectable difference in the stack gas.
That work was all monitored by B and W, whom we brought
into it, and Foster-Wheeler sent people there; so we had experts
in this particular field to carry out that phase of the work.
The most attractive use of this methyl fuel by a utility is for
gas turbines. It is just about a perfect gas turbine fuel. Utilities
find that they can generate 2 percent more power than with a
hydrocarbon fuel with the same B.t.u. input.
Also, the NO
x
is fantastically low, so low that when they did
the work initially they were certain that their instruments were
out of calibration. They recalibered them all and then re-
peated it, only to fmd the same thing. The utility world knows
that for their peaking turbines-and they all use peaking tur-
bines-ifthey can get this fuel at a price which the public utility
commissions would permit them to pay, a price that would cor-
respond to a number one distillate or a turbine fuel or LPG
or propane or butane, and are assured of a continuing supply,
they are better off than if they rely on relatively short-term
contracts for hydrocarbon fuels, of which almost 50 percent
at present is being imported.
Fifteen utilities in that North Central tier of states have
opted for publicity on this project, three others have gone
through this initial economic evaluation and are rapidly moving
forward, but the people involved do not want publicity. We
have been successful in convincing people that we do have
commercially available technology, proven technology to go
ahead. None of the people involved are interested in govern-
ment participation or money. It all can be fmanced in the
private sector. The key to financing, of course, is take-or-pay
contracts from the utilities.
A.M. Squires: I just should add for the record that this pro-
cess is Texaco's partial oxidation as the coal gasification step.
And there are certainly some by-product chemical implications.
Mr. Wentworth earlier said that he could reach in and pull out
some chemical-grade methanol, say 3 to 4 percent of the
product, and also that one could pull out some synthesis gas to
go with ammonia synthesis.
Ted Wentworth: Again, contrary to some of the remarks that
have been made, we do know, as a result of discussions we are
having currently with several of our chemical companies, that
there is a very real interest in establishing an across-the-fence
association, not necessarily to be part of the consortium that
will build and operate the plant but simply to buy the by-
products across the fence. Now, of those by-products, number
one would be synthesis gas. The surface-mined coal is laid
down at the plant at a price of about 40 cents a million B. t.u.
in today's dollars; the price in North Dakota was published in
1975. Four companies are surface mining there, in relatively
small quantities with relatively small mining equipment. The
average selling price at the mine was $2.99 a ton, which is less
than 26 cents a million B.t.u. There are these large, contiguous
deposits that with very large equipment can be mined at a very
attractive price.
A.M. Squires: I think this is an exciting model for the kind
of thing that some of us have discussed, whether we call it the
piggyback approach or the chemical by-product approach.
Here is a project for providing fuel simply to be burned, but
out of it one can pluck some minor percentage of the product
in the form of chemical goodies.
Ted Wentworth: There is a hydrogen purge stream that is
quite rich in hydrogen, which we normally use to superheat
steam. But an across-the-fence ammonia facility would simply
combine that hydrogen with nitrogen from the air separation
plant.
Waldo Leggett: Several of the groups, I noticed, stated con-
clusions that liquefaction is less attractive long range for mobile
liquid fuels thanfor something like shale oil. I just wanted to
interject that really the jury is still out on this issue and that
most of these processes are in the development stage. I think
it is premature to come to any conclusions at this point. I do
want to comment on the Exxon donor solvent process. We are
planning to build a large pilot plant, a 250-ton-a-day pilot
plant at Baytown. The program that will go with this is going
to cost something in the range of $240 million, half of which
is going to be sponsored by ERDA and the other half by private
enterprise made up of Exxon and Epry and Philips. We have
let contract to McKee for the engineering and Daniels for the
60 Koppel CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
construction of this plant. It should go onstream about 1980,
and we plan about a three-and-a-halfyear run period.
One of the things in the engineering and construction field
that needs comment is capital. I could mention any number of
companies that have laid by the wayside projects that have no
technical risk to speak of and for which the market seemed to
be there, but they don't have the money. Yet the things that
we are talking about are fantastic in capital investment. Some
of you have spoken about pushing off a batch of this invest-
ment on the utilities, but, you know, they have limits, too. If
you want an inexhaustible supply of investment, you practically
have to go to the Middle East.
From a sociological point ofview, the United States does not
have much capital money to spend, and it has lots oflabor. If
at all possible we should be concentrating on sources of equiv-
alent petrochemicals that depend on labor rather than on in-
vestment capital.
The other point that I made earlier I made only because it
seemed to me something that was lacking in this consideration
of coal and biomass as alternative chemical feedstocks. Most
of the discussion has centered on force fitting the feedstock
to our present downstreamend products. Some fits very nicely,
like making synthesis gas and methanol and ammonia out of
coal or ethanol out of biomass-the chemistry is already there.
DuPont for many years in Bell, West Virginia, made ethylene
glycol out of synthesis gas. They shut down for economic
reasons, I guess, some time in the fifties.
But we seem to be stretching things when we are trying to
make polyethylene by somehow either from coal or biomass
getting ethanol and from that getting an ethylene and from
that getting polyethylene. No attention seems to be paid in
this meeting to the possibility of finding other things that you
can make out of coal or oil shale or biomass, things that you
might use instead of polyethylene.
A.M. Squires: I would like to pick up on your remark about
the extremely high capital cost of these coal-conversion plants.
Martin Hawley asked whether we can make the transition from
an oil-based economy to a coal-based economy. And I would
like to translate that into can we make the transition from cheap
energy to dear energy? I think the essence of our energy crisis
is that energy today, at the margin, costs a good deal more
than the average price that the customer is paying. And that
situation has prevailed since October or November of 1973 for
the first time in our Western culture since the transition from
wood to coal in the late 1600's, early 1700's in England. Iron
was first made from coke made from coal in 1709 in Coal-
brookdale, England. And at that moment we moved into an
age where energy at the margin was constantly cheaper than
the average cost that the community was paying. And for 260-
odd years that was true. It is no longer true. I do not believe it
will ever be true again. And I think that is the essence of every-
thing we have been talking about.
The thing we are squirming about on the question ofchemical
feedstocks from coal is that we cannot see the timing because
it costs too much. Nobody is ready to take the risks, and there
are still those tankers idle, and there is still that glut of oil.
Until the world's oil really goes through the inflection point-
it does not have to top out-the real crisis will not come. It
will come not when world oil production goes through the
maximum and starts down the other side; the crisis will come
when there just is not that barrel of oil that somebody wants to
buy. That is the inflection point in the world's oil production
curve.
I think, according to the geologists that I talk to, that that is
coming very soon. I think we are in trouble, and I think we
need to do almost everything that we possibly can to get back
on our feet and get into a posture where we can defend our-
selves and react as these blows strike us.
Paul Koppel (Stone and Webster, Boston): I wouldlike to say
that Stone and Websteris one ofthe companies that maybe are
not so pessimistic on coal liquefaction as it seems that nearly
everyone, with exception of Exxon, here has been. In fact, at
Stone andWebster we are very optimistic that coal liquefaction
will be commercialized, maybe not in a year or two but some-
where down the stream. We have put a good deal of our own
money into the development of a process for the hydropyrol-
ysis of coal liquids for the production of aromatics, methane,
and ethane. And first experimental results are very
encouraging.
BIOMASS
BIOMASS
Dr. Irving S. Goldstein, Professor and Head of the Depart-
ment of Wood and Paper Science at North Carolina State
University, Raleigh, is deeply involved with the technology of
converting wood into chemicals. The author of many articles,
he holds fifteen patents in wood preservation, paper making,
fire retardents of wood, the dimensional stabilization of wood,
and chemicals from wood.
Goldstein 61
I. S. GOLDSTEIN
Biomass to some people is the foliage of plants, to other
people it is the residue from animal feed lots. I have my own
prejudices, and in view of what we have heard earlier today I
think we ought to put the whole area of biomass in some per-
spective as far as availability is concerned.
The total synthetic polymer produced by the chemical in-
dustry in the United States runs just under 20 million tons per
year. And we ought to think of this in relation to the pulp
and paper industry, which produces approximately 50 million
tons of pulp a year.
When people talk to me about the problems of harvesting
and procuring solid wood as a raw material for processing,
they are so used to handling something that comes through a
pipeline or in a tank car or in a tank barge that they forget
that the forest product industry is handlingmuch more organic
material in solid form than would be needed to satisfy all the
requirements of our petrochemical industry.
Earlier discussions of chemical feedstocks put them in the
neighborhood of 55 million tons a year in round numbers.
But a hundred million tons a year of wood is used by the pulp
and paper industry, and a hundred and fifty million tons a
year of wood is used by the solid wood products industry for
lumber, plywood, particle board, fiber board, and things like
that. We're not talking about all that much material in rela-
tion to what the forest products industry can now handle.
What are we talking about as far as availability is concerned?
Rubber is biomass, and we know that natural rubber used to
be more important than it is, but it still is a fairly important
commodity in the world today. Rubber constitutes only per-
haps 5 percent of the product of the rubber tree; the rest of it
is not used.
Also among the extractives are the naval stores. (Extractives
are those components which are not structural components of
the tree.) The naval stores industry, which used to be very
primitive,just tapping trees or distilling turpentine and rosin
from stumps, now derives most of its raw material as a by-
product of the pulp and paper industry. And in the United
States now we use approximately one million tons a year of
material called tall oil, which is a mixture of fatty acids and
rosin acids. This again is quite small compared to the total
amount of material we need and the total amount of material
which is available.
If we conservatively say that the 500 million acres offorest
land in the United States is capable of growing two tons per
year of lignocellulose, this gives us a billion tons of renewable.
Everyone else is talking about depletion and when things are
going to run out, and we have 50 years of liquid fossil fuels
and maybe 300 years of solid materials and all that, but no-
body has remarked on the fact that this stored fossil energy or
material is like money in the bank. It was laid down over geo-
logic time by the accumulation of biomass under the changes
brought about by geologic accident. And it is certain that we
are using it faster today than it is being regenerated. Whether
we have to come to grips with its ultimate depletion, certainly
I would think that, in fewer years than our country has been
in existence, even if we convert completely to the solid fossil
material we will still have a crisis as far as our material needs
are concerned. Even if we get fusion energy, we are still going
to need something to make our synthetic organic materials
with. We have to be clothed, we need insulating materials, we
need elastomers, we need adhesives. Our society is too com-
plex to run entirely on inorganic materials.
Now about 95 percent of the biomass on land is in the form
of woody vegetation. And in the United States we are growing
about 750 million tons a year which is not being used. If we
grow a billion tons and we use 250 million tons for pulp and
paper and solid wood, that leaves 750 million tons which is
just being recycled in the carbon cycle. That means the wood-
62 Goldstein CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
CH30H
HETIIAiiOL
"I CARBON
OIL
GAS
Fig. 1. Chemical conversion processes applicable to total lignocellulose.
<$'
.<.."
"",
~ "
~ "
<0'"
LIGNOCELLULOSE --LIQUE-o----- OIL ----CRACKING TO C"EHICALS
FACTI ON OR rUEL
HYDROCARBON
NIXTURE
:>
One of the other components is a cementing and stiffening
polymer called lignin, which is a three-dimensional polymer of
phenol propane units and you might envision this as a type of
phenol formaldehyde or Bakelite resin. This material cements
cellulosic fibers together and acts as a stiffening agent within
the fibers. In fact it is the matrix in which the cellulose fibers
are embedded, just the way fiber glass might be embedded in a
polyester resin.
And there is a third polymer which is also a matrix polymer,
which we call hemicellulose (Figure 3). These polymers are
also carbohydrates in nature. They are lower molecular weight
than cellulose. They are branched. They are comprised of
other sugars than glucose, many of them pentoses. The hemi-
celluloses in hard and soft woods are different.
This, then, is the raw material which is available to us, and
we use it to a great extent. As I said, we use the cellulose, 50
million tons a year, in the form of pulp. We also dissolve away
the matrix carbohydrate and lignin, and we form a material
which we call chemical cellulose, for dissolving pulp from
which we can make cellophane, rayons, cellulose acetate, car-
boxymethylcellulose, ethyl cellulose, methyl cellulose, what-
ever. And there are some who say that instead of making
polyethylene and polypropylene we should go back to these
naturally derived polymers.
What I would like to call to your attention is the possibility
of an intermediate route, a route between the gasification of
the coal polymer to give us synthesis gas and the utilization of
the wood polymer in its high-molecular-weight form. I would
like to propose a partial degradation of these polymeric mate-
peckers are getting it, the beavers are getting it, the gypsy
moths are getting it, the wood-destroying fungi are getting it,
etc. Man is the only one of these organisms which are depen-
dent upon biomass, living plants, that will plant two trees for
every one he uses. I never heard about the beavers doing this,
or the insects-the pine beetles which are ravaging the South.
What I propose is that this 750 million tons a year which we
are growing in the United States and not utilizing now is more
than enough to provide our material synthetic organic needs in
perpetuity. I am not talking about walnut logs or redwood
trees or even Douglas Fir or mature Southern pine trees, which
we may need for lumber or pulp. I am talking about rotten
trees, crooked trees, small trees, noncommercial species, all the
stuffthat our foresters deemjunk. Ifyou were to drive through
the Southern states, between every small hamlet you would
drive for miles and miles and all you would see on either side
would be green vegetation. This is not returning anything to
the land owner, and it is not returning anything to society,
even if it is green. And if we can harvest a corn field every
year and have it grow back in a crop the next year, I see noth-
ing wrong with harvesting woody vegetation on some sort of
rotation.
I am going to talk about wood as a chemical raw material
even though biomass does include such things as starch. I
think, the way the world economy and the world population
are shaping up, that it is probably immoral, even if it is expe-
dient in the short-term economic picture, to convert starch
into chemicals when starch can be used as food for people.
Before I talk about what chemicals one can make from the
structural component of plants-this is the cell-wall material-
let me briefly describe what this is made of. The plant cell
wall is a mixture of three polymeric materials, and the relative
proportion of these materials depend:s on the plant and on the
species. You might think of it as being a reinforced composite
polymeric material.
The major component is cellulose. Cellulose is a long-chain
polymer of d-glucose just as starch is a polymer of d-glucose,
but cellulose has a configuration which allows it to form a
crystal structure which gives it considerable strength. Unfortu-
nately, this same crystallinity makes it difficult for us to break
the cellulose down into glucose even though we can do this
easily with starch. This fibrous cellulose, which most people
know in the form of cotton or in the form of paper, is embed-
ded in a matrix of two other polymers. The cellulose is roughly
50 percent of the wood, and in some plants it might be even
greater.
HYDROLYS IS:>
Fig. 2. Chemical conversion of cellulose.
BIOMASS
l
(C6H100 S)nJ
HEi1ICELUJLOSE
Goldstein
ACID
HYDROLYSI S
63
r--
0
-:

ACID> FURFUiu\L
Fig. 3. Chemical conversion of hemicellulose.
rials to maintain as much of the carbon bond as we can and to
stick that as closely as we can to our existing chemical indus-
try, which is based on monomers from petroleum.
Figure 1 is a schematic representation of the cellulose. Two
of the hydroglucose units hooked together give cellobiose and
in a long chain which may have a degree of polymerization of
up to ten thousand in native cellulose. The crystalline struc-
ture is plain; the unit cell gives a very sharp X-ray defraction
pattern. The difficulty is that it is happy being associated with
itself by virtue of the hydrogen bonds. This has three residual
free hydroxyl groups. The association is very strong. This is
why you can launder a cotton shirt and it does not dissolve;
whereas if you cook up starch in water, you would get pud-
ding. It also interferes with efforts to break the cellulose
down into glucose.
The other major component of the plant cell wall is lignin
(Figure 4). This is a schematic representation; we do not
know exactly what the structure is. But the phenol propane
unit from which it is derived shows here. The lignin is about
50 percent aromatic. Also important is the phenolic character
of the lignin. When we talk about breaking this material down
and getting aromatic chemicals it is clear from whence they are
derived. There are carbon carbon bonds here also. In pulping
wood we dissolve the lignin away from the cellulose, leaving
the fibers behind in the form of pulp, and we do this generally
by cleaving the ether linkages. But in order to break this down
into monomer chemicals, we have to break these carbon carbon
bonds, and that of course is more difficult.
Everything that has been said about coal at this meeting also
pertains to the lignocellulose from which the coal was originally
derived (Figure 1). And so we can take lignocellulose-and by
this I mean the entire mixture of cellulose and lignin and
hemicelluloses-and we can gasify it to yield a synthesis gas.
There are some advantages to this perhaps over coal because as
we already have the proper CO ratio, we do not need an oxy-
gen plant, and as we don't have any sulfur in it, if we are con-
Fig. 4 Abbreviated skeletal schematic structure of conifer lignin.
64 Goldstein CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATlVES
TABLE 1. CHEMICALS FROM LIGNOCELLULOSE
$40 a ton in chipped form, which is about 2 cents a pound.
But we have just completed a study in Piedmont, North Caro-
lina, which indicates that we can haul total true chips from
low-grade hard woods a distance of 50 miles and deliver them
at about 8 mills/pound of wood. So instead of a penny a
pound for the cellulose, right now I can get cellulose for 8
mills.
One of the ventures which the National Science Foundation
is backing is a study to improve the yield of this hydrolysis,
because whether we can get the yield of ethylene from 26 to
56 is theoretical, and the hydrolysis of starch to glucose is vir-
tually quantitative. If we can raise this to 60,70,80 percent,
it would have a tremendous effect on the relative value of cel-
lulose to ethylene. Then a penny-a-pound cellulose would be
3 cents a pound ethylene as far as material costs are concerned;
it would still have to be processed.
But we are not talking about complicated technology here;
this is fermentation. Distilleries and breweries do it, and this
would be hydrolysis.
The second conponent of the wood, the hemicellulose, is
depicted in Figure 3 as hexosis, 6-carbon sugars and pentoses.
In the case of hardwood, where xylan, the 5-carbon sugar, pre-
dominates, the hydrolysis product is xylose, which in the pres-
ence of acid is converted into furfural.
cerned about the poisoning of our shift catalyst when we want
to change the ratio of CO to hydrogen, we may not have that
problem. Given the synthesis gas, we can make ammonia,
methanol, hydrocarbons, whatever one would do with synthe-
sis gas from coal.
In a country which does not have coal and has ample vegeta-
tion, I would submit that it is probably better to have a native
syngas industry based on wood rather than on coal. Whether
or not this is feasible in the United States with our abundant
supplies of coal, I'll leave to economists. But perhaps up in
Maine, which is far from the coal fields, they might be able to
afford to use their native materials rather than haul the prod-
uct of coal from Wyoming all the way across the country.
We can also liquefy biomass (Figure 1) just as we can coal
and we can get an oil, and perhaps that oil could be cracked to
chemicals or fuel. And we can pyrolyze it (Figure 1) to car-
bon, oil, and gas. Most people do use this product of the py-
rolysis'of lignocellulose whenever they grill anything on a
charcoal grill in the backyard. That carbon came from the
pyrolysis of the lignocellulose.
But I would submit that if that's the best we can do with the
wood in this country we should probably use coal. I would
prefer to use a rifle rather than a shotgun to get after what we
can in the way of chemicals from wood.
If we take cellulose, which I have represented in Figure 2 as
a polymer of anhydroglucose, it can be hydrolyzed to the glu-
cose, which by an ancient art can be fermented to ethanol, and
this in turn can be dehydrated to ethylene or converted into
butadiene. In the 1940's when I joined Kopper's Company
they were making ethylene and butadiene by an ethanol route.
In the presence of acid the glucose goes through an interesting
transformation, to give first hydroxy methyl furfural and then
levulinic acid. And levulinic acid, which is polyfunctional,
should make an interesting chemical intermediate.
Some of the stoichiometry of this conversion indicates that
one can end up with a very high yield of ethylene from cellu-
lose, about a 3 to 1 ratio. In practice, though, the competitive
destruction of the glucose under acid hydrolysis conditions
that you in effect get only a 50 percent yield from the
cellulose. So you end with only about 26 parts of ethylene al-
though you start with 162 parts of cellulose.
That roughly 6 to 1 ratio of cellulose to ethylene means
that if you could get cellulose for a penny a pound, the mate-
rial cost of the ethylene derived from it would be 6 cents a
pound. The current price of ethylene is 12 to 13 cents a
pound, and so the material cost of only 6 cents a pound when
crude oil at $12 a barrel co.sts 4 cents a pound is not so far out
of line. You might say where can one get cellulose at a penny
a pound when wood pulp costs 15 cents a pound and walnut
logs cost even more than that? That of course is the problem
with what cellulose is worth. Its cost depends on its purity
and on its value for other applications. Walnut logs might be
worth thousands of dollars each; pulp wood is worth about
Total Lignocellulose
Ammonia
Carbon
Methanol
Hydrocarbon Oils
Hemicellulose
Ethanol
Furfural
Ce 11 ul ose
Ethanol
Ethylene
Butadiene
Levulinic Acid
Phenol
Benzene
1974 u. S. Production (2)
6
15.7 x 10 tons
6.9 x 10
9
Ibs.
2 x 10
9
lbs.
2 x 10
9
lbs.
9
.23.5 x 10 lbs.
3.7 x 10
9
lbs.
2.3 x 10
9
lbs.
11 .1 x 10
9
1bs
LIGNIN
HYDROLYSIS
HYDROGENAT; ON
PYROLYSIS
..
PHEi-lOUC CeH:,oi-l CG!-::'
MIXTURE ---3-- PHENOL
Fig. 5. Chemical conversion of lignin.
BIOMASS Goldstein 65
Before butadiene became as cheap as it is, DuPont used to
make a considerable amount of nylon from furfural. So fur-
fural is certainly a worth-while chemical intermediate. Here
the economics is much better; the xylan, being amorphous, is
readily hydrolyzed to xylose, and this conversion goes into
high yield.
The third component of wood, the lignin, requires more
stringent processing (Figure 5). It is more like coal in nature
and requires high-temperature and high-pressure hydrogena-
tion or pyrolysis. But we can get a mixture of phenols, a com-
plicated mixture, and by reforming the alcolation or dehydra-
tion we could make phenol and subsequentlybenzene if we
had to.
There are skeptics out there who say everybody knows that
the way to make phenol is from benzene and the way to make
ethanol is from ethylene, not vice versa. That's fine as long as
you have mother nature's largesse in the form of stored hydro-
carbons. When you no longer have those stored hydrocarbons,
if you really want the benzene and the ethylene, they are at
least obtainable by this group.
In summary Table 1 lists the tonnage chemicals, and here
again, I should point out, I have neglected all the other mate-
rials which we can derive from wood. We get our vanillin, our
synthetic flavoring material that can be obtained from lignin,
as a by-product, maybe the output of one or two small pulp
mills. There are many chemicals in small quantities that are
now, and can be in the future, obtained from biomass. But
when we're talking about major tonnage chemicals that will be
compatible with our existing chemical industry, we come
down to the old familiars. From the total lignocellulose we
could get ammonia, carbon, methanol, or hydrocarbon oils.
From the hemicellulose we get ethanol or furfural. From the
cellulose we can get ethanol, ethylene, butadiene, or levulinic
acid, and 'from the lignin, phenol and benzene.
66 Katzen CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
Dr. Raphael Katzen, Managing Partner of Raphael Katzen and
Associates, Cincinnati, is currently concerned with chemicals
from wood wastes, with converting waste sugar mill bagasse
into furfural, with the recovery of chemicals from sulfite
waste liquor, and with the production of ethyl alcohol by
fermentation from sulfite waste liquor. He has published
extensively, is a Fellow of the AIChE, and has received an
Outstanding Alumnus Award from Polytechnic Institute of
New York.
RAPHAEL KATZEN
Table 1. Methanol
%
Formaldehyde 45
Solvents 10
DMT (dimethyl terephthalate) 7
Plastics 8
Export 5
Miscellaneous 25
Total U.S. production 1974
Waste wood, or forest residue, represents a potential feed-
stock for the production of methanol, ethanol, furfural, and
phenolics. Indeed, investment requirements and operating
costs have been developed for commercial-size installations
using waste wood as a feedstock and employing known engi-
neering technology.
METHANOL
Methanol Production Today. Methanol was originally pro-
duced in the United States in relatively limited quantities as a
by-product of the wood-carbonization industry. Production ex-
panded rapidly in the 1920's with the advent of high-pressure
synthesis plants using water gas generated from coke. As natu-
ral gas became available, the raw material was switched from
water gas to a synthesis gas produced from the reforming of
natural gas.
In the United States synthetic methanol manufacture in
1974 totaled 1,080 million gallons, produced in twelve plants
having a combined annual capacity of approximately 1,242
million gallons. Methanol capacity, production, and uses are
listed in Table 1.
Capacity,
MMGPY
22
50
80
100
160
200
230
Total U.S. capacity
Plants
Number of
plants
1
3
I
4
1
1
1
Production and Uses
Total
MMGPY
22
150
80
400
160
200
230
1,242
MMGPY
486
108
76
86
54
270
1,080 (1)
Methanol Synthesis. Methanol is produced by the catalytic
reaction of hydrogen and carbon monoxide at a temperature
of about 600F (315C) and a pressure of 1,500 to 5,000
lb./sq. in. (220 to 725 kPa), according to the following
equation:
2H
2
+CO ~ CH
3
0H
When natural gas is the feedstock, it is first necessary to re-
form the methane into hydrogen and carbon monoxide in the
2: 1 volume ratio required for methanol synthesis. This opera-
tion, which requires steam and carbon dioxide, is represented
2This material was prepared with A. E. Hokanson of Raphael Katzen
Associates.
by the following equation:
3CH
4
+CO
2
+2H
2
0 ~ 8H
2
+4CO
Partial Oxidizers. Several types of gasifiers have been de-
veloped for the partial oxidation of wood, wood waste, and
garbage. Designed to operate at atmospheric pressure, in con-
trast to coal gaSifiers, which can operate at pressures up to 400
lb./sq. in. gauge, the gasifiers produce a crude gas consisting
primarily of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide,
with minor amounts of heavier hydrocarbons. Also, in general,
about 2 percent of the wood (dry basis) is converted to an oil
tar fraction. Thus, although the gas is potentially useful for
BIOMASS
WOOD
AIR
REACTOR SCRUBBER
Katzen
COMPRESSOR HOT
CARBONATE
MEA
67
CRYOGENIC
SEPARATION
COflPRESSOR I RON HOT COt1PRESSOR
CATALYST CARBONATE
SHIFT
....----. PRODUCT
ZINC CHROMIUI'
CATALYST
REACTOR
DISTILLATION
Fig. 1. Methanol from wood waste.
methanol synthesis, it must be subjected to extensive purifica-
tion to bring it up to the syngas composition.
Depending on the process, partial oxidation of the wood
waste is carried out with air or oxygen. With air, the resulting
crude gas contains about 42 percent nitrogen and has a heating
value of about 180 B.t.u./std. cu. ft. (5.4 kJ/Nm
3
). With oxy-
Table 2. Composition of Raw Gas from the
Moore-Canada Reactor
gen, nitrogen dilution is essentially eliminated, and so the
heating value of the crude gas is about 350 B.t.u./std. cu. ft.
(10.4 kJ/Nm
3
).
Moore-Canada of Richmond, British Columbia, has devel-
oped a plugflow, or moving bed, reactor for producing a low-
B.t.u. gas from "as is" wood waste containing 40 to 50 percent
moisture. The Moore reactor employs a mixture of air and
steam as the oxidizing medium. Aside from the presence of
nitrogen, the gas is of good quality (Table 2).
Raw gas (dry basis)
Hydrogen
Carbon monoxide
Carbon dioxide
Methane
Hydrocarbon
Oxygen
Nitrogen
Moore-Canada
(wood waste)
voL %
18.3
22.8
9.2
2.5
0.9
0.5
45.8
100.0
Methanol from Wood Waste. The production of synthetic
methanol from wood waste is shown schematically in Figure 1.
Crude gas from the gasifiers passes upward through a cooler-
absorber-scrubber to remove organic compounds such as acetic
acid. The partially purified gas is compressed to about 100
lb./sq. in. gauge (14.5 kPa) and treated in a two-stage system
to remove carbon dioxide. In the first stage a hot potassium
carbonate system is used to reduce the carbon dioxide content
to about 300 parts per million. The gas stream then is pro-
68 Katzen CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
cessed in a monoethanolamine system to reduce the carbon
dioxide content to about 50 parts per million.
The essentially CO
2
-free gas passes to a cryogenic system
where methane and hydrocarbons are removed first, followed
by the removal of 99 percent of the nitrogen. The net product
is a gas that is essentially a mixture of carbon monoxide and
hydrogen but which is not yet in the correct ratio for metha-
nol synthesis.
Following cryogenic separation of the "inerts," the gas is
compressed to 400 Ib./sq. in. gauge (58 kPa) for shift conver-
sion. Here a portion of the carbon monoxide reacts with
water vapor to form additional hydrogen, to the extent that
the fmal gas contains the required two parts of hydrogen to
one part of carbon monoxide.
The shift reaction also produces carbon dioxide, which must
be removed from the gas prior to the methanol reaction. This
is carried out in a second hot potassium carbonate adsorption
system, which removes about 97 percent of the carbon dioxide
formed during the shift reaction.
The synthesis gas is compressed to about 2,500 Ib./sq. in.
gauge and fed into the methanol synthesis reactor, where ap-
proximately 95 percent of it is converted to methanol, the
balance being lost in the inerts purged to the boiler. The
product then passes to a distillation train for separation of the
light ends and the higher alcohols. A grade A methanol prod-
uct is produced. The mixture of light ends and higher alcohol
is used as a fuel.
Conversion Efficiencies. A comparison of the efficiency of
wood waste conversion to methanol as compared with natural
gas and coal conversions is shown in Figure 2. Since both coal
and wood waste are partially oxidized in their natural state,
wood waste more so than coal, conversion efficiencies are
lower than for natural gas.
100
91,0
2
2. OVERALL PLANT
1. PROCESS
2
84.6
60
....
z
w
U
IX
W
Cl.
>-
50.8 u
z
50 w
U
::;:
u..
w
40
o
70
90
30
80
20
10
NATURAL GAS COAL WOOO WASTE
Fig. 2. Methanol conversion efficiency.
BIOMASS Katzen 69
50
257,000,000
88,300,000
118,000,000
463,300,000
89,780,000
69,060,000
48,340,000
41,440,000
34,530,000
62,150,000
345,300,000
GPY 190
0
Proof
361,000,000
20 30 40
DOLLARS PER ODT OF WOOD WASTE
Table 3. Ethanol1974
Capacity (2)
Synthetic ethanol
Production 1974
Synthetic Industrial
Fermentation Industrial
Fermentation Beverage
Industrial ethanol usage %
Chemical manufacture 26
Toiletries & cosmetics 20
Acetaldehyde 14
Industrial solvents 12
Detergents 10
Miscellaneous 18
....
__
30 S.P.
10

a..
VI
!Z
&..I
U
DOLLARS PER TON COAL
Fig.4. Methanol selling price (1975).
Synthetic Ethanol Plants
Petrochemical plant size range: 25 to 120 MM GPY
Number of plants: 6
3OItlJrIl:u..&.----.'--_--.6..--__---},..--__--"
9

70

1. 00 200 300 4. 00
DOLLARS PER 1,000 cu/ft NATURAL GAS
110 r-- __---,
11 OT'"""---.,....:.::::..:.:..;:.:.:.:.:.::....:..:F-=:.:;...:=T-::::__
z
g 60 +-----f-----+-----+--::_""""'--l
..oJ

40
a..
VI
!Z 20 +-----=-i-----+-----+----,
&..I
u
50

5200 I'll
S 50
5150
S100 M11
Fig. 3. Methanol plant investment (1975).
Investment and Operating Costs. The projected investment
requirements for wood waste methanol plants capable of pro-
ducing 50 and 200 MM gpy of methanol, compared with the
investment of natural gas and coal, are shown in Figure 3, and
Figure 4 compares the required selling price of synthetic
methanol from natural gas, coal, and wood waste as a function
of raw material cost. At an expected wood cost of $34/0DT
for waste wood the selling price required for the methanol
from a 50-MM-gpy facility would be $0.96/gallon, allowing a
15 percent after-tax profit on investment. This compares with
the current selling price of $0.38/gallon for petrochemical
methanol.
ETHANOL
Ethanol Production. Ethanol in the United States is pro-
duced by synthesis from petroleum feedstocks and by fermen-
tation of carbohydrate materials. A breakdown of production
and uses is shown in Table 3.
Ethanol from Wood Waste. The hydrolysis of wood by
mineral acids has been developed by means of both sulfuric
and hydrochloric acids. In general, the most successful pro-
cesses have used dilute sulfuric acid. During World War II the
Scholler Process using dilute sulfuric acid yielded about 50
70 Katzen CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
duces degradation. Hydrolyzer operating conditions have a
significant effect on the yield of sugar. Optimum conditions
as determined by TVA pilot plant development work are listed
below:
A dilute hydrolysis solution from a previous batch is pumped
into the top of the hydrolyzer containing the wood waste.
The sulfuric acid concentration varies during the percolation
cycle, averaging 0.53 percent of the water present in the batch.
After the dilute hydrolyzate has been charged, hot water to-
gallons of 190 proof ethanol/ODT of wood chips (not in-
cluding bark). A modification of this process, called the
Madison Process, developed by the U.S. Forest Products
Laboratory, improved the yield to about 65 gal./ton. In the
case of wood waste containing 25 percent bark, the ethanol
yield was found to average 50 gallons/ODT.
For an ethanol-from-wood-waste facility (Figure 5) a basic
design parameter was a production rate of 25 million, 190
proof ethanol, a capacity matching the output of the smallest
of six synthetic plants. Such a plant would require a wood
waste supply of 1,480 ODT/D, comparable to the require-
ments for an average-sized pulp mill producing 700 ODT/D of
pulp.
Instead of a simple batch operation as employed in European
plants, the Forest Products Laboratory developed a semicon-
tinuous process in which the hydrolyzate percolates through
the "chip" bed, continuously removing the sugars as they are
formed; this procedure avoids prolonged retention of the
sugars under acid conditions at high temperatures and thus re-
WOOD
WATER
Acid concentration in total water
Maximum temperature of
percolation
Rate of temperature rise
Percolation time, min.
Ratio of total water/DO wood
Percolation rate
Optimum
TVA conditions
0.53%
385P.
5P./min.
145-190
10
0.065-0.108 gal./(min.) (cu. ft.)
ACID
FLASH FURFURAL
TOWER
SLUDGE
CLARIFIER
FERMENTERS YEAST ALCOHOL EXTRACTIVE
SEPARATION STRIPPER TOWER
.-- TOWER
EVAPORATORS
PLHOSE
CONCENTRATE
Fig. 5. Ethanol from wood waste.
ETHANOL FROM ETHYLENE
1.
...J
0.4!t------+----+----4----1
-
50
22
71
30 40
DOLLARS PER ODT WOOD WASTE
14 18
CENTS PER POUND ETHYLENE
20
10
:P.-
6
g

"'" 8 1.
a::

Katzen
2.2
"'"
1.

0
1.4
i
1.0
.....
-
0.6
10
gether with sulfuric acid is added, its temperature being in-
creased to a fmal temperature of 385F (196C), equivalent
to a vessel pressure of 200 lb./sq. in. gauge (29 kPa). Mter 70
minutes of pumping, a strong hydrolysis solution starts to
flow out of the bottom of the hydrolyzer. Two letdown flash
stages are used, the first stage operating at 50 lb./sq. in. gauge
(7.5 kPa) and the second stage at atmospheric pressure. The
condensates from the flash vapor from both stages contain
furfural and methanol, which are recovered. The underflow
from the two flash stages is the sugar-containing solution. At
the end of the percolation cycle the lignin-rich residue is dis-
charged and recovered and used as a fuel.
The flash condensate passes to a distillation tower for the
recovery of methanol. From the base of this tower the bot-
toms pass to a second distillation tower for the recovery of
the furfural-water azeotrope.
The hot acid hydrolyzate solution is neutralized with a lime
slurry, and the calcium sulfate precipitate is separated in a
clarifier. Calcium sulfate sludge is concentrated to about 50
percent solids and is trucked to a disposal area.
Neutralized liquor is blended with recovered yeast from
previous fermentation and passed to fermentation tanks.
From the fermenters the fermented liquor passes to yeast
separators for recovery of the yeast for recycle. Fermenta-
tion is carried out by the yeast strain Sacchromyces cerevisiae.
BIOMASS
$200
1.80-----..----
1. 25 MM gpy (190' proof)
2. 100 MM 9PY (190' proof)
Fig.6. Ethanol plant investments (1975).

DOLLARS PER BUSHEL CORN
Ethanol is recovered in a series of distillation towers. In the
first tower live steam is used to strip ethanol from the liquor.
Ethanol is finally rectified to approximately 190 proof in the
rectifying tower.
Bottoms from the beer-stripping tower contain the pentose,
or C
s
,sugars. Instead of disposing of this stream in waste
treatment systems, the company found it economically feasi-
ble to concentrate the sugars to a 65 percent solution for sale
as a feed supplement or for conversion into furfural.
Investment and Operating Costs. The investment require-
ments of ethanol from wood-waste facilities, direct from the
hydration of ethylene, or from grain fermentation are com-
pared in Figure 6. These investments are based on a complete
"grass roots" facility.
A projection of the selling price of ethanol from three differ-
ent feedstocks is shown in Figure 7. At a cost of $34jODT of
Fig. 7. Ethanol selling price (1975).
"'"
1.40

o
i .........

O.
-
WOOD WASTE GRAIN ETHYLENE
$ 50 MM
$150 Mfl
!
>-
z
w
$100 MM
72 Katzen CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
SASlS OF
',.tOOD WASTE (HARDWOOD) 761) TID
l"lvEsmENT $27.7
PENTOSE IN :100D WASTE 18%
120,OOO/VR
25,OOO/VR
30,OOO/VR
100% OF LABOR
20% OF INVESTMENT
<lOX AFTER TAXES)
wood waste the estimated price for ethanol is $1.90/gallon for
a 25 MM gpy facility, with a 15 percent after-tax return on in-
vestment being allowed. This price compares with a current
selling price for ethanol of $1.15/gallon of 190 proof.
FURFURAL
Furfural Production. Furfural is a unique five-membered
organic ring compound used in the solvent refming of petro-
leum oils, as an industrial solvent, in resin production, and as
the starting point of the synthesis of the Furan chemicals.
Breakdown production and uses are given in Table 4.
PRODUCIlON.,-c'OSIS.
1. DEPRECIATION
2. MAINTENANCE
3. TAXES AND INSURANCE
OPERATORS
FOREMEN
MANAGEMENT
PERCENT

o "
50
1915
3S SB..L"ING-
15 PRICE
V "
25
i 20
I::
5
o ----:!,,---=,'o----:!J5--: ..
Furfural is produced by the hydrolysis of the pentosans to
xylose followed by the dehydration of xylose to furfural.
Production in the United States is based on com cobs, rice
hulls, sugar cane bagasse, and oat hulls as raw materials. Such
agricultural residues offer the advantages of relatively easy
collection and high potential pentose yield (15 to 23 percent
on a dry basis) relative to wood (11 percent for hardwood and
6 percent for softwood).
FI:rfural from Wood Waste. In a one-step batch hydrolysis
operation the wood waste is charged to the digester together
with a mineral acid catalyst. Steam is introduced into the di-
Table 4. Fmfmal197S
Production (3)
U.S.A
Europe (western)
Asia, Australia
South Africa
Latin America and the Dominican Republic
Raw materials
Corn cobs
Bagasse
Oat hulls
Rice hulls
Uses (4)
Chemical intermediates
Lube oil refining
Solvents
MMlb./yr.
186
77
36
20
S6
37S
Percentage
55
25
20
100
OCl..LARS PER WASTE waD (tWlDWD[J))
Fig. 9. Fmfmal from waste wood (hardwood)-40 MM lb/yr facility.
gester and continUOUsly withdrawn. The vapors leaving the
digester consist primarily of water and furfural, which are
separated by azeotropic distillation. A schematic drawing of
the process is shown in Figure 8.
Hardwood waste would be chosen over softwood as a feed-
stock because of its higher furfural yield. Such a plant would
need to be located in the eastern or midwestern U.S. since
these regions account for 82 percent of all hardwoods. A
projected 40 million lb./yr. plant would require 760 ODT/D
of wood feed.
Digesters are of the rotating spherical type about 18 feet
(5 mm) in diameter. Typically they are charged with 15 ODT
of wood waste, which is acidified with concentrated sulfuric
acid (100 percent) amounting to about 4 percent of the weight
of the OD wood charge. Vapors are released from the digester
under pressure control at about 60 lb./sq. in. gauge (6.7 kPa).
Digester vapors may contain up to 10 percent by weight of
furfural, but 5 percent is probably a reasonable operating level.
The overhead is condensed and subcooled to 140F to form
two immiscible phases: the water phase, containing about 10
percent by weight furfural, and the furfural phase, containing
about 84 weight percent furfural. The water phase is decanted
and fed to a methanol tower to remove methanol and low
boilers, and then it is returned to the stripper for furfural re-
covery. The furfural-rich layer is fed to a dehydrating tower,
which produces a furfural-water azeotrope overhead and an
essentially dry furfural product at the bottoms.
__
1. flYDROLYZE PENTOSANS I N
WASTE INTO FURFURAL,
2. CONDENSE FURFURAL AND STEAM
VAPOR.
3. STRIP FURFURAL FROM CRUDE
FURFURAL FEED.
4. DEHYDRATE FURFURAL.
5. REFINE FURFURAL
WOOD wt.. STE
ACID
DIGESTER
I
CCNCENSER
2
STRIPPER DEHYDRATOR REFINING
3 4 5
Fig. 8. Furfural from wood waste (hardwood).
BIOMASS Katzen 73
REFERENCES
NOMENCLATURE
1. Chemical Marketing Reporter.
2. U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearm Information for fiscal June-
July, 1974-45.
3. Forest Products Laboratory Report, April, 1975.
4. Chemical Week, April 2, 1955.
Investment and Operating Costs. The investment require-
ments for a 40 million lb./yr. furfural plant is $28 million and
for a 15 million lb./yr. plant is $14.7 million. This investment
covers a complete "grass roots" facility including off-site
facilities.
Estimates of the delivered, or market, price of furfural as a
function of hardwood costs are shown in Figure 9.
If a hardwood cost of $34/0DT is assumed, the delivered
price for furfural is $0.63/lb. for a 40 million lb./yr. facility.
This compares with the current market price of furfural at
$0.47/lb. For a 15 million lb./yr. furfural plant, the delivered
price is estimated at $0.90/lb. for the same wood cost. These
projected selling prices assume a 15 percent after-tax return on
investment.
ODT/D
GPY
190
0
Pr
MM
oven dry ton per day
gallon per year
95 vol. %ethanol
million
74 Sarkanen CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
Dr. K. V. Sarkanen, Professor of Wood Chemistry at the Uni-
versity of Washington, Seattle, holds appointments to the Col-
lege of Forest Resources and the Department of Chemical
Engineering. His current research interests are in lignin and
wood polysaccharides. The author of many publications, he
has coauthored a book on lignins.
K. V. SARKANEN
We have been talking about wood waste so far, but we should
not forget that the agricultural lands are the major biomass
producers in the United States. We have about 400 million
acres of agricultural land, and the photosynthetic activity is
about triple that of woodlands; so agricultural residue, which
amounts probably to 500 million tons a year, is a much larger
pool of potential biomass for future utilization.
This research unfortunately has been grossly neglected, and
I think it is one of the aspects in this complicated area which
deserves intensive study. Dr. Goldstein pointed out that the
pulp industry in terms of the weight of the product is larger
than the petrochemical industry. Still there is a difficulty, and
in terms of scale of production, while the petrochemicals are
obtained from essentially point sources, that is from oil wells
or coal mines, the vegetation is spread widely over the country,
and it is difficult to supply to any given location larger amounts
ofwood waste or agricultural residues than perhaps 2 thousand
tons a day. The scale, then, is different. While it is easy to
visualize a coal-based plant utilizing, let's say, 20 thousand to
100 thousand tons of coal a day, the size of wood- or biomass-
based plants by necessity is one-tenth the size. So this is one
constraint which needs to be relieved. Areas which do not
fmd a counterpart in the petrochemical industry deserve in-
tensive study.
Equally as important as the conversion ofchemicals, I believe,
is the improvement in biomass production-plantations, regen-
eration, and genetic improvement. Dr. Goldstein pointed out
that the production in normal forests amounts to about 2 tons
an acre. In plantation growth, particularly in poplar planta-
tions, we can increase this eightfold and perhaps more; bam-
boo plantations go even to tenfold that figure. Obviously we
have to get rid of wide forestry and get to plantation through
silviculture, and this deserves a great deal of research, which
still is in its infancy.
We have also the problem of harvesting and transportation,
which puts a limit on acquiring biomaterial farther away than
perhaps 100 miles. We have to develop better methods of
harvesting. It is being done for the forest residues, but practi-
cally no work has been devoted to the harvesting of the non-
food biomass from agricultural residues. And we should also
take into account that wood unfortunately contains 50 per-
cent water, which cannot be removed in the forest; so we have
to haul an extra weight equal to that of the dry matter content
of the material.
Since biomass studies have not been conducted with any
great intensity, perhaps even to a lesser degree than studies on
coal, the question arises, how should this area be approached?
As far as research is concerned, we could of course throw the
whole field open to free research and ask the university profes-
sors to characterize biomass. There might be Nobel discoveries
which would open new horizons, but unfortunately most of
this research as usual will be trivial but publishable informa-
tion. For this reason it may be worthwhile to defme our targets
very carefully. I think both fundamental and applied research
is needed, but we must know what our target is. We have to
be very careful, however, since we don't have much information,
that we don't pursue unrealistic schemes or go too far into
the future. An example from another area may explain the
dangers. We are nowadays pursuing the production of electricity
by the use of solar cells. The scientists who are involved say
that right now solar electricity costs 30 times as much as con-
ventional electricity but that we still should be optimistic.
That is what I call an unrealistic approach. I do not think we
should study anything which could have applicability after 300
years or so. We should think about something which can be
applied today.
The interesting question from the chemical feedstock point
of view is whether we can make hydrolysis more specific. Can
BIOMASS Sarkanen 75
we actually stop at an earlier stage and pull out useful inter-
mediates? Some exciting prospects are being studied which
could be extremely useful for chemical intermediates. There
might be a possibility of getting sufficient amounts of phenol.
Microwave degradation is just beginning to be studied, but
there are indications that perhaps the degradation of the total
biomass or of wood agricultural residues can be made more
specific microwave degradation than by hydrolysis.
There is a pilot plant in Albany, Oregon, where fuel oil is
produced from wood byhydrogenolysis. This however, requires
very high pressures and a very costly investment, and it is
probably not very practical for fuel production. But maybe
we should take a look at this to see whether, again, this could
be made more specific so that useful chemicals might be
derived from this approach.
This is obviously high risk research, which we have to explore.
We don't know what will be possible and what will not be. We
are on safer ground ifwe concentrate on more known chemical
conversions. Take, for example, a classical pulping scheme,
which starts from lignocellulose, either wood or straw agri-
cultural residues. Converting it to fiber pulp gives, in the spent
liquor, lignins, carbohydrates, and extractives. I would like to
compare this with the approach of converting the cellulose and
lignocellulose by hydrolysis to hexoses, which could be then
converted by various means to ethanol and many other things.
One important aspect to be realized here is that glucose as a
part of pulp fiber is world priced from 13 to 16 cents a pound.
In the hexoses, glucose mannose, which is obtained in hydrol-
ysis, is less than 10 cents a pound. The world price for su-
crose, and this is clean, purified sucrose, is about 7 cents a
pound; so we must assume that crude sugar, which is compar-
able to glucose, should be valued at about 5 cents a pound. If
we convert cellulose to glucose by hydrolysis, therefore, we
actually are degenerating its monetary value to about one-
third. The way I look at it, we should really use alternative
sources for glucose and ethanol production, because cellulose
is valuable as such. The alternative sources are hemicelluloses,
which we can recover from the pulping liquors; starch; and
also oligopolysaccharides, which would be more amenable to
enzymatic hydrolysis. On this basis in terms of research I
would say that the question is how could we co-generate, inte-
grate the pulp production with the production of chemicals
from lignins and hemicellulose carbohydrates and extractives?
Of course we do have the conventional pulping methods; we
have kraft pulping, which dominates, and so there is a poten-
tial of about 22 million tons oflignins and an equal amount of
carbohydrate derivatives. Should we concentrate on trying to
find outlets for these products?
Unfortunately the pulping methods which are in current use
have not been optimized for anything but effective pulping,
not chemical recovery, and we have certain difficulties; mainly,
we obtain the pulp, and then we obtain a spent liquor which
contains a lignin derivative, and in the case of kraft pulping we
get kraft lignin, but then in kraft pulping we actually destroy
sugars and we obtain saccharinic acids. We know something
that we can do about sugars, but we don't know anything that
we can use the saccharinic acids for. That's the weakness of
our dominant pulping process.
The sulfide process accounts for only about 2 million tons of
pulp; it is a less economical process, and it is dying away slowly.
There we do get sugars, and these are partially utilized.
These are some of the difficulties of getting lignin into gainful
use; for instance, in vanillin manufacture we have to take this
whole spent liquor and use alkali and oxygen to produce
vanillin. And most of our sodium hydroxide is then utilized
for nothing but the destruction of the remaining sugars.
It would be much better if we could convert the pulp in such
a way that we might obtain these two components separated.
And the initial work has already been done on Arkansas pulp-
ing, and here I think the prime example is ethanol pulping.
One researcher has shown that wood can be converted to pulp
by using 50 percent ethanol at 185C. He does not use any
catalyst, but we have tried aluminum chloride, which is defi-
nitely very helpful. The main thing is that here is simplicity
compared with the usual kraft process. The whole process
can be totally countercurrent, which is not possible for con-
ventional pulping processes. After evaporating the ethyl
alcohol we can simply ftlter off the lignin. The lignin com-
ponent seems much more promising, at least on the surface,
than kraft lignin, and it has lower molecular weight. In all
likelihood it will be a better feed stock for, for instance, phenol
production. The ftltrate contains carbohydrates, which may
be then utilized for fermentation. The whole chemical recovery
consists of simple distillation. The question is how do the
economics work out? How does this method compare with
the conventional pulping processes such as kraft pulping?
Professor Johanson and I undertook recently some preliminary
evaluations. First of all, we did not take into account the
chemical potential. This study is strictly for pulping. We are
confident that the investment cost for a pulp mill is 40 percent
lower than for the same size kraft mill. We have reduced the
environmental problems. The production energy requirements
are probably going to be lower. There is a possibility for higher
pulp yield. The pulp can be bleached by a simpler sequence,
and then we have the particularly interesting possibility of
improved recovery of extractives, lignins, and carbohydrates.
There are disadvantages here. The chemical make-up is def-
initely going to be higher, and unless we can recover the
chemical reliably and completely, this can either make or
break the process. The pulp strength is lower, and so
strict process control is required. The conventional pulp
mills usually run about half time under abnormal con-
ditions, and they spill enormous quantities ofliquor and
waste water. This actually, although it is not usually admitted,
is one of their most serious environmental problems.
Right now what are the research needs to which we need
to apply cellulose, lignin, and hemicellulose? First of all, cel-
lulose as a syntheticpolymeris utilized in two areas: regenerated
cellulose, or rayon, and cellulose derivatives-cellulose acetates,
methane cellulose, etc. Unfortunately, these processes are
badly outmoded. The viscose process is a ridiculous way of
making regenerated cellulose.
When the energy and environmental crisis came about, I ex-
pected that the situation of cellulose derivatives would improve.
It has not, and the reason is that in the viscose process, where
cellulose is converted to xanthate solubles, which are then
76 Sarkanen CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
reprecipitated in the form of rayon, there are tremendous en-
vironmental problems in handling the bath liquor.
Therefore, two proposals have been made by the research
director of the ITT Rayonier Corporation. He says that we
need new solvents for cellulose so that we may develop an
improved method of making regenerated cellulose. Secondly,
in the cellulose:derivative feed we need reactants which do not
undergo as many side reactions as is the case, for instance, in
acidulation.
Much of this has been already covered. We have the hexoses
and pentoses; we have the furfural, antho and levulinic acids,
and hydro-sugars, possibly by pyrolysis. We have to ask the
question what do we do with saccharinic acids? We have
enormous amounts of these in kraft spent liquors, and we
don't have very good ideas.
Should we apply hydrogenation? The need for producing
ethylene glycol and glycerol from coal was already pointed out
earlier, and perhaps we could have in carbohydrates a possibil-
ity of producing these more cheaply. We don't know.
Then we have all these possibilities of using fermentation.
Propane to a degree is being produced but not very eco-
nomically. There are these very interesting bacterial and fungal
polysaccharides, which have been explored by the Northern
Regional Laboratory. We should look at amino acids and
drugs. As far as lignin chemicals are concerned, I want to em-
phasize that particularly lignin sulfonates have gained; there
has been a true revolution in the use of lignin sulfonates. For
instance, in one mill, Georgia Pacific in Bellingham, Washington,
they produce pulp as a by-product and lignin sulfonates as the
main product. Their spent liquor is not sufficient to cover
their marketing needs; so they actually buy lignin sulfonates
from elsewhere. There is a great amount of development work
going on in adhesives and agricultural complexing agents, and
reinforcing agents could be developed, for instance for the
rubber industry. These are all polymeric applications. And
these are the degradation products. Of course vanillin is
being produced but has a small market. Some attention might
be given to parahydroxylbenzaldehyde, which would be
available from hardwood and agricultural residue. I agree with
Dr. Goldstein that this is the most promising line to go. Dr.
Katzen pointed out that in the hydrocracking of lignin you get
a mixture of various phenols, and this does not have a very
good market. On the other hand we have been assured by the
Hydrocarbon Research people that this phenol mixture can
be submitted to hydrodealcolation, resulting in good yields of
regular phenol and benzene.
It seems to me that there could be a better potential in lignin
than in coal for the production of phenol. The phenol yields
are about 40 percent of lignin, and if these can be converted,
with a good yield to phenol and benzene, this might be a very
profitable approach.
One area which has received practically no attention at all
is our ignorance of the species differences in biomass. Most
of our knowledge is concentrated on soft woods; we don't
know much about the feed stock potential of agricultural resi-
dues. Here I think the chemical characterization work should
be done. I think that here immediate exploration is called for.
I would like to make a few brief comments about other
natural polymers, besides lignin cellulose. Natural rubber has
never been displaced from the market. On the world market
natural rubber still covers 40 percent of the total rubber field.
Obviously with increased petroleum prices there will be a come
back of natural rubber, and I think that further development
work using polyisoprene should be carried out. I think there
should be further exploration of starch chemicals that are
produced from com. Then one area to which I would like to
give a very strong emphasis is using our protein resources for
synthetic fibers and plastics.
Before the petrochemical revolution indeed many products
were made from proteins for both fibers and costly plastics.
Looking back I do not understand why the production of
synthetic fibers from plant protein was phased out in 1957.
One of these products, made from ground nut protein, was
extracted with sodium hydroxide and then precipitated in an
acid, and you had a fiber which was equivalent to wool. Syn-
thetic fibers are not so tremendously great as textiles or fibers.
Wool has never been reproduced by the petrochemical industry.
The production price of the nut fiber was about half that of
wool, and its textile properties were completely equivalent to
wool. I think we need to get back to proteins and use the
principles of modem polymer chemisty in order to develop
new fibers and plastics.
Biomass polymers have one tremendous advantage. If we
start with petrochemicals, we have to crack these molecules
and then synthesize the monomers, put the monomers together,
and then we have a polymer. Nownature makes some marvelous
polymers, and I think we have not really looked at the utility
of these polymers to ourselves. If we take a polymer made by
nature, we have very few operations to carry out. We need
very small amounts ofenergy in order to end with the product.
So regenerated polymers, I think, is one area which definitely
needs to be looked into.
BIOMASS
T
Hearon
DISCUSSORS
77
Dr. R. H. Bogan, Professor of Civil Engineering, University of
Washington, Seattle, has been involved with biomass-related
matters since 1973, when he joined the staff of RANN of the
National Science Foundation as Program Manager for Bio-
conversion of the Solar Energy Program. Later he was Act-
ing Branch Chief for the Fuels from Biomass Program of
ERDA. Dr. Bogan is on the Advisory Board, Silviculture Re-
search Project, MITRE, McLean, Virginia.
Dr. W. M. Hearon, Assistant to the Vice President at Boise
Cascade Corporation, Portland, Oregon, is responsible for
chemical operations and all research in the Paper. Group at
the company. Dr. Hearon is the holder of about fifty patents
and author of numerous published works on wood products,
chemistry, and economics.
Dr. David W. Goheen, Senior Research Chemist at Crown
Zellerbach Corporation, Camas, Washington, is researching
pulping chemicals, the utilization of by-products in the pulp-
ing industry, and the modifications and reactions of cellulose. ~
The holder of some twenty patents, he is the author of numer
ous publications in the chemistry of lignin, cellulose, and
wood.
78 Hearon CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
W. H. HEARON
On a curve going from 8,000 years in the past to 4,000
years in the future, there is one sharp peak about the middle,
and that is the petroleum era-the petroleum and natural
gas era-and the coal era I suspect is another peak very close
to that. Whether we like it or not, the petrochemicals are
like people. You know you will die sometime; you just do
not know when. When petroleum is gone and coal is gone
and natural gas is gone, there will be no choice except to
use biomass as a raw material for making chemicals. I real-
ize it is not around the corner. None of us will be alive when
that happens, but let us not get in the same position as we
are in the energy situation, where we wait until a crisis oc-
curs before we start putting intensive effort into solving the
problem.
Petroleum and coal have enjoyed relatively short periods
of use in the history of man. On the other hand, the utili-
zation of biomass, for both chemicals and energy, as a feed-
stock and also as a source of energy, can go on relatively
forever, because of its renewable nature.
I don't think that the inroads of biomass as a raw material
for making chemicals are going to be spectacular. But we
are already, of course, producing a lot of chemicals from
biomass; you can name a hundred of them. Gradually, there-
fore, we will have more and more things probably made by
biomass instead of by the existing petrochemical route.
As a matter of fact, certain things can uniquely be made
from biomass. And they have been all along. When you get
into complex chemicals, nobody is going to make steroids,
for example, from petrochemicals, from ethylene. Nobody
is going to make optically active compounds from petroleum.
Nobody is going to make levulinic acid from petroleum.
You can go on down the line-nobody is going to make tar
oil or turpentine. These are just little pimples, you know, on
the surface of a big balloon, as far as the petrochemicals are
concerned. Biomass is not going to become a really important
source of chemicals until you get into some of the basic
building blocks which we presently use.
I was glad that Dr. Sarkanen mentioned the Bureau of
Mines's ethyl process, which consists of taking any kind
of biomass and, by feeding it with carbon monoxide in the
presence of sodium carbonate as a catalyst, converting it to
a type of crude oil. I don't quite agree that the pressures are
so high there; 1,500 lb/sq. in. gauge is less than the pressures
used in making ethylene. It is perfectly within reasonable
range. The temperature is about 350F., and the residence
time is about 15 minutes to carry the oil. One ton of biomass
will produce a little over two barrels of a crude oil, one barrel
of which is used for energy in the process.
The emphasis on using that as a source of energy I personally
don't agree with. If you burn the biomass directly, you1l
get all the energy instead of having to use half of it for the
process. However, as a possible raw material for making chem-
icals it might be interesting.
Fifteen years ago we found out that you could take any
kind of oxygenated material, biomass if you like-lignin,
cellulose-and by giving a rather high temperature of pyrol-
ysis, 2,000, you simply tear the molecule apart, and it re-
combines to form ethylene and acetylene. And when you
get to ethylene and acetylene, it's a little different story
from making, you know, tar oil and turpentine. Now you're
getting down to the guts of the petrochemical business.
Another point is that a lot of the things that were done
years ago probably ought to be reviewed in the light of the
present and anticipated costs of crude oil and natural gas,
of which this acetylene, ethylene business from biomass is one.
There was some earlier work in various alcohols and alkalis,
that never got commercialized. It was designed to break
down lignin to produce all sorts of phenolic compounds. And
the yields were really pretty good.
That brings up another point, which is that in getting chem-
icals or feed stocks from biomass I think the emphasis should
be on getting things which could feed as nearly as possible
into the existing petrochemical technology and equipment
with the least number of changes.
There is also the hydrogenation of lignin, another one
which I think probably should be reviewed in light of present
BIOMASS Hearon 79
costs. It was a pretty close go on the hydrogenation of lignin
12 or 15 years ago, when you cranked in phenol at 8 cents a
pound! It's 22 cents now; unless the chemical industry goes
crazy building phenol plants, why, it's not going to get very
much lower.
To me there are basically three approaches to making
chemicals out of biomass. One of them is biological, and
the other two are chemical. I think Dr. Goldstein agrees
with me; only we use different terms. He talks about using
a rifle approach versus a shotgun approach. And for years
I have used the terms the rapier approach and the hammer
and tongs approach.
If you hydrolyze cellulose to glucose, you are getting out
a specific compound which is sort of based on the struc-
ture of the biomass to start with. The hammer-and-tongs,
or the shotgun, approach is illustrated by ethylene. The
process just tears the molecule apart, and you get fragments,
or hydrogenate. I consider the Banlin process from sulfide
waste liquor a hammer-and-tongs approach. You do get a
multiplicity of products. You just beat the lignin to death
until you get out some fragments to collect.
Both of these approaches, I think, are being used. The
dimethylsulfide process, for example, from kraft lignin is a
rapier, or rifle, approach, because you simply delicately take
one little group off the lignin and make it into the compound
you want and isolate it. All the rest, well, they can just go
away.
Generally speaking, with the shotgun, or hammer-and-
tongs, approach, you end with a multiplicity of products.
And, by and large, nobody likes to base a plant on selling
three or twenty products. If you don't get them all sold,
the economics can just go to hell. And yet you look at the
petroleum industry and they start with the most God-awful
mixture of stuff in crude oil that you can imagine. And they
have learned to make plenty of money on it. There is no
reason the use of biomass to produce this multiplicity of
products by the shotgun, or hammer-and tongs, approach
can't be economically attractive, provided you approach it
from the point of view that you're going to have to live
with all the products you make.
Another very important point is that the petrochemical
industry has spent I don't know howmany times more money
in Rand D than all the work done on chemicals from biomass.
If and when as much Rand D has been done on making chem-
icals from biomass as the petroleum industry has done on
making ehemicals out of petroleum and natural gas, I think
you are bound to see some interesting processes come out
of this.
Irv Goldstein mentioned the levulinic acid process, and I
thought I might say a few more words on it. We built a
levulinic acid plant in the early sixties, just based on reacting
sawdust with hydrochloric acid. You hydrolyze the cellulose
and at the same time convert it to levulinic acid and formic
acid. This is a relatively simple process. The biggest problems
were corrosion. We operated that plant, which was perfectly
successful from a technical point ofview. We recovered 70 to
80 percent of the hydrochloric acid. The material costs were
low, sawdust at $5 a ton. We were selling levulinic acid at
that time at 25 cents a pound. The plant was shut down
because after the principal market was lost, management
simply did not want to take a gamble on being able to develop
a market. As a matter of fact, this was a very poor manage-
ment decision because immediately after the plant was torn
down, Air Products and Chemicals came to us and wanted
to buy the plant. That was one of those decisions that you
sort of regret.
Of course, you can say, "Well, what's levulinic acid com-
pared to ethylene?" There's no question about the fact that
there is an awful lot more ethylene used today than levulinic
acid, but I might point out that 50 years ago somebody might
have said, "What are you going to do with all that plain ethyl-
ene?" Now look at it. As far as levulinic acid is concerned,
it is reactive on every atom in the molecule. A whole book
has been written on things you can make out of levulinic acid.
I'm not saying that levulinic acid is ever going to become
another ethylene, but on the other hand it is possible that
80 Hearon CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
levulinic acid could be a very substantial building block for
a lot of things.
I think Dr. Katzen has done an overpoweringjob on the
economics, but I think that you can be fooled by economic
studies. You can make numbers tell you what you want to
hear. I know because I've done it. For example, it depends
on what kind of assumptions you make. Dr. Katzen has
proved that it is completely uneconomical to make alcohol
from cellulose. However, if you change your premises, sud-
denly it does become economical. And the premise that
he used was acid hydrolysis instead of enzymatic hydrolysis.
He also made an assumption on the cost of the raw material.
If you used a raw material which has a zero value, and there
are some such materials in the paper industry, economics turns
around.
Right now Gulf Oil is apparently planning to build a 25
million gallon a year alcohol plant based on the hydrolysis
of cellulose.
One idea is that the Gulf people are going to pick up
from paper mills waste cellulose, which has a negative value
because it costs as much as $50,000 a year just to dispose of
the stuff. And this cellulose also has some other advantages.
You don't have to hammer mill it. So you save an energy
staff, you save equipment, capital costs. It is already collected
for you. There are high-concentration locations. I have cal-
culated that within a 50-mile radius of Portland, there is
enough primary sludge to make a couple of hundred million
pounds a year of glucose. And there are better locations
down South than out in the Northwest. If forest waste
were used, they would have to collect it and it would cost
something to bring it in. They would have to delignify it
and hammermill it when they got through. In all fairness to
Dr. Katzen, he is looking at it as a big project where everyone
could go into the business of doing this. What I am saying
is that not everyone is going to be able to collect primary
sludge and make alcohol out of it, but that somebody, some
one guy or two guys, can do that and probably make a lot of
money on it. It looks as though Gulf is going to be one of
them.
Another example is furfural. You can prove that furfural
cannot be economically made from other sources of biomass,
I guess, but Quaker Oats has been making furfural out of
biomass for years and years. And I guess on the whole it has
been making money on it. And there is this rosinal process,
for example, over in Finland where they take hard wood and
heat it up with steam to produce its own acids, corn furfural.
They distil it out, then take the residue when they're through
and make pulp out of it and make liner board from the pulp.
There are a couple of plants working on this, and presumably
the economics is all right.
One other comment, Dr. Sarkanen and I don't quite agree
on the pulping processes which might be used to obtain a re-
active lignin. He is in favor of investigating solvent or alcohol,
and he illustrated some definite advantages and some disad-
vantages of this. There are some other disadvantages.
One is that some of the solvent always gets tied up with
the lignin. And if, suppose, 2 percent of the solvent gets
tied with the lignin, and you lose another 2 ~ percent going
out in the air, which is typical of solvent processes, your
solvent losses are just going to kill you. Dr. Sarkanen men-
tioned this. He's perfectly aware of all of this.
The other disadvantage is that there is no question about
the capital cost of this. I think if I were going to try to find
a different way of removing the lignin, so that you could
use it as raw material, I would look at my easol process of
hydrotropic pulping. This does not give a decent pulp, but
if you simply want to separate the lignin from the cellulose,
why this is a pretty economical way. In the hydrotropic
pulping process, you take xylene sulfanate, xylene sulfonic
acid,40 percent concentration; this becomes a solvent for
lignin. You dilute that down to 10 to 15 percent; then the
lignin precipitates out; and you can concentrate, re-use it,
keep on going around that cycle.
One problem with these so-called solvent systems is that
you must wash the pulp with a solvent because if you don't,
you are going to precipitate out the lignin right back on the
cellulose and you are where you started from more or less.
So, that means that you increase the amount of alcohol or
BIOMASS Goheen 81
solvent going around by a factor of two or three or four
times. Then when you take a percentage of that as your
losses, why suddenly you find it is a pretty big number.
Factually, it is awfully hard to beat the kraft process as a
means of separating lignin from cellulose. Materials, make-
up cost, and pulping are about $2 a ton; the pulp and the
capital investment are high. The biggest thing against it is
the EPA, frankly. You can also get enough energy out of a
kraft pulping operation to handle all the energy requirements
in the pulping operation. In round numbers you get 10
percent left over.
The oil industry has for years kind of conned us with an
artificially low price for petroleum. It is true that to pump
a barrel of oil out of the ground does not cost very much.
It is estimated that in Saudi Arabia you can do this for about
D.W.GOHEEN
For many years people have known that some time petro-
chemicals are going to run out. But only in the crisis of the
past few years has the realization become acute. For example
as long as 40 years ago it occurred to the people in Germany
and Sweden, when World War II was coming on, that petro-
leum was going to be very difficult to come by. So they de-
vised a program which would make them self-sufficient. They
proposed to make solid and liquid fuels, food and fodder,
cellulose and textile fibers, structural materials, and basic m a ~
terial for the chemical industries. Surprisingly enough, they
were quite successful. They prolonged their war effort a long
time on the basis of wood. Obviously, when petroleum be-
came available again, it was very cheap. Wood could not
compete.* In 1949 a writer* suggested that worldwide we
were not even close to the amount of wood we could grow.
But what has not been taken into consideration is the word
renewable. If you looked at petroleum from that context,
oil should be more, far more valuable than gold, or at least as
*Glessinger, Emil, "Coming Age of Wood." Simon and Schuster,
New York (1949).
valuable as gold because in terms of our understanding it is
really irreplaceable. And when we burn it up to heat our
house or to run our car or whatever we do, we are really
burning up an enormously valuable commodity. And so I
submit that we have not put the correct value on petroleum.
And this oversight has got us into some real binds. Because
of this artificially low price nothing has been developed that
can replace it.
Dr. Hearon and I speak from bitter experience. We have
been involved in many projects over the years that were
technically sound, could make a large number of chemicals.
They all have foundered on this-I call it artificially-low
price of petroleum. We were unable to compete economically
with oil at $1.60 or $2 a barrel. When we give a rigorous
present value analysis of it, as Dr. Katzen would, indeed they
could not compete. But I submit that when the true value of
petroleum is put on it, some of these processes are competi-
tive right now and deserve a new look.
With biomass we are not talking about insignificant amounts
of material. I'd like to emphasize that. If you want to use
wood, that's all right; or use just biomass-these are literally
billions of tons of material we're talking about.
Glessinger* has said that with proper management, proper
forest practices, 14 billion tons every year, from now to you-
name-it, could be realized. I don't know that that world
figure ever will be realized, but certainly a figure of half that
magnitude might indeed be practical with a relatively small
improvement over what we are doing today. So these fig-
ures, these amounts that are available, are enormous, certainly
equal to those that the petroleum industry talks about.
Three points that Glessinger had I think would bear em-
phasizing. He said these were real attributes of wood: It is
universal; it can be found almost everywhere. It is abun-
dant. It is inexhaustible. Forests cover about 25 percent of
the earth's surface. They are found everywhere, relatively
speaking. And he contrasted this fact with the relatively
small areas where petroleums, minerals, coal, and so on, are
found. It is not a mine to be exploited and then depleted;
82 Goheen CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
it can be worked on each year, and you go back and, sure
enough, there it is again. And it is not to be exploited and
exhausted.
In a recent issue of Chemical and Engineering News some-
body pointed out that, as far as biomass or forest regen-
eration is concerned, there is a removal of nutrients as one
harvests the crop. But this should not be limiting. Farmers
have been doing this since the start of agriculture. As they
take off the material, take out nutrients, they replace them.
And certainly the same thing would have to be done in forests
or other biomass practices. It is not impossible. It is esti-
mated that probably harvesting a forest repeatedly would
be only about one tenth as intensive as with agriculture. In
other words, probably only about one tenth of the amount
of replacing of nutrients would need to be done as is done
now in agriculture.
I would like to talk a little bit about pulping, which I have
been associated with for many, many years. Now, in pulping,
only about one half of the material is recovered as a usable
product, which is the cellulose. The rest of it is, to all in-
tents and purposes, burned.
One therefore is destroying a pretty useful commodity. And
the commodity that is destroyed-it doesn't even really give
you much value in terms of e n e r g y ~ a r e the hemicelluloses,
which make up some 20 to 25 percent of the wood. The
commonly used pulping system, which is the kraft system, is
done in a very alkaline environment. And those that remem-
ber their chemistry will know that when you heat a carbo-
hydrate material to a high temperature in the presence of
caustic, the carbohydrate is altered, partially oxidized, loses
more of its heat value than it had, and is turned into a com-
plex mixture of carboxylic acids. Now I submit that the
kraft industry could be well advised to do a very simple pre-
hydrolysis step before the pulping takes place. One does
not need to add acids; just heating with steam will produce
enough acidic material to accomplish the hydrolysis. You
will need heat and you need some steam.
Now, you don't even have to go to the extent whereby you
take all of the hemicellulose out. Just take maybe half, and
in so doing you will not materially-and I say materially or
radically-destroy the strength of cellulose pulp that you get
out. You will reduce it a little bit, but can you imagine a
process whereby you could get from the kraft industry in the
United States nearly 10 million tons of almost free sugarlike
material from prehydrolysis? Now, this is a large figure, and
certainly the material is very amenable to further processing.
So I think the kraft industry could address itself to this
probability that one could make much better use of the
hemicellulose by taking it out before it is pulped and then
converting it.
One little point that I'd like to emphasize on this whole
thing is that the amounts we're talking about are large. Even
if you don't do the prehydrolysis, you could still get some
pretty valuable materials out of the hemicellulose. It is
estimated for 20 tons of cellulose pulp, approximately one to
two tons of formic acid and acetic acid are made. These ma-
terials are in the liquor. I don't know how to separate them
commercially or economically, I don't know if anybody does
at the present time, but they're there. There probably is some-
thing like two million tons of these very simple acids in the
kraft liquors from the pulping industry of the United States.
It doesn't make very much sense to me to burn these and get a
very, very small return on heat value from burning acetic
acid and formic acid, especially when the petrochemical
industry then goes ahead and makes formic and acetic from
some irreplaceable resource. So I submit that's a wasteful
practice, and we should do something about it.
Now, it's been alluded to a number of times that lignin
could be hydrogenated to produce a more or less complex
mixture of phenolic materials. This is certainly true. Both
Dr. Hearon and I were involved in an extensive look into the
hydrogenation of lignin some 15 years ago. That's isolated
lignin; I admit it is not just what is in the black liquor. It has
to be worked on, and so it is not just without value or without
expense. But if one can isolate the lignin and submit it to
relatively simple hydrogenation procedures, about 40 percent
can be converted to phenol and simple methyl phenols, maybe
ethyl. In addition. you will get 6 to 7% of a higher phenolic
BIOMASS Bogan 83
fraction, including catechols, propylphenols and so on. You
are converting the organic content of the lignin in about a
45 percent yield, a fairly respectable yield.
One can take the complex mixture of alkylphenols, submit
them to hydrodealkylation or thermodealkylation, and get a
quite respectable conversion to a free phenol, phenol itself,
plus benzene. In the days when we looked at this, when
phenol was 8 cents a pound, it did not look very practical.
As a matter of fact, the benzene that we were talking about
we just ignored and said it would just be six tenths of a pound
for fuel value. Nowadays, of course, that is markedly differ-
ent. Benzene is 75 to 85 cents and going higher per gallon.
I don't know what that turns out to be in terms of per pound,
but it is probably JO to 15 cents a pound.
So I think that at this point the possibility of getting aromat-
ics from lignin, which, after all, is a complex aromatic poly-
mer, is pretty great. The probability of success is pretty great.
It just takes somebody who will risk the stockholders' money
to do it. And I don't know whether we will be able to find
such a person very quickly. But I think NSF or a govern-
mental agency could be advised to look into this a little more
thoroughly.
At Crown Zellerbach we have looked at many processes,
and they have always, except for one or two, foundered on
the basis of economics. In the days when petroleum was
$l to $2 a barrel, there was not really much chance to com-
pete. Even today probably Dr. Katzen is correct. In present
value dollars many of these processes would not hold up.
But I do submit that the gap is widening. The increasing cost
of wood I think is going to be simply that of inflation; whereas
the cost of petroleum is going to be geared to scarcity. I can't
tell you when biomass will be competitive, but I think it
certainly is going to be so. I heard yesterday that by 1985
petroleum is going to be $25 a barrel. That is a staggering
figure, and I hope that whoever said it is wrong, but I don't
think he is wrong. And so we'd better get cracking right now,
because anything we come up with now will not be imple-
mented before 1985.
Just to reiterate that many of the basic building blocks of
petrochemistry can be done with present technology, I would
emphasize ethenol, ethylene, acetylene, acetic acid, lactic
acid, benzene, phenol, and catechol. All can be made with
present technology from biomass-in this case, wood.
I would like to also emphasize this possibility, indeed
probability, that kraft black liquor is a great mine of valuable
organic commodities. The amount of heat that is required
to ~ e c o v e r the inorganic pulping chemicals is quite large, but
most of that heat comes from bUrning the lignin content.
Over 75 percent of the heat value of kraft liquor burning is
due to the lignin content. The carbohydrates, the acids that
are in there are much too valuable for that little 25 percent
of the heat that we are getting. I would suspect that on the
basis of petroleum, in comparison w.Jth the B.t.u.'s, the kraft
industry is paying 25 to 50 cents a pound for this heat. I
don't think that is very practical, and I don't think it should
be condoned in the long run.
I will admit that economics is going to govern the selection
of feedstocks. And so long as there are abundant supplies
of oil, natural gas, and petroleum, the economics are against
biomass. Nature has done too much work on the biomass to
allow us to compete, as long as supplies are abundant. Now,
I don't know when they're not going to be abundant, but I
suspect the day is on us right now. And so fossil sources are
not going to have the buitt-in advantage that nature has given
them, because we are using them up much too rapidly. Orders
and orders of magnitude faster than they are being replaced.
I think that at the crude oil price of $15 to $20 a barrel, wood
biomass is going to have a competitive sword to challenge the
petrochemical dragon.
R.H.BOGAN
I heard remarks from our colleagues in the coal, petroleum
and oil shale areas indicating that the chemicals that would
derive from those feedstocks would come off as by-products
from an energy venture. And I think an analogous situation
84 Hawley CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
exists in connection with biomass. The implication was that
we could get all these nice chemicals because there was an
energy game to be played. But with respect to biomass, I
think that it is going to be the chemicals that will be deriving
from the biomass feedstocks in the nearer term that will lead
the way to fuels and energy from biomass in the future.
I see a need to focus and emphasize work in the general
area of molecular biology. We have the potential perhaps for
developing so-called super plants. It may be that in the realm
of genetic manipulation we can make plants preferentially
channel some of their metabolic energy, so to ~ p e a k , into pre-
ferred constituents which may enhance the recovery of desired
chemicals. Also, in connection with using enzymes I think the
potential is there to make some of our conversion processes
more specific. I would urge the National Science Foundation
to support research directed at molecular biological
applications.
Another interesting point which we have heard quite a bit
about in the last few years in the populafpress has to do with
nitrogen fixation. And I think that this is an important area
that bears further support.
A big problem in connection with biomass generally has to
do with the harvesting, handling, transportation and storage.
Woody-type plants are a little easier to deal with perhaps than
agricultural field crops. Also, forests can be harvested through-
out most of the year; whereas field crops will occur in a short
time frame. This is a potentially serious and significant limita-
tion. It occurred to me some time ago that use of field crop
residues might be enhanced if the farmer could process his
residues as it were and convert them into materials that might
be more readily stored. If we could indeed advance the tech-
nology necessary for this, to get it into the realm of economic
feasibility, I think we would have indeed the potential for a
major breakthrough.
The key to biomass in part is the photosynthetic process.
We haven't heard much about this, although, of course, there
is research going on related to photosynthesis. I think this
needs to be supported and encouraged. Humans are egotisti-
cal enough to suspect or believe that perhaps what nature does
they can do better, and so we are trying to unlock the secrets
of nature and hopefully capitalize on this photosynthetic
phenomenon in time.
There is one aspect of biomass chemicals and energy which
is rather intriguing. It has to do with tricking the plant, so
to speak, so as to tap a major portion of its energy that it has
converted from sunlight into the production of hydrogen.
This is still in the realm of a laboratory curiosity, but bio-
photolysis of water, so to speak, is indeed a long-term
possibility.
Marine biomass, too, is a potential feedstock source of great
proportions. We are doing virtually nothing with our nearer
coastal waters, and there is great opportunity here to begin
to grow biomass in various forms and to modify those biomass
forms that grow in ocean waters to enhance the yield of useful
materials. One species of kelp has bladders that help the plant
structure to float near the surface. And these bladders are
fIlled with carbon monoxide, which makes one begin to specu-
late about the possibility of enhancing the production of CO;
whether this is indeed practical or feasible in our lifetimes is a
moot point. But again, I think this is an area in which the
Foundation might support exploration.
Mention was made of the time involved in getting new pro-
cesses and facilities in production. We heard from our col-
leagues in the coal fields, for example, that it would probably
be the tum of the century before there was any meaningful
impact from whatever we might decide to do today. This is
also true for biomass. We can not make a hard and fast eco-
nomic case today. Even if we were geared up to move for-
ward aggressively today, it would be the tum ofthe century
before we would have channeled anything more than perhaps
a quad or so of biomass feedstock into the mainstream of
chemicals and fuels. So to paraphrase a rather outworn
phrase, "The future is today."
In regard to economics, I think many of the things that
have been said about coal conversion could also be said about
biomass conversion. A substantial portion of the cost of the
chemicals and fuels derived from coal is related to the plant
investment. How this divides depends somewhat upon your
objectives and the nature of the coal feedstock and so forth.
But well over half the cost is bound up in the process itself.
In fact, for many synfuel processes, the cost is divided about
two to one, about two thirds of the cost being bound up in
the process itself. That being the case, the actual cost of the
feedstock may not be the determining factor or may not have
as large an impact as others might be inclined to suspect. Even
so, the cost of biomass materials on large scale, put in terms of
quads, is already in many instances competitive with that of
coal feedstocks. And it certainly is competitive with petroleum
costs.
This brings us to the dilemma currently constraining the use
of biomass feedstocks. We have prodigious amounts ofbio-
mass materials more or less readily at our disposal. And we
have technologies which have reached a level of maturity that
allow us to begin to derive desired materials from this biomass.
And yet we see little, if any of this, going on. The question
is why?
Why should an industry make a substantial investment in a
resource conversion process where the resource itself is in
doubt? Why should the producer of the resource go through
the added expense and effort of making the resource available
when he is not even sure that there is anybody out there who
wants the stuff?
We might consider, in this respect, the events going on in
Canada. The Biomass Energy Institute of Canada recently
hosted a conference entitled "The Current Status and Practi-
cal Constraints to the Expanded Use of Forest and Field
Fuels." The meeting was concerned with compaction, gasifi-
cation, and liquefaction. One paper dealt with the Canadian
production potential for fuel-grade methanol from Canadian
forests. And another considered the constraints on alcohol as
a potential replacement for gasoline and diesel fuel in Canada.
The Canadians appear to be very serious about switching from
a petroleum-based energy economy to some alternative and
renewable resource base.
BIOMASS Miller
DISCUSSION
8S
Martin Hawley: I have a question for one of the first two
speakers this morning. You referred to a patent whereby you
were able to produce acetylene and ethylene. Have you a
more specific reference to that patent?
D. W. Goheen: It came out in 1964, number 3148227, and
the inventors are Goheen, Hearon, and Henderson. It was
called, "The Production of Unsaturated Hydrocarbons from
Oxygen-containing Materials."
Dwight Miller (Northern Regional Research Center): We at
the Northern Regional Research Center in Peoria, lllinois,
which is a large research center of the Agriculture Research
Service, have been concerned with this whole subject of
biomass of the nonwood type. And I think most of the
things that have come up so far have been concerned with
wood biomass. With your indulgence I'd just like to present
a few thoughts in this regard because we are dealing with a
tremendous raw material of the nonwood type. We have
about 2,266,000,000 acres in the United States, and of those
about a little over 400,000,000 would be classed as cultivat-
able land, in other words, land on which you grow crops and
not wood.
In the United States we have been quite fortunate in that
we produce much more material than we are able to use our-
selves. One farmer today feeds approximately 56 people.
And we are exporting 25 to 30 percent of our production.
I don't agree with Dr. Goldstein when he so firmly said that
it was sacreligious to use any of the food grains for other
purposes. This is quite a controversial subject. However,
we might say that we are putting much more of these grains
into our animals today than we are using directly for human
food. And in reality most of these do not have to go through
the animal.
So, we do have quite a reserve, and we have a tremendous
surplus of materials. Probably this year will be the highest
on record for agricultural yield.
One of the ways to use this surplus, of course, is to convert
it to alcohol. It is technically sound; it is technically feasible;
it is not completely economical at this time, but we must
think in the future and not ridicule some of the things that
are done. We must also not overlook that as this material
goes through the fermentation chain, you have all of the
protein left; in fact, the protein is upgraded. The animals,
to use this, are here today and the increasing number are
certainly going to need this material. Even if we converted
all that we could produce, we probably would not produce
over about 20 million tons of this concentrated feed today.
And yet already we're producing something like 35 million
tons and it's growing rapidly. We must think bigger than
some of the things that I heard yesterday.
I want to emphasize that one of my crusades in recent
months has been never to use the word waste, because what
may be called waste are perhaps our most important raw
materials-or may become our most important raw materials.
In the United States we are producing almost 800 million
tons of renewable materials. This counts the straws, the hulls,
the corn stalks, animal waste, etc. There I use the term
waste because we have not really used it as a raw material,
but we have a big project going on, a fermentation project
in fact, in which we can recover a great deal of methane and
other materials from this.
Just straws alone in this country amount to some 190
million tons a year, and those come every year. Obviously
it is not economical to collect them. If you convert these to
energy or to chemical raw materials, you can see what a po-
tential they have. We consume some 100 plus billion gallons
of gasoline today. It is not economical to make a 10 percent
alcohol blend as has been proposed, at least according to all
the calculations that I have seen. However, we should be
thinking this way. I represented the Department of Agri-
culture on a National Petroleum Council study in 1972.
It is interesting to see what happened. It was projected that
if the price of petroleum at that time doubled, became ap-
proximately $6 a barrel, practically everything from Alaskan
oil to oil shale or what-have-you could all come in to make
86 Goldstein CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
fuels. We all know what has happened. We didn't realize at
that time what was going to happen in a short time. The
price is now roughly double that, and we think that it will
double again or more before too long.
I do want to point out, very briefly, that at our research
center we are working on postharvest biomass in order to
make chemicals-much as we have discussed today. Through
fermentation we are convinced that we can produce almost
any material. We have the world's largest industrial culture
collection in Peoria-60,000 to 70,000 cultures. And we use
these to work for us. They work 24 hours a day and they
never go on strike;just give them the right condition, and
they never ask for a pay raise. And from this we have such
things as xanthan gum, which many are probably familiar
with; it's going into foods. It looks like a potential ma-
terial for tertiary recovery of petroleum that we're talking
about. Also, through chemical modification of these mate-
rials, we have all kinds of chemicals. Some of you are prob-
ably familiar with one that was called Super Slurper and is
a starch graft polymer. I have never been near a product
with as much attention as that has had. This is chemical
modification.
We have developed slow-release herbicide materials and
pesticide materials, and practically every chemical company
here has had people in my office in the last year looking at
them. You tell us how long you want it to release, and that's
what wel1 make for you.
I can go on and on about these various chemicals. Some
of these are commercial; some of them are only waiting
for inflation or the higher costs that are obviously going to
come, particularly in the petroleum field.
I did want to bring in this tremendous amount of nonwood
biomass, or agricultural by-products and residues. They are
there. The energy to grow the crop has already been put in.
They are by-products. Roughly for every pound of major
grain crop we harvest about two pounds of the by-products
and residues. And I might sayl,I'for example, if you take an
acre of com at 100 bushels, there is about 18 million B.t.u. in
the grain, but there is about 50 million B.t.u. in the stalks,
husks, and all that are left behind. In wheat, for example,
there is roughly 2.3 times as much energy in the straws and
hulls and all that are left as there is in the major grain. I
couldn't let this go by without pointing out that there is a
tremendous biomass potential in these various fields. The
economics in some cases is here today, and in other cases
may be yet to come.
K. V. Sarkanen: I was particularly pleased, Dr. Miller,
that you were willing to bring up one extremely important
aspect which so far had not received enough coverage. I
think we have been rather one-sidedly concentrated on wood.
There is more agricultural biomass available, I suspect, and it
is more easily collectible than lugging residues from the
forests. There can be standard machinery, I imagine, that
can go to the fields and collect straw and make superbales.
Perhaps we have a better economy of harvesting and trans-
portation. The storage, of course, is a problem, obviously.
AI Stiles (University of Delaware): A long time ago DuPont
from coconut oil made long straight-chain alcohols, from C 8
up to 24, simultaneously making propylene glycol, which
should have been making glycerol. But we were the victim
of the petroleum business. The long straight-chain alcohols
became a more economical product from ethylene, by the
so-called "Ziegler Process." I feel very strongly that somebody
will be back in this business again before very long, using
coconut oil, peanut oil, or the many oils that are going to be
available. And it is going to be an economical process.
I'd like to mention one other thing, too. One ofthe threads
that have been going through all of the discussion, and a very
Important thread, is that you can make CO and hydrogen
from coal, from gas, from oil, from wood, from grass, from
almost anything. Once one has CO and hydrogen, one can
make almost anything. Here is another case in which the
DuPont Company and the ethylene glycol process were a
victim of cheap petroleum, ethylene, for example.
We, in the early forties, were making ethylene glycol from
CO hydrogen. (Carbide is going to make it by a different
process.) It was a very simple process that we used, about a
four-step process, but it was a very effective and inexpensive
one. And it was only by the skin of the teeth that it was
economically made unsatisfactory. I feel strongly that this
route, which is through CO and hydrogen to methanol, meth-
anol to formaldehyde, formaldehyde to hydroxyacetic acid.
hydroxyacetic acid to ethylene glycol, hydrogenation, oxi-
dation, and so forth, is going to be back in business again.
In other words, we are going to be relying upon, I hope
in this case, CO and hydrogen derived from wood or what-
ever.
I have heard a great deal about the need for fertilization
of our biomass. The green revolution was thought of as a
very remarkable development. However, it was not long
until we heard that more energy went into the green revo-
lution than was developed from the crops derived from it.
I may be wrong; I've read this and I hope that youl1 refute
that statement.
However, presuming it's right, I heard it said that you're
after genetic research. Well, genetic research of course should
do a grt:at deal. It should be possible, I suppose, to make oils
and other things more productively than by the coconut
plant. The thing though that I was impressed by, and I haven't
heard much recently, is that the alfalfa plant and the clover
plant fix nitrogen. I have often wondered why that could
not be more broadly applied to other plants, trees, and so
forth. We don't have to put nearly as much energy into
the recovery of potash for use and phosphate for use as
they do for ammonia. Ammonia is one of our energy-
consuming products. But presuming that we can afford the
energy that goes into potash and phosphate but cannot afford
to put the energy into anunonia, can we get anunonia by bac-
terial action?
K. V. Sarkanen: I would like to say that there are three
species which do assimilate nitrogen. And one of the ideas
of having fast-growing plantations, such as poplar planta-
tions, is to have mixed cultures of poplar and alder, where
alder would provide the nitrogen.
Irving Goldstein: I wanted to address this question of
depletion of nutrients from the soil by b i o m ~ s s in relation
BIOMASS Miller 87
to continuing renewability. The woody plants have the
ability to recycle their nutrients. The bole which supports
the tree is essentially dead material. The protoplasm is re-
sorbed in the process of the tree's sustained growth, and the
only living cells in the woody plant are at the cambium,
which is the interface between the wood and the bark.
Much more of these nutrients are in the foliage, and this
material is recycled annually. When you cut down a tree,
let's say on even a 20-year cycle, even if you took all the
leaves out of the forest with the tree (and generally the leaves
are not taken out), even by whole-tree harvesting, where we
chip up whole trees, the difference in density between the
chips and the foliage means that the foliage stays behind
and the chips go into the van. But if you were even to remove
the tree, foliage and all, on a 20-year basis, you would be
removing only 5 percent of this nutrient. At the same time
the nitrogen in the soil is being replenished by atmospheric
conditions; rain, lightning fIx the nitrogen in the atmosphere.
The mineral soils on which the plants are growing are gradually
being decomposed, liberating things like phosphorus and
potassium.
There are a lot of studies on forest fertilization, and people
argue right now whether it is economical at all to do this.
It depends on the circumstances and on the soil. Most forest
industry companies do not fertilize now. They just let nature
take its course. Sometimes they can get some advantage in
extra growth by adding extra fertilizer. But as Dr. Goheen
pointed out, the worst estimates are that we would have to
spend only as much-tO percent-fertilizer energy in growing
woody plants for their cell wall as we do in growing the
cultivated crops for their fruits and seeds.
K. V. Sarkanen: Before I proceed further, I think a new
aspect of biomass was brought up by Dr. Stiles. And this is,
of course, the oils-coconut oils and others. Is there any-
body who would like to make a comment on the potential
of this particular natural porduct?
D. W. Goheen: I might say that the pulp and paper industry
is a big producer of oils. Tall oil is a very large commodity in
the South and will get, I hope, larger. It is very profItable,
and so we fIgure that we are already making oils. And there
have been many studies of ways to try to increase this amount.
The periquat inoculation is one attempt. I don't know how
the economics have worked out on that yet. But at least it
is an attempt to increase the ability of the trade to produce
these hydrocarbonlike things-oils and so on. So it is being
addressed, and the pulp and paper industry is a large oil
producer at the present time.
Unidentified: Let me comment on this, too. Yesterday,
I believe, a remark was made about sort of a futuristic point
of view concerning plants that might produce hydrocarbons.
This idea has been given some currency by Melvin Calvin at
Cal-Berkeley. And I think there is some merit to this-not
necessarily the plant that he has singled out. It does remain
a fact that most of the plant life on earth is largely unknown
to us, except perhaps as botanical curiosities. And I strongly
suspect that among this vast inventory of plant life there
may be a number of species that will present unique oppor-
tunities to us. To summarily dismiss this as folly or futur-
istic consideration, I think, is a serious mistake. And I feel
both U.S.D.A. and N.S.F. and like agencies could be support-
ing searches now for new kinds of plant life that we can
utilize.
We do have such a variety of approaches to the biomass
question, and I think that we should select priorities. So
the idea which I tried to expound yesterday was really that
we should select those areas which have reasonably near-
term application, because we just have otherwise too many
things to look at. And this was my point.
Dwight Miller: We have had in our research center for over
20 years a new crops research program. And we have researched
many thousands of potential new crops for the United States.
We know that there are at least 250,000 different species of
plants in the world, and yet the world uses only about 250
commercially. And we have selected out cetrain types for
further study; for example there is newsprint made from
kenaf, which is a fast-growing cellulose material and of which
we can produce maybe as much as 10 to 20 tons of dry matter
per acre per year instead of two. We also have selected perhaps
a dozen or two unusual oil seed crops that contain quite un-
usual fatty acids. And these have a lot of potential. In fact,
88 Goldstein CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
you practically name what you want, and we'll select a poten-
tial crop that will produce that material.
Maybe some of you have heard of crambe, which is high in
C 22, erucic acid, for industrial purposes. I mentioned kenaf
as the other. We also like lesquerella and we've Qeen interested
in jojoba, which of course is a desert type of material, and
in hydrocarbons also quayule, which is a rubber type of mate-
rial. There is a concerted effort going on in this country
to select crops that will produce these materials. And many
of them have a lot of potential.
We also are conducting work on nitrogen ftxation crops.
For example, I'll take the soy bean which has been the wonder
crop for many years. Essentially no nitrogen is necessary to
grow soybeans today, and for that reason the cost of growing
an acre of soybeans is much lower than the cost of corn.
Soybeans do not require nitrogen, because it is inoculated
in the bacterial action, and it is inoculated in fIxation-type
crops; therefore, no nitrogen is put on that crop. You still
have to apply the other minerals of course.
Raphael Katzen: Why didn't we cover enzyme technology
in our study? We were to use the best available proved tech-
nology. Five years ago Natick laboratory ofthe U.S. Army
came out with propaganda that they hoped to process sugars
to 1 cent a pound, alcohol for 20 cents a gallon. I'm all for
progress but not for propaganda. The next day I had a call
from the president of a client company, a major alcohol
producer, very worried, what should he do next? I said,
"Sit tight." And two years ago, in November of 1975, while
we were completing our study, we heard from Natick; they
gave a paper at an AIChE meeting in Los Angeles. The 1 cent
sugar was then up to 52 cents a pound. And with enzyme
recycle and other improvements, they would get it down to
12 cents a pound. You use 14 pounds of sugar to make a
gallon of alcohol; that means $1.68 a gallon in raw material
costs for a product that was then selling for $1.05. That is
why we did not even mention enzymes in our report.
Dr. Hearon mentioned Gulf. We are consultants to Gulf
Chemicals on their project. Under secrecy agreement I can't
say very much. They are still piloting; planning two years
of engineering studies is still somewhere off. I fmished up by
saying wood would not replace petrochemicals for some time.
My crystal ball guess is a crossover line, which Dr. Goheen
referred to; it could be 10 to 15 years away.
What I am after is to avoid the wasteful expenditure of
private and public funds. And there is a lot of pressure being
put on government agencies to spend money; look at the
Nebraska Gas Hole Project. But these projects are not eco-
nomic; they are wasteful and inflationary. We should be
spending the money on research and development to get
ready for the time when these things come in.
We have been active on agricultural materials. Our problem
is generally not process technology. From the engineering
standpoint collection, transport, and storage are bigger prob-
lems, particularly in agricultural residues. Right now the
residues are seasonal. We want these plants to run year
around. In Florida for Quaker Oats, we have what I think is
the largest agricultural residue operation in the world, making
furfural from gas. We developed new methods of transport,
new methods of storage, on the basis of replacing the gas with
$3 fuel oil. OPEC ruined us. That's what we are up against.
What we need is entirely new logistics.
On the other end is marketing. You make furfural in a very
limited market. It's an entirely different type of product.
So we have more to do in these research processes. A lot of
research money is relevant in collection, transport, and
storage, all of these residues.
I agree 100 percent that on the basis of present
technology, most of what Dr. Katzen said is correct. And I
will submit that 10 or 15 years is not very far off. Just
remember it is really with us. We must look to the future.
There is no way that you could build a methanol plant today
and be competitive with one from natural gas. But in 10 or
15 years, I don't know how much natural gas will be around.
Maybe there will be a lot. I hope so.
Irving Goldstein: Well, since Dr. Katzen said we need some
controversy, I'd like to ask him why, in all the formal pre-
sentations that he and his colleagues have made about
this study they performed for the Forest Products Laboratory
with N.S.F. money, they continue to emphasize single-product
plants based on wood. This would be equivalent to the
petroleum refmer's running on gasoline and leaving out the
middle distillates and the asphalts and everything else. I
think that we could show that the economics would look
very dismal. Or it is like people running a meatpacking plant
on steaks and leaving out the hamburger and bone and hide
and everything else. This also would look dismal.
I think that it is not doing the cause of chemicals from
biomass on the political stakes a service to emphasize what
we all agree with now, that you can't take a material that
contains only 20 percent hemicellulose and process it all by
itselfto make furfural at a proftt when there are other, more
hemicellulose-rich raw materials present. And since wood is
only part carbohydrate, it you ferment only the carbohydrate
part of the wood, you certainly are at a disadvantage com-
petitively with grain, which is much more carbohydrate.
These things are essential factors that we just can't over-
come. But I think we ought to recognize that if we have to
go to the expense that Dr. Katzen pointed out of harvest-
ing and collecting and transporting all these-whether they
be residues or whether they be stands of woods that have no
other use, so-called "noncommercial" species-and hauling
them into a central processing point, we have to make use of
everything that is there. And any economics that is based on
less than such an integrated, complete utilization of all the
material that is brought into the plant, is really very
unrealistic. If we are concerned about raising public con-
sciousness and getting granting agencies to increase the amount
of money available for the needed research (and there is a
tremendous amount of needed research here), and if we want
to encourage industrial people to put some of their risk re-
search money into this area, I think we have to shine the
spotlight on what is truly possible.
And even in the Katzen study there was one little thing
at the end-they came to the conclusion that it would be
possible to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel if,
in fact, you did have co-products along with a single product.
BIOMASS Smithson 89
But yet, whenever Dr. Katzen or Mr. Hokanson talks about
the study, they emphasize the single-product plants.
Raphael Katzen: I was going to say that Dr. Goldstein had
not done his homework, but he finally got to the reference
at the end of our report. We had an assignment to study
these specific products, which do not always go together.
We studied them individually. At the end we voluntarily
inserted in the study a section on the multiple-product plant
and pointed out this had the greatest economic potential,
was the closest to present reality in our recommendations.
Here are three recommendations for further investigation
by the Forest Service.
The only single product recommended was methanol. And
then wood waste to supply economics was the critical feed.
The one thing that is overlooked in the multiple-product plant,
Dr. Goldstein, is the commercial aspect. When you have a
plant, you have to sell five different products, and you have
only limited control of variable quantities. You have one aw-
fully difficult economic problem. That takes a lot of study
too. So we said this is the way to look. We emphasized the
economics because there are people who are trying to sell alco-
hol plants from agricultural bases and wood grain methanol.
We think it is still very questionable. The multiple product
that we said had the best economic feasibility was phenol.
Irving Goldstein: I did not mean to imply that Dr. Katzen
had ignored multiple products in the study. I was referring
to their coming to a public meeting where they have the
opportunity to influence the minds and future actions of
hundreds of people. This is the second time in the past six
months that I've been at such a large public meeting and
they don't point out that their report did in fact include
this information, to make people want to go out and get a
copy of the report.
Raphael Katzen: Incidentally, this report was extremely
controversial. We issued it in December, 1975. Finally, after
a year and a half it has been printed by the Government. It is
BB-262289, costs $7.50. The microfIlm is $3. It's a volumi-
nous report. We don't get any commission.
Jack Smithson (U.S. Dept. of Energy): I was pleased to
hear one of the speakers point out a few minutes ago that
there is a time variable there. I am perfectly willing to be-
lieve that there will be an ethanol-from-agricultural-material
plant built in this country sometime in the next ten years;
I am sure there will be. And I am sure we may even go back
to making nylon from furfural. But we heard some mind-
boggling numbers this morning. A 200,000-barrel-a-day
refmery is probably about the smallest economic plant you
could build these days, government regulations aside. And
that plant requires 10 million tons a year of carbon and
hydrogen, which is something like 22 million tons a year of
cellulose, bone dry. And I say that I have received no enlight-
enment at all as yet on how I can amass this quantity of mate-
rial without depleting the soil, without feeding ammonia at
fantastic quantities, in order to begin to replace one tenth of
our current petroleum supply, which is one twenty-fifth,
I guess, of our present energy consumption. And I would
like to hear some emphasis on this problem, because petro-
chemical feedstocks, while they may be 4 to 5 percent by
weight of today's barrel, are still growing at a rate twice that
of petroleum. Our problem is not petrochemical feedstocks.
Our problem really is a liquid feedstock.
I am sure that benzene will be withdrawn from the trans-
portation pool to make chemicals as the economics dictates.
But you still have to get these mind-boggling quantities avail-
able in one place on a steady day-in, day-out basis, or else
you pay inventory charges. I would like to get something
on this, please.
Unidentified: I did write an article for Science recently.
And it seems to me that we shouldn't really take black and
white attitudes here. We have constraints in getting enough
biomass in one location. So the answer I think is not to use
petroleum or biomass, but to use biomass as an auxiliary fuel
for petrochemical plants. I think that this idea makes sense.
We can replace part of the petroleum by taking the biomass
which is economically available in that particular location
and using it as an auxiliary source for producer gas.
Unidentified: This falls into my comment on making alcohol
from grain, yes. And this is the way I tend to write off your
feedstock operation and so on. They are great supplements
to our energy demand. But long term-and Lord knows how
many hundreds of years this may be-I see no alternative to
solar energy, nuclear, and biomass as a form of solar. You
simply cannot view biomass just as a supplement. That
may be good for 50 years. But at some point it is going to
have to stand on its own two feet and be purely economic
in competition with other energy sources.
Unidentified: I agree that we don't have enough biomass to
make much of a dent in our energy demands. But we do
have enough biomass, now and in the future, to take care
of our synthetic material needs. As far as other energy is
concerned, it may well be that we'll have to rely on fusion
or some kind of more concentrated form of solar energy,
such as solar collection cells. As far as the availability of
biomass is concerned, in the concentrations and quantities
necessary to meet our chemical needs, that we now get from
petroleum, this is readily available. I just completed a study
where we took a sample area within a 50-mile radius of Rox-
boro, North Carolina. We took the U.S. Forest Service
inventory of the woody material in this area, which is about
two-thirds forest. And we subtracted from this what was
being harvested now for conventional use, such as pulp mills
and lumber. And it turns out that the net annual growth-and
this is not the inventory-is about 113 million cubic feet a
year within this 50-mile radius. And the current annual re-
movals are only about half of that. So we have about 50 mil-
lion cubic feet of excess of growth over removal. This mate-
rial can be harvested by total tree chipping. It can be hauled
within this 50-mile radius for about a dollar a ton mile. That
is a penny a ton mile, which amounts to a dollar if you haul it
from the periphery 50 miles down to the plant and 50 miles
back.
And this wood would support three 1500-ton-perday
wood chemical plants. The Katzen Report gave proper con-
cern to where to get 1500 tons a day of dry hardwood
material. Katzen's group was given the mandate by the
Forest Products Laboratory oflooking at wood waste. And
90 Manchester CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
what is wood waste? Wood waste is what is left over from
the furniture plant or the plywood mill or something like
that. This material is scattered, and it's hard to assemble
and very expensive. But let's not look at so-called "waste";
let's look at our unutilized standing woody material in the
forest. Most of this material is not even inventoried by the
Forest Service because conventional forest service inventory
is based on saw timber. They go out and they scan only trees
that are 5 inches in diameter at breast height. In the North-
west they don't even worry about trees like that, but in the
South we do. And they count the material only up as far
as a diameter of four inches. They don't count the tops
and they don't count the branches. They don't count the
trees smaller than five inches. They don't count the non-
commercial trees. They don't count the decayed, rotten,
culled, twisted trees. And it turns out that on any given
acre ofland, when you're talking about these low-grade hard
woods, there is three times as much tonnage as the Forest
Service saw-timber inventory will indicate. A paper based
on these statistics has just been submitted for publication.
I'll be happy to make a copy available. There is enough of
this material, on a sustained-yield basis, without depleting the
inventory of growing stock, to support three of these. That
is only within a 50 mile radius of Roxboro, North Carolina.
This problem of the low-grade hard woods is endemic
across the South, from Virginia to East Texas. And there is
great concern about what to do with this material. Here is
a solution whereby we can convert it into something that we
need and without paying money to foreign countries, which
is bad for our balance oftrade deficit.
Unidentified: I don't follow some of Dr. Goldstein's budget-
ing, I guess. It seems to me that 20 quad of material is a sub-
stantial energy reservoir. And that's just business as usual
for the most part. If we really wanted to generate biomass
within this country, I'm convinced that we could double
that figure on a sustained-yield basis by the middle of the
next century. We're talking now about40 quad of material.
This is not interfering or competing with the food and fiber
industry, as it sees itself growing over this same period of time.
The gentlemen from D.O.E. commented-and I think I
will have to agree with him on general principles-that our
future energy resources will doubtless come from solar, of
which biomass is a part, and perhaps nuclear and other things
like that.
Now 20 quad between now and the year 2,000 strikes me
as a lot of energy. That's more than a fifth-in fact, I guess it
is approaching a fourth-of our current energy budget. And
we really wouldn't have to work very hard to get that. The
costs, based on some fairly intensive studies that have been
made over the last 3 ~ years, show that this would run between
75 cents a million B.t.u. delivered, up to as much as $3 or a
little over, delivered.
A point was made about the size of the plant. There is a
unique issue here, as I see it, in that biomass is a distributed
resource. To sustain a facility with 1,000- or 2,000-ton-per-
day feedstock consumption would require about 50 square
miles or more of tributary area. If you could increase the
productivity to something like 5 to 10 tons to the acre bio-
mass yield, you could increase the size of this facility to some-
thing approaching 10-tons-per-day feed stock consumption.
Now just because this does not match up with the current
level of thinking in the petrochemicals arena does not neces-
sarily mean that this is uneconomic or unrealistic or cannot
be done. I think what you'll see with biomass fuels and chem-
ical facilities in the future is a larger number of somewhat
smaller facilities distributed regionally. I haven't seen any-
thing yet which says this is not realistic or potentially feasible.
Donald Dickmann (Michigan State University): I have a
question for Dr. Goldstein regarding his analysis. Did you
take into account some of the social factors that may limit
the availability of wood? Are people going to be willing-
and I assume that most of the land in this area is owned by
private landowners-are they going to be willing to part
with this wood to sell it to a chemical plant? I own ten
acres of woodland myself, but I be damned if I'd skin it
off and sell it to a chemical plant.
Irving Goldstein: Let me read you just one paragraph
from this report.
"Although there is a theory that some private owners will
refuse to sell timber, the literature indicates that the average
length of tenure per private owner is only 15 years, more or
less. Even though a given owner may preserve his timber,
the probability that harvest will occur increases every time the
property changes hands. l'he new owner may have different
attitudes from the previous owner. The volume available
for harvest would have been built up in the meanwhile, making
a timber sale more attractive. And the new owner may need
to recoup some of his investment in land and timber. In-
dications are that all categories of ownership in the study area
now make their lands available for harvest." Remember that
this is an intensively harvested area right now, and we are
talking about only the 50 percent of annual growth that is
not now b ~ i n g utilized. Our forest economists have con-
sidered this aspect, and they think that in the long run this
will come to pass.
If it is not so, I think that what we need is propaganda,
or an educational program, to make the public understand
that there is nothing worse about harvesting trees than there
is about harvesting a corn field. We know that we have to
harvest corn every year it we want to have bread. And perhaps
we have to realize that we have to harvest wood every year if
we want to have clothing or whatever else we want to con-
vert it into.
Unidentified: About this question of size, a thousand ton a
day pulp mill in the South requires a feed of 2,000 to 2,500
tons of wood a day. And I don't know how many thousand-
ton pulp mills there are in the South, but there are a lot of
them. So harvesting is right now. I can't quite see what the
big problem is. They are not using all the wood in the South
by any means. As a matter of fact, they're probably growing
twice as much as is being used, or even more. I don't know
if using biomass will ever be done economically, but it cer-
tainly can be done as far as size is concerned.
A. H. Manchester (Hercules): I would like to address the
whole panel on where we should be focusing in our attention.
It seems to me we want to go back to that continuum of
BIOMASS Katzan 91
energy resources that has been referred to, where for the next
25 to 50 years we are still in the petroleum age, and then
for the next 200 to 500 years we're in the coal age, and
then beyond that we are in to the so-called solar age, of which
biomass has certainly got to be a large part.
I think,just from some of the discussions that have gone on
here today, that for the next 25 to 50 years any chemical feed-
stocks that come from biomass are going to be rather specific
materials which will be by-products of the forest products
industry or the agriculture industry.And these are going to have
to compete with the specific products that could be produced.
In the long run, when we get beyond the coal age, when we
are in to the solar age, there is-no question that we are going
to have to get these things from biomass. I think Dr. Bogan
made this point. I am wondering whether we should not
focus our attention-because anything that will happen in the
next 25 to 50 years is really going to have to be based almost
on present day technology-this, oh, 25- to 300-year period?
And this is what we should be developing our objectives for in
this discussion.
I found some of the discussion today rather confusing be-
cause I think we are jumping back and forth among these
three ages. Our friends in the forest products industry, of
course, are very interested in the utilization of their present
materials, because basically they are in the cellulose business
and there is a little by-product they would like to utilize.
I am just suggesting this to the panel as a way of getting rid
of some of the controversy, so that we focus in on what our
real objectives should be.
Unidentified: I'm not sure when the Age of Coal, so to
speak, leaves off in time points of the future. But I must
admit that I was severely shaken up when I saw a report that
was prepared by the Electric Power Research Institute the
past year. They examined coal as an alternative fuel for the
electric utilities. And on the basis that by the year 2,000 or
thereabouts they were all essentially fueled by coal, our coal
resources would run out by about the year 2,050. That's
what I thought, too.
If this accounting of the situation is even approximately cor-
rect, we are going to be in a position of needing biomass in
very large quantities a lot sooner than you were suggesting. I
don't think the age of solar is 300 years down the road; I think
it is now. And I think we are going to have to start moving
very aggressively in that direction.
K. V. Sarkanen: At the ACS Chicago meeting, Professor
Johannsen and I presented a paper in which we promoted a
very near-term, partial solution, for electric power generation.
We suggested that all the kraft mills in the United States would
become a power-plant-pulp-rnill combination through coal gen-
eration of electricity and steam. There are two aspects to this:
First of all, a pulp mill has all the capability of collecting
biomass and also urban waste. And it has to use it for the pro-
duction of steam. By producing high-pressure steam and ex-
tracting the electricity from it, one can increase the electric
power generation efficiency from 42 to 82 percent of the fuel
value through coal generation. So actually such a combination
would be twice as effective as a conventional power plant. I
see somebody shaking his head here. We thought that this was
one of the very-near-term solutions whereby about an extra
1.5 quads could be provided to the national energy balance.
Raphael Katzen: In response to the question what to do
with the program we need time elements difficult(???) let's
start at the beginning. We have to learn how to collect and
process this raw material. The waste we looked at, not only
secondary waste but forest waste, we don't even begin to
understand how to collect economically. In the Southeast
there is tree farming. Limbs and so on, trimmed off, drop on
the ground, biodegraded by nature. That waste can be picked
up. In the Pacific Northwest they drop things on the ground
that they consider valuable pulpwood, especially on mountain
slopes. How do you process that? Go to the Northeast; trees
are spindly. The trimmings are pretty small. Whole-tree har-
vesting is trying to develop. The same applies for agricultural
residues. Dr. Miller spoke of the tremendous tonnage. You
try picking it up, collecting it, transporting it. The logistics of
movement are very difficult. Take an estimate on wood, pulp
wood-every time you touch it, pick it up and lay it down,
move it, the cost is $4 a ton. The logistics of moving over
92 Gaire CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
large areas into a central point requires several pickup and lay-
down movements.
Unidentified: According to my booklet here the conference
is on chemical feedstock alternatives. And we are spending
half of our time talking about biomass as a fuel. I realize that
these are somewhat interrelated, but the conference is on
chemical feedstocks. If we want to talk about fuel, that's fine;
I've got some comments to make. But I am trying to keep on
the problem of chemical feedstocks.
As for what Dr. Katzen says, there is no question that it is
not going to be cheap to pick up corn stalks and floor stuff
from the forest, particularly in the Northwest where you have
hills. There are two aspects to this, I think, though. One is
that you do have processing plants which bear the burden of
bringing in a lot of the raw material, and they don't use it all.
This is true for pulping, it is true for lumber, and it is true for
plywood. This is small compared to the total feedstocks
needed for the petrochemical industry, but it is a step in the
right direction.
If you are really going to get into this in a serious way, you
have to purposely design plantations for the purposes of pro-
ducing feedstock material. There is a lot of work going on in
that in the Forest Products Laboratories. They have for a
number of years been looking into this possibility. They have
planted trees two feet apart, a special genetic breed of poplar
which grows very fast, and in five years those trees are over
25 feet tall. Now, there are many other examples of the same
thing. I could go on about fast-growing plants. If you design
a plantation simply for this purpose, you get away from some
of the problem of having the biomass scattered all over the
landscape.
There are techniques of getting down trees-pulling them
out, particularly young trees like those I have mentioned. You
can just pull them all out and have a portable grinder out in
the field; it is a matter of getting set up to do this. What Dr.
Katzen says is absolutely true today.
That brings up another point which has been mentioned, but
I'd like to re-emphasize it. We keep looking at the economics
of biomass as of today. And it is axiomatic that the econom-
ics don't look any good; otherwise everybody in the United
States would already be using it. If you could make ethylene
cheaper from biomass, the duPonts, the Carbides, the Dows,
the Herculeses, and so forth, would be doing it. I don't think
our discussion should be about today's economics. It ought to
be about what will happen in the foreseeable future. And I
think that there is no question but what, as natural gas and
petroleum become dearer, they are going to be more expensive
than biomass, which is not going to go up so fast. And so
there are going to be gradual inroads in natural gas and petro-
leum as raw materials.
K. V. Sarkanen: I didn't think the discussion this morning
would turn out to be as lively as it has. I was a little bit afraid
that a full day would be too long a time for our workshop, but
now I am afraid that we will not have enough time to cover all
the aspects.
Martin Hawley (Michigan State): I have a question about
the composition of wood as it pertains to lignin and about the
amount of kraft pulp that is made. I think over 20 billion
pounds a year of lignin is produced in kraft process pulp.
Unidentified: Oh, let's see; there is about 40 million tons of
kraft pulp produced, and I would guess about two thirds of
that amount would be as lignin; so that is somewhere in the
range of 20 to 25 million tons of lignin a year, something like
that.
Martin Hawley: Okay, I usually think in terms of billions of
pounds, being familiar with chemical engineering.
The other question I have is that if you look at the option of
going from biomass to carbon monoxide and hydrogen, via
gasification, and then to chemicals, when you think of an en-
ergy scene you think of a plant processing 200 to 250 million
cubic feet of methane. Now, when you think in terms of a
chemical plant which would be based on biomass via gaSifica-
tion, what size gasification plant would you envision? And
how big a biomass area would be required to feed this
plant?
Raphael Katzen: We worked in coal gasification and the
coal problems are different. You could go out West, if the en-
vironmentalists didn't stop you, as they are doing now, and
bring 50,000 tons a day of coal from a mine to a plant and
make 500 million cubic feet a day plus liquids. In the East
you could economically bring 15,000 tons of coal to a single
station, make 250 million cubic feet; so it is raw materiallogis-
tics, as I said before. For wood and agricultural residue the
problem of bringing together more than say 2,000 or 3,000
tons a day is a costly one.
Now, just to match one point Dr. Bogan made. He says we
have to think of smaller plants. Why not? The answer is eco-
nomics. About a year ago I visited with the Manitoba authori-
ties to discuss the question of methanol fuel from wood.
There is lots of forest land, swampy, up north there; not very
good wood and not much use; a high percentage of Indians
and not very skilled; low living level; terrible roads. Fuel is
very expensive. We took a quick look, just an hour's time, and
said, "Build a 25 million gallon a year methanol plant, bring
the wood in from these areas, gasify it, make methanol." A
25 million gallon a year methyl plant is a small methanol plant.
They said no way we can do that. We can't transport it, we
don't have labor in one spot, we'd rather have ten 2 million
gallons a year plants. How about it? Well, if you'll know how
to design plants you take your scale-down factor, and you fix
charges, and labor costs just ruin you. No matter how many
Indians you have, it's still costly.
Unidentified: I hate to even bring up this idea but I think I
should. We are talking about coal as being the ultimate solu-
tion for however long. I don't know whether anybody has ad-
dressed the question of what happens when all this carbon that
is locked in the earth is burned and we have the carbon diox-
ide in the atmosphere? I think we should think about that.
The only pollutant that man has really increased globally is
CO
2
It has increased significantly since 1900. And if one
thinks of burning all the locked hydrocarbons in coal and put-
ting them up in the atmosphere as CO
2
, I don't think that we
know what will happen. It could be bad.
Roger Gaire (Foster Wheeler): A lot of work has been done
in liquefaction of coal. I haven't heard very much about lique-
faction of biomass materials to make them more readily han-
dled as far as transportation is concerned.
Unidentified: I touched on that briefly yesterday. There is a
BIOMASS Soltes 93
process which was developed by the Bureau of Mines in the late
1960's. When ERDA was formed, it took the process over.
A $3.7 million plant was built in Albany, Oregon, which has
been operated, since December 23,1976, by Bechtel Corpora-
tion. Before I left I checked with them to see what the status
was. They have made a number of runs and they're collecting
data and what not. Briefly, they can take any kind of biomass;
they are operating now on wood chips, which obviously is not
going to be the final raw material to be used. They heat it
with carbon monoxide, with sodium carbonate as a catalyst,
believe it or not, to about 1,500 lb./sq. in. and about 350C.
Their residence time-it is a continuous reactor-can be as low
as 15 minutes when certain carrier oils are used. They have
used anthracite oil as a carrier-I don't know whether that's
going to be the ultimate one. And over 90 percent, closer to
95 percent, of the organic material is converted to a sort of
crude oil. They get a little over two barrels of this oil per ton
of bone-dry refuse. The oil is, I think, 80 percent carbon,
10 percent hydrogen, and 10 percent oxygen. In that it differs
from crude petroleum, of course, which does not contain ap-
preciable amounts of oxygen. It has a very wide boiling range.
Most of the oils are aliphatic compounds.
My comments yesterday were that as an energy source this
is not really the right way to go. !fyou are going to burn all
this refuse, you might as well stick a boiler where the refuse is
and burn it and save your barrel of oil. But as a means of put-
ting the biomass in a transportable form, this is attractive. I
also commented that it might be more attractive as a feed-
stock than it would be as a fuel. It is well known that it is
easier to handle liquids than solids in any kind of a processing
plant.
Unidentified: There are actually several processes similar to
the one at Albany. They have been explored by a number of
different organizations. Dr. Radovitch might be able to com-
ment on this, as he and his colleagues are to do a study for
EPRE focusing on the production ofliquid fuels, particularly
low-nitrogen fuels, from biomass materials.
J. M. Radovitch (University of Oklahoma): We are looking
at processes for converting biomass to liquid fuels. We found
two or three areas that look promising, one of them in Albany,
Oregon. Another process is Occidental's flash pyrolysis unit; I
think it is down in San Diego. There also is a process by Bat-
telle Richmond up there in the Northwest that they think will
compete with the process in Albany.
But I don't think we can divorce the fact that we can use
biomass for fuel from the fact that we can use biomass for
feedstocks. To me if you can produce a barrel of oil from bio-
mass, and you burn this barrel of oil, this barrel of oil may not
be as good as the barrel of oil you get from petroleum, but
you still free another barrel of oil to produce petrochemicals
or to produce something else.
It seems to me that especially the people from the forest
products industry have been giving the impression that the
conversion processes are here, that they just aren't economical.
Are the conversion processes to liqUids, to liqUid fuels, to liq-
quid feedstocks there? What stage of development are they
in? Are they at the laboratory scale? Are they at the bench
scale? Or are they at the pilot plant scale?
Unidentified: We do have on the shelf a number of processes
that are there. The only reason they failed, that is by the kind
of rigorous evaluation that Dr. Katzen would give, is present
economics. The technology is there to do these things. Not
everything is there, but there are a number of processes just
sittmg on the shelf waiting until the time that they can com-
pete economically.
K. V. Sarkanen: I think this is the proper point, since we
got to the area of pyrolysis and hydrogenation, to ask Ed Soltes
to give a brief review of this area.
E. J. Soltes: (Texas A&M University): I guess we're going to
pyrolysis by the backdoor. I think we are getting to the point
where we fmally are agreeing that eventually the true cost of a
limited, exhaustible resource such as petroleum or coal is going
to be greater than that of a renewable resource. What we are
seeing here are several efforts in universities across the country
to look at biomass as a source for chemical feedstocks. Maybe
some of you in the coal and petrochemical area feel that some
of our efforts are a little premature or naive. I'd like to ad-
dress that point.
I would not be wrong in saying, I think, that if you com-
bined the total man years of effort in the various activities
across the country in terms of developing chemicals from bio-
mass, you would probably fmd that that total effort is less
than what one individual oil company spent on one of their
processes or that the coal people spend on coal gasification. I
think this is true. What we see at present is some diversity of
opinion on how we proceed. I think this is healthy at this
point. I think it's time for controversy, it's time for argument,
it's time to put all our ideas on the table.
I am one of the people who believe that one of the routes to
chemicals is through the energy route. I would like to talk a
little bit about the pyrolysis situation, how it could feed that
thought.
The heart of our problem in the whole energy situation is
not our dependence on petroleum itself but on petroleum
technology. We have talked a fair bit about the relative cost
of materials, but we have forgotten, as a result of the past
ready availability, the relatively inexpensive nature of petro-
leum. Because of this our best understood, our most efficient,
our usually least expensive processes for chemicals and for
energy production revolve around petroleum, to the point
where technology dictates the use of petroleum.
There has been much discussion, for instance, about the new
fuel sources. And most of these efforts consider the use of
energy-containing materials in physical forms which cannot
take advantage of existing high-efficiency energy-producing in-
stallations. Wood chips, especially green wood chips, are very
poor energy material. Not only are the net B.t.u. contents rel-
atively low, the densities are also low, and the burning meth-
ods most often are relatively inefficient in producing usable
energy. These facts m ~ a t e , to me, that for a given energy
requirement bigger and less efficient energy installations must
be built if we're going to replace oil with things like wood.
And this is a less than desirable solution for energy-producing
locations with considerable investments in high technology.
It should be obvious that our thinking about new energy
materials should include fuel preparation processes which per-
mit the use of existing higher efficiency energy installations.
And yet very little attention is being paid to this requirement.
94 Soltes CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
What I am saying is that we should address ourselves to the
transformation oflow-B.t.u. materials into higher-B.t.u. mate-
rials and to the physical forms that can be utilized in existing
oil- and coal-burning equipment, with little or no investment
in modification.
We have talked a little about the use of biomass materials
and have identified several constraints in the use of these ma-
terials. The first problem is just assessment of biomass avail-
ability. I don't think there are two groups in the country
which agree as to how much biomass is available. But then
again, more importantly, at least two types of biomass avail-
ability studies are necessary in the development of
opportunities.
The first type has been pretty well addressed, even though
there is some difference of opinion. These are collections of
national, regional, statewide availability data, and they can be
used to ensure potential utilization schemes of raw-materials
supply.
The second type of biomass-availability study is less avail-
able. That is the one that tries to address local situations in an
effort to match specific residue availability with specific local
product needs. What have we got and what do we need? How
can we match these two? Goldstein, for instance, mentioned
that they have completed a study looking at the availability of
wood residues within a 50-mile radius in North Carolina.
Wood residue, to me, is nonmerchanted wood, the stuff that is
left out in the woods. I'd like to say also that as the result of
some comprehensive studies by several departments at Texas
A & M, we can take each county in Texas and tell you how
much rice residue, how much cotton gin trash, how much
wood residue is available. We have done studies to indicate
that in many cases, the period of harvesting activity is such in
a state like Texas that you can combine several different types
of residues and have feed for a mill or some processing plant
for virtually the whole year or eight months of the year at
least.
Availability is another problem. You can calculate how
much limbs or roots or foliage you have got in the case of
trees. You can calculate how much you are going to have in
terms of straw. However, the true availability should be con-
cerned with that amount of biomass that can be removed
without detrimental environmental effects. And this is some-
thing that really hasn't been done. This needs to be done.
Should we remove foliage and roots? We just said that fo-
liage contributes, in terms of leaf fall, to some of the nutrients
in forests. Should we remove these? Should we really con-
sider whole tree harvesting? Why? Do we consider it on low-
productivity sites?
Again, there has been much discussion of the real and poten-
tial undesirable effects of whole-tree harvesting and of the
widespread removal of agricultural residues. I think specific
issues must be resolved through active programs, which must
be keyed to weighing adverse and beneficial effects in such re-
movals. One of the biggest obstacles to utilization of residue,
as we have mentioned, is residue cost. To be used, residues
must be collected, transported to some processing site, prob-
ably stored for some period of time. And the operations of
collection and transportation have been estimated in many
studies to cost more than the fuel value for normal, nonmer-
chanted biomass.
The time is ripe, I believe, for a systems analysis approach to
various harvesting situations which weighs the relative advan-
tages of equipment now available and equipment that can be
envisaged in harvesting various residues.
The major cost is probably transportation, transportation to
the point of utility. Here we have to think about the future.
Traditional transportation systems should be evaluated along
with newer technologies, for instance pipeline transportation.
That sounds novel for wood chips and residues; the transporta-
tion of wood chips for electrical power generation is being
considered here in Texas.
Transportation economies can also be realized by the identi-
fication and development of systems which would either den-
sify residues or remove water from residues before transporta-
tion. Remove the water and make the residue more dense.
One method, again, that is being tried at Texas A and Mis the
effect of the composting of one type of agricultural residue on
transportation economics. I think there are possibilities for
using composting, and I use composting in a very loose way in
terms of wood chips, of providing for composting, for using
BIOMASS Soltes 95
composting in reducing the elasticity of wood to the point
where it's easy to squeeze out the moisture and densify. If
you want to use the residual as a fuel briquette, fme. If you
want to use it for transportation economies, fine.
Again, collection, harvesting, transportation studies should
be carried out on a very broad front for a variety of residues.
And I think attempts to develop and refine such costs will
identify the key problem areas that have to be solved. And as
a matter of fact, I think when we get around to collection and
harvesting transportation studies, they are going to identify
the key utilization opportunities. And identification of econ-
omies and these broad studies should impact on both agricul-
tural and forestry residue utilization.
Then there is the development of conveyance systems. How
do you move this pile from there to there? We have to put
some thought into conveyance systems. They are necessary in
harvesting, transportation, processing sites, etc. We need some
work in these areas, some basic conveyance studies.
Up to this point I have been addressing some problem areas.
The reason why I came here is pyrolysis. I'd like to borrow a
paragraph from Dr. Goldstein: "Whether a particular tree or
forest or wood or agricultural residue is classified as commer-
cial or noncommercial is not an inherent property. It depends
on a number of factors. And commerciality depends on util-
ity under existing economic conditions and must be consid-
ered a relative term subject to change. And the identification
of economical processes and profitable products from wood
and agricultural residues will permit the test of economic util-
ity to be passed." That should be obvious. What we are talk-
ing about, as we have indicated today are all sorts of processes
that are not economical today.
I maintain that in terms of energy production and chemical
feedstocks, we should be less concerned today with relative
economics and more concerned with improving our efficien-
cies and the utilization of our material.
Pyrolysis has been identified as a promising raw material
conversion process from the viewpoint of flexibility in process
feed requirements and flexibility in product mix possibilities.
I am not going to propose this as a solution to all It
is not the only process. But I should like to go through this
just to indicate how this process meets some reference
requirements.
It is well known, for instance, that the major chemical con-
stituents of wood, of agricultural residues, of cellulose, various
hemicelluloses, lignin or phenolic-lignin-type materials are all
basically chemically similar. This observation suggests that a
universal process that would preprocess various residues to
more homogeneous liquid and solid products would enhance
subsequent processing to extract chemical energy values. It
would provide for versatility in process feed requirements,
obviously. You could throw in corn cobs and wood chips and
cotton gin trash. A fuel-preparation process suitable for pro-
ducing gases, oils, and chars from wood residues would be suit-
able for other residues as well.
Pyrolysis, that word has been kicked around the last few
years, and I guess every time you mention the word pyrolysis
you have to define it. It means different things to different
people. What I am talking about is thermal decomposition,
the absence of catalytic factors, usually at relatively low tem-
perature. Low-temperature pyrolysis processes are favored
because of their low energy requi];ements. I am talking about
thermal decomposition to the point where we have significant
liquid, solid, and gaseous products. We have liquids in oils and
as oils and solids as chars, to the point where we have not gone
so far as to destroy some of the structure that we find in our
residues; we still have some inherent structures that can be
utilized.
It is interesting that the relative amounts of gas, oil, and char
obtained in various pyrolysis situations are the function of the
reaction conditions. What I am saying is that conditions can
be found which favor production of the oil product, for in-
stance in liquefaction. In fact, recent work at the University
of Minnesota indicated that yields of pyrolysis can be as high
as 80 percent.
Okay, what does pyrolysis have in terms of advantage? The
relative yields of gas, oil, and char products can be selected or
altered, to some degree anyway, to meet some specific require-
ments. We are not looking at something that is dead locked
into one situation; it has some flexibility. We have talked a
little bit about the oils that are produced in pyrolysis situa-
tions. The oils and chars are relatively high B. Lu. material.
Relatively high to me, as a wood chemist, means looking at
wood as 8,000 B.Lu. a pound roughly, dry. These oils and
chars have roughly 12,000 B.t.u. a pound.
It is not a fuel oil. A fuel oil has 18,000 to 19,000 B.Lu. a
pound. But the interesting fact about these oils is that they
have significantly higher densities than fuel oil. We have den-
sities of 1.4 or 1.5, as opposed to fuel oil densities of 0.9.
This means that a barrel of pyrolysis oil contains probably
5 to 15 percent less energy than a barrel of crude. We are get-
ting very, very close. And when we talk about B.Lu. contents
of materials, we should be getting away from this B.t.u.-per-
pound basis, because all the economics, all the utilization of
fuels revolves around B.Lu. per volume, especially if we are
talking about liquid fuels.
Pyrolysis also reduces a very heterogeneous low-density
residue mix to homogeneous liquid- and solid-fuel products of
higher density. It minimized storage and transportation costs.
The gaseous product is a low B.Lu. gas. We are talking about
gases of B.t.u. contents of anywhere from 400 to 500 B.Lu.
per standard cubic fool. It is low, but it is enough. It is
enough for some energy process requirements; that is, there is
enough there to dry your material.
Another factor of pyrolysis is that it can have significant po-
tential in providing clean fuel from dirty residues. As new
separation technologies are developed and applied to the ex-
traction of clean fractions from wood residues or whatever,
the remaining biomass destined for the fuel house becomes
dirtier and dirtier. The paper and solid wood industries are
using more and more of the tree. They are developing new
whole-tree concepts. All that is going to be left for the fuel
haul is going to be dirtier and dirtier. And pyrolysis might be
used in one sense to volatilize clean liqUid and gaseous fuels
from dirty residues.
But the major advantage of pyrolysis is one that has been
overlooked. The liquid product of pyrolysis is, of course, a
96 Goldstein CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
mixture of chemical entities. It can provide a basis for chem-
ical production. And, as has been discussed, similar chemical
composition of various different residues should result in liq-
uids and solids and gases of relatively homogeneous composi-
tion, independent of the residue feed mix. So pyrolysis offers
promise as a universal process in converting huge residue sup-
plies into useful, chemical intermediates.
We have just completed a one-year study into the character-
ization of several pyrolysis liquids, which indicates that in-
deed the composition of pyrolysis liquids (from wood at least,
and we are going into agricultural residues) is very similar in
some respects to that of some petroleum or coal liquefaction
products.
The role of petrochemical or coal-conversion technology
comes in. Here is an opportunity for participation. Recent
coal and petrochemical conversion processes, particularly
those using catalytic reaction technology-hydrodealkylation,
hydrodehydroxylation techniques-are all borrowed from a
paper given in 1969 at a meeting. That's been one of the most
quoted papers, although most people quote an abstract of it,
and very few people have seen the real paper.
There are possibilities, then, for transforming some of these
materials. It is expected that the pyrolysis products (as indi-
cated, the chemical composition of wood and agricultural resi-
dues already is quite similar) exhibit a chemical resemblance
and that coal or petrochemical conversion processes have some
applicability to these materials. And it is time that this tech-
nology was adapted for use in our residues. Such technology
is expensive to develop. We are fortunate in having it avail-
able. And we should be working hard to make that technol-
ogy transfer work. I think we need some cooperation from
the petroleum and coal people.
Our major effort here is to survey the field of coal and petro-
chemical conversion technology and identify those processes
that can be of interest. Where are we going to use this mate-
rial? I think specific emphasis can and should be given to the
production of several fuel materials, for instance, forestry and
agricultural residues as diesel fuel substitutes. The logistics are
good. Both the agricultural industry and the forestry business
use a large amount of diesel fuel in their harvesting and trans-
portation operations. It is logistically sound to consider utili-
zation of these materials as diesel substitutes.
What I'm suggesting here is that pyrolysis not only can be
turned to producing usable fuels, as has been demonstrated,
but that a pyrolyzate for instance can be burned as'is. It's very
very similar to No.5 and 6 fuel. It bums very clean. It has no
sulfur; it has no ash. After all, it is a condensate product, a
condensible liquid. There is the question of corrosivity of this
product. If you went back into your wood chemistry or agri-
cultural product chemistry, you would find that most prob-
ably the corrosivity is due to acetic acid and formic acid. And
surely, when we get around to it, we find that indeed acetic
acid and formic acid are the culprits. Acetic acid, formic acid
mixtures are notorious corrosive materials. One company, by
the way, Sunoco, does extract acetic acid and formic acid from
stem pulping liquors. And it has had in its operations very
serious problems with corrosivity. But it is a very simple mat-
ter. We have identified several schemes that can be used to
preprocess this fuel to remove the corrosivity. We have done
this, and so we can eliminate the problems as they arise.
1should like to propose that along with the various situa-
tions that have been considered, pyrolysis be considered as
another route for generating energy and chemical feedstocks.
R. H. Bogan: The last speaker of the morning raised a num-
ber of questions concerning the biomass resource itself. There
are now reports out on several studies of major biomass re-
source areas, and 111 give you some names in case you want to
pursue this further.
The Mitre Corp., McLean, V., has made a very extensive
study of the forestry type of resource and you can get infor-
mation on this, including costs and the like, under a variety of
scenarios.
Batelle-Columbus Laboratories also made a fairly extensive
study of biomass that might derive from a sucrose-based agri-
culture and also subsequently added corn to their study. The
Mid-West Research Institute in Kansas City has been making
an extensive study of another major segment of agriculture-
cereals, grains, and grasses. The Stanford Research Institute
has been carrying on studies for the past three years on agri-
cultural residues and some forest and industrial residues as
potential feedstocks.
All these studies have addressed the issue of quantities,
availability, seasonality, and costs for gathering, collection,
etc., and have looked at some of the other issues that are
involved, including impact on the land resource.
WORKSHOP SUMMARIES
Dr. Goldstein: We started out with a brief discussion of the
place of economics in the utilization of biomass for alternative
feedstocks. It was pointed out that current analysis is always
behind embryonic and incipient technology and that we have
to be careful not to be deterred by current economic analysis
from what we're going to do in the future. My feeling is that
we need not look at the economics for every five-year period
but that we need some kind of rolling economic analysis, so
we keep up with inflation while at the same time we absorb
emerging technological development into our economic analy-
sis. And I don't know whether this is asking too much.
I suppose if NSF gave enough money and if a full-time team
worked on it, not only keeping up with ordinary concerns
about escalation of costs but also immersing itself in the tech-
nology as it emerges, a group like that could on short notice
give a state-of-the-art economic picture, and maybe that is
something we ought to recommend to the National Science
Foundation.
Then it was pointed out that we have devoted very little
time in our discussions so far to the biological or enzymatic
processing of the biomass. And I think the comment was also
made that there has been too much emphasis in at least some
people's point of view on wood as a raw material, that we
should be considering raw materials such as the agricultural
residues like straw.
Then some concern was voiced about the definition of what
is possible with today's technology versus the research which
should be beginning to be undertaken to take care of poten-
BIOMASS
. Goldstein 97
tial. I think that a lot of this input is going to have to come
from people who decide to enter the field and have inspiration.
Then the enigma of lignin reared its head again, and here
again there was some discussion of enzymatic modification of
lignin-or any other modification to make it useful. In this
connection we started talking about the use of the polymeric
components of biomass as polymers. Most of the discussion
so far has been on breaking it down into CO and hydrogen or
to smaller fragments. Isn't there some way we can retain more
of the energy that has been stored in this biomass and use it
in this polymeric form?
And let me skip to something that came up later in the con-
versation. It was pointed out that what we really need is a
very sharp, clean separation process which would allow us to
separate these components nondestructively. Then we would
have the option of either using them as natural polymers or
converting them by other technology either enzymatic or
chemical into other materials.
We got off into some corollary aspects that do not neces-
sarily deal with the feedstock question, but with some of the
consequences of changing to a biomass source for feedstocks.
These are the environmental aspects and the availability
aspects.
What would be the effect on biomass of CO
2
generation?
We talked about the increase in concentration of CO
2
in the
atmosphere that has been occurring over the past decades.
What is the implication of these giant coal burning plants on
the CO
2
level in the atmosphere? What effect will that have
on biomass growth, and what effect will that have on biomass
utilization?
Along the same line, what are the environmental side effects
of any new technology if it arises? A company that is invest-
ing its capital has to be very sure that someone is not going to
blow the whistle on it before that capital has been paid back
and the plant paid off.
We talked then about the major problem, that a more impor-
tant problem than the cost of the raw material is the capital
intensity of the processes involved. There is so much money
involved in building a plant to process this material that it is
a much more important criterion of the ultimate cost of the
product than such considerations as harvesting and trans-
portation costs. There was not unanimous agreement on
that, but everyone did agree that process improvement re-
search to reduce capital investment would certainly be
warranted.
We said that biomass (wood and agricultural residues) will
eventually be materials for chemical production. The time
frame is difficult to project, but it might be anywhere from
7 to 15 years barring some political national emergency.
11 was very strongly agreed that what we don't need now are
demonstration plants. What we need are funding for research
and development and a concurrent engineering economic
evaluation to help guide our Rand D. It was felt that this
was far enough off in the future that industry could not justify
such large R and D expenditures but that they very well could
work in with NSF and other agency funding along this line.
There was some question about proprietary rights, but it was
pointed out that in R and D work the problem is not so great
because there is not too much on fundamental Rand D, and
there's always improvement, invention which individuals can
then add.
We felt the areas of investigation should start with, one,
raw materials and, two, philosophies.
One, investigate further the reasonable economic collection,
harvesting, and transport processing of these residues, whether
they be forest or agricultural. Not everything is available
nationwide.
On the other hand, more research is needed on plantation
technology and economics, what we would call agri-industrial
operation for growing whatever it might be. And this growth
would be in commercial species like trees, sugar cane, etc.,
intensively cultivated for biomass rather than wood or sugar
production, or in new.specified species for maximum solar-
energy-conversion yields.
In the process areas we agreed that there were two stages.
Stage one is producing really specialty products from these
biomass materials, many of which are already going. Others
are developed; for economic reasons they'll come off the shelf.
We feel that generally private industry can very well carry
this part of the game, but the really massive conversion for
98 Sarkanen CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
chemical production such as ammonia, methanol, ethanol, the
olefms requires more researching. The simplest is gasification.
Simplicity two ways. Almost any biomass is a gasifier with
some modification, but biomass differences are not so critical
to gasification. Alot of research is needed before we get the
demonstration gasifiers.
That's why they feel that NSF funding would be very useful.
We talk about thin gas, ammonia and ethanol, the varying
ratios that produce oxoalcohols, long-chain fatty acid, etc.
In the cleavage area enzyme or cleavage using the carbo-
hydrates true to form is already on the way. I have consider-
able doubts whether lignin enzyme might work.
Here again fundamental research is needed before we get
demonstration plants.
In pyrolysis we have an approach that serves in terms of
fitting end product into existing operations-hopefully crude
oil going into refineries with some modification of refineries
so they can process them. And this would be an integrated
type of research between the people in the pyrolysis and people
in the refming end who know what they can handle. Again
we should be doingit on an R&D basis before we demonstrate.
K. V. Sarkanen: In the third group we really dealt with the
same ground, and I will very briefly indicate what was dis-
cussed. We started considering agricultural residues as com-
pared with wood-based biomass, and it was recognized that the
collection and harvesting costs are very high. For instance
there was a gentleman from Quaker Oats who said that al-
though there is as much as three to four times per acre of resi-
due in corn fields, after spending three million dollars the
company found that the collection was impractical because
the cost was $50 a ton. This probably included the storage.
There are of course other sources or methods for soybean
and wheat straw but these figures look rather discouraging.
Surprisingly the wood-based figures which we had, sawmill
residues for instance, are priced about $18 a ton, dry ton in
Canada.
We came to the conclusion that we have a very analogous
situation in wood waste and agricultural waste. Both deserve
study, but in view of the fact that the agricultural residues
have not been studied very extensively in the past, they would
probably require more research than wood residues, which
are being intensively studied by industrial companies.
There were some figures quoted on whole-tree chipping
versus selective chipping. A conventional chipping in Idaho
costs about $27 a ton; whole-tree chipping is $21 a ton;
integrated collection of saw logs connected with chipping of
branches brings down the price to about $18 a ton. This
price is very close to the heating value for, or energy value of,
such wood. We discussed what improvements could possibly
be made in harvesting and collection. Could we for instance
visualize portable pyrolysis reactors which would condense
the biomass to a more transportable form? The other idea
here is similar-small-scale reactors which an individual farmer
could utilize to get rid of his waste and to get energy, for
instance, for pumping water.
Then we moved to the question of what sort of enzyme
processes are in existence. There are enzyme processes for the
conversion oflactose to glucose, glucose to fructose; it was
also brought up that the enzyme processes may become use-
ful in converting wood to cattle food to increase digestibility.
Microorganisms could be used in this connection in order to
convert biomass to cattle food. Of course this is perhaps a
little outside chemical feedstocks, really, but it is obviously
important.
It was also indicated that there are other ways of convert-
ing biomass to cattle food-sodium hydroxide addition, in
the case of straw prehydrolysis and possibly controlled pyroly-
sis. And things like this could be possible if they are done in
fluidized-bed reactors.
We also discussed biomass production. We agreed that the
production of energy and of chemical feedstocks should both
be looked at and possibly in an integrated manner.
We also discussed biomass production. We agreed that the
should be considered or not. We talked about kelps and algae
plantations which could in the future play an important role
because they can be subjected to modern chemical conversion
teclmiques. There is a great deal ofunderutilized hardwood
growth in this country. We would not really be stealing any-
thing from the pulp industry or the lumber industry if these
were utilized for chemical production or energy. We recom-
mended intensive cultivation study, but we also wanted to
point out that the local situations in different parts of the
United States are tremendously different and that it is high
time that these local problems were sorted out, so that we
might see whether similar problems could exist, for instance,
in Maine, in Louisiana, etc. In this way the importance of
providing solutions to these problems could be figured out.
We then shifted to pulping by-products. For the present
the most promising source for chemical feedstocks is really
in the pulping industry. We discussed lignin versus coal
and came to the conclusion that the discussions at this meet-
ing indicated that higher yields of phenols, up to 40 percent,
and their further conversion to ordinary phenol and benzene
are more possible from lignin than from coal.
It was argued against this opinion that the coal processing
plants will be huge and that even if their by-product phenol
production were low it would still amount to very substantial
amounts of phenol; so we did not really agree completely
whether indeed lignin is a more promising feedstock for
phenol production than is coal.
We did agree that there is about ten million tons of mono-
meric sugars from hemicelluloses available as potential by-
products, and this makes it questionable whether there is
indeed a need of hydrolyZing cellulose for the sugars.
A very new process was brought up, and I think this is quite
important to cite here, namely the hydropyrolysis process,
which has been developed by the St. Regis Pulp Company for
the improvement of energy recovery from black liquor. It
consists simply of using 25 percent black liquor up to tempera-
tures of 350 degrees under 2500 Ib./sq. in. As a consequence
organic matter is changed through two-phase systems: a liquid
phase consisting of lower molecular weight chemicals and the
solid phase, which is 88 percent carbon and can be used as a
solid fuel.
The interesting thing about the hydropyrolysis process is
that it is flexible. One can optimize the recovery of the oily
BIOMASS Hearon 99
phase, which may be a potential way of getting chemical feed-
stocks out from the pulp in the industry.
In that connection we returned to the prehydrolysis ques-
tion, and it was pointed out that it is not in all respects bene-
ficial. In the kraft process most of the xylene component is
recovered as a pulp constituent and has a value of 15 cents a
pound. If we carry out prehydrolysis, we will predominantly
hydrolyze xylene, and that will result in pulp loss; so there
are. certain negative sides to prehydrolysis as a method of
chemical by-product production.
We also were intrigued by the question why no chemicals
are made out of sugar; we would expect that the material,
which is less than 7 cents a pound, would become a chemical
feedstock. It was stated that extensive work has been done in
converting sugar to polymers but that this has been unsuccess-
ful. We fmally agreed that one very important focusing point
is really the question of what kind of products should be
produced from sugar-sucrose or glucose or other hexoses or
pentoses obtained from the biomass?
We touched briefly on the conversion of biomass, either
sawdust or kraft lignin, to ethylene and acetylene and other
hydrocarbons and recommended that this is a very intriguing
avenue for future research, as is the possibility of removing
extractive components from wood chips before pulping. We
came to the conclusion that this was a very difficult operation
unless specific pulping methods are used.
W. Van Hom: Quaker Oats Company. I was making a point
that in the appraisal that was made the agricultural residues
were more expensive than the general kind of collection of,
well, of the grass that was quoted as being $19 a ton. I was
making the point that when we were trying to collect the
whole com plant the collection and storage cost would get up
to the range of $50 a ton. I did not mean that to be an exact
quote of a specific price, that I was going to deliver it for that,
or that you could not get it for less. It is a big field, and there
is a lot of difference, for example, between the farmers in
illinois and those in Missouri.
Dwight Miller: I would hate to see such a figure go into
the record tomorrow because it is much higher than agricul-
tural residues cost to collect. I happen to know that they are
way below that; in fact I think that the figure overall is per-
haps a hundred percent too high and in many cases even higher
than that. I would hate for this to be used as the base figure
in the report.
W. M. Hearon: I'll try to sort things out a little bit. The
production of chemicals from biomass is first dependent upon
the raw material you have. Forgetting about the steer manure,
the growing plants or trees contain basically only four chemi-
cal entities: one, cellulose; two, other carbohydrates, some-
times coal; three, lignin; and four, extractives. Since nature
has already done some of the synthesis for you from carbon
dioxide and water to make these particular structures, it is
advantageous to retain those structures and get out products
directly related to these four structural materials.
In other words, you don't have to get out cellulose, although
we do, and you can make things out of it. You can also get
glucose, which is structurally related to the cellulose of course.
The problem with this is that you are limited to the kind
of things you can make. There may be a great market for sex
hormone or something that no way are you likely to get out
of a tree directly from the structure of the materials there.
That approach, which has been used and is today in produc-
tion, will probably continue to be used, but it is not going to
solve the problem of what we are going to use to make this
wide variety of petrochemicals when petroleum and natural
gas run out-or become very expensive.
Then you have a different kind of approach, and that is,
you can take the biomass material and massively break it down
into something which can be used as a feed for the existing
type of product made from petroleum and natural gas. And
we could think of only two things which might fit that. One
of course is the syngas; second is some kind of liquefied oil
made from biomass. May be with future technology some
other things might be developed, but at the present stage those
are the only two things we could think of.
There are various ways of getting a liquid kind of product.
One can do it by something like the Batelle process or pyroly-
sis. They would likely be for the longer range things that
would be made from biomass to fit into the chemical vacuum.
As far as getting the biomass material is concerned, the resi-
dues might be the way to get started, but in the long run, to
avoid the wide distribution and the difficulty in collecting and
harvesting, you would have to go to a biomass plantation.
We did not know what the biomass might be; it probably
would be different in different parts of the country and we
felt that there should be some research on it.
Unidentified: This is primarily a question of economics.
The technology is, if not available, somewhat obvious, and so
I would go along with the suggestion that the NSF address
itself to some sort of economic watchdog committee or what-
ever you want to call it. That way the problem will be kept in
perspective, and at the time these things are right they will be
done. I think economics is the name of the game here.
I would like to defend prehydrolysis a bit. It was mentioned
that prehydrolysis would be a bad thing simply because it
would remove the hemicelluloses. I won't deny that in toto;
I will deny it partially, although the kraft process by its very
nature dissolves a great deal of the hemicelluloses. Xylene is
partially reprecipitated, but a lot of it is not. It may indeed
have some beneficial properties in the formation of the pulp,
but the point I am trying to make is that in the long run it
does not really add a lot to pulp, and it might be more valu-
able as a source of feedstocks than as an adjunct to cellulose.
Unidentified: If I were asked to summarize our activities
here relative to biomass, I would in the light of my own preju-
dices say the following.
We should leave this conference with the strong concept
that biomass is a renewable material in contrast with the
depletable nature of the other alternative feedstocks under
discussion. In the long run, whether it be 30 or 50 or 100
years, we are ultimately going to be faced with dependence on
the renewable resource rather than a depletable one.
Of all the biomass available in the world today, wood is the
best choice for feedstocks. It is the most abundant, it is
widespread, it does not need man's intercession to be avail-
able. The energy involved in its growth is less than in agri-
100 Brokaw CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
culture, and it is accessible in more concentrated forms than
other biomass. Just as coal has an advantage over wood, in
that you can get a lot of coal from one hole in the ground,
wood has an advantage over agricultural residues in that you
can get 50 to 100 tons per acre rather than 3 or 4 or 5 tons per
acre. Furthermore, wood has the advantage that it can be
stored on the stump until it is needed; so we don't have a stor-
age problem, and we have availability all year round, instead of
a seasonal crop.
Also, when doing our economic analyses, we should keep
current instead of depending on what happened 20 years ago
when petroleum was $2 a barrel or what is happening today
if petroleum is an average of $12 a barrel. We have to keep a
moving comparison with alternative feedstocks, so that we are
truly making a choice. And we should bear in mind that if
we are going to pay the price of bringing this raw material
into a plant, we should endeavor to get as much out of it as
we can. In other words, I am arguing for multiple use of the
wood that is brought into the plant, in order to improve the
economics overall, rather than reliance on the single product.
Finally I would point out that since we are talking about
alternative feedstocks not chemicals which can be sold in the
marketplace, we should bear in mind that this country has a
very sophisticated network and organization of the chemical
industry which is now dependent on petrochemicals for its
raw material supply and that the least dislocation would come
about if we were to interface with this complex chemical
industry and provide the same type of raw material that it is
now familiar with. And if we can get this from biomass, this
is good, and I contend that we can.
I don't mean that we should preclude changes in our mix
of chemicals or that we should not look at specialty chemicals
from biomass, or that we should not look at by-products from
the existing pulping industry, but we should take a very broad
view to see how the natural resources that we have available
can be used to solve the material needs of the chemical
industry.
K. V. Sarkanen: The petrochemical industry will be around
for a long time. Since the higher prices will affect its use in
energy generation more than as a chemical feedstock, I don't
accept the argument that the present petrochemical plants
won't still be around when we run out of petroleum as a chem-
ical feedstock.
I think that it is a mere accident that we actually are utiliz-
ing polyethylene, polystyrene, polyatherlates. We are using
them strictly because we happened to start with petroleum.
Ifwe take biomass, we have different biopolymers, and I
submit to you that the biopolymers are as good polymers as
the synthetic polymers and sometimes better. I did refer to
the fact that reprecipitated protein makes a better textile
fiber than any of the synthetic fibers; I mean in terms of gar-
ments. I think there is better moisture absorption, it feels
better, etc. I think that we should really launch an endeavor
rather than take everything apart. Taking apart is an energy-
intensive process, and so is building up new polymers from
broken down biomass. I think we are much better off ener-
getically and environmentally if we look at all the available
natural polymers in nature and use them. That means cellu-
lose in the regenerated form of cellulose derivatives, and I
think we have a fantastic opportunity in proteins.
H. P. Brokaw (Council on Environmental Quality): I'm an
alumnus of DuPont. One thing struck me, and that is that we
are all assuming that we are going to have to use biomass
because we are going to run out of petroleum. Certainly pe-
troleum is going to run out some day, but the figures show
that if you take an extreme case and say we are not going to
use any more petroleum for energy, but only for raw mate-
rials, it would last a long time, because we are saying we are
using only 4 percent.
The logical thing to do overall might be to develop other
sources of energy and conserve this stuff for chemical building
blocks. That does not mean that you would not use any
biomass, but you might use biomass where biomass performs
best and in those special chemicals where it may perform best,
but you would continue to use petroleum-based raw materials
when they suited best.
I wonder whether one of our recommendations in looking
at the biomass situation might be that we can do certain things
BIOMASS Johnson 101
with biomass. We certainly think we can do more on a realistic
economic basis as the price of petroleum goes up, as it will,
but on the other hand it probably is not economically rational
in the long run to depend on biomass. You ought to conserve
all the petroleum you can in terms of both natural gas and of
crude oil, and use that to the extent you can. There are of
course other ways to get energy that don't involve consuming
organic materials, and those are nuclear and direct utilization
of sunlight. I would seriously doubt that we would end up
depending upon biomass for a major part of our raw materials
any time in the next few hundred years if we are smart enough
to try to conserve some of these fossil fuels and spread them
out over a period of time.
I might say trying to make these organic molecules fit is a
nice idea, but in my own experience with textile fibers a lot
of the reason that those protein fibers failed was performance
not cost.
My first job after I finished graduate school and the reason
I got into this business in the first place (I was trained as an
organic chemist) was working for a rayon yarn manufacturer.
I had to make an analog, a regenerated protein fiber based on
corn protein, and we succeeded in making such a corn protein
fiber, as did Virginia Carolina Chemical Company. Theyac-
tually marketed this as vicara, the fiber that improved the
blend, and for awhile they were going along great blending the
vicara with wool. But it had a lot of problems, and when
orlon was developed orlon was eminently superior to the
vicara and displaced it completely.
The utilmate parameter that we invariably examined in
DuPont on a fiber was performance. If that didn't work,
there was no use going into the technology and the cost.
When you get a complex chemical such as protein or wood
chemicals, you face a problem trying to fit that into what you
want to end with. With petrochemicals, you have the advan-
tage of starting with basic building blocks.
Unidentified: We are developing new technologies. We are
growing woody plants. In addition to wood, more investiga-
tion should be made into alternative biomass sources, things
like water hyacinths and algae and weeds and so forth. Some
people have proposed why kill weeds, why not grow them?
They are very productive.
J. M. Radovitch (University of Oklahoma): I'd just like to
encourage you people that are involved in this field to put
everything, when you make comparisons among wood biomass,
agricultural residues, forest biomass, on a common basis.
When you talk about yield, talk about yields per acre per year.
And when you talk about shipping costs per ton, talk about
dry tons or talk about wet tons, because when you talk about
wet tons or as it is found in the field, there is a big difference.
And I would like to reemphasize that if we are going to use
biomass for feedstocks, I think there is a lot of work that can
be done with genetic selection. We have done a lot of growing
of crops for food, and we are able to alter the crops to get
higher yields. If we go to the other alternative of getting
crops for feedstocks, I think there is a lot of research that
can be done that is not now being done on genetic selection
for feedstock preparation.
H. P. Brokaw: Environmental quality is not one of the fav-
orite topics of chemical engineers. I'm a chemical engineer
myself; so I know. But it is a fact of life. It really is one of
the costs of manufacturing and also of the limitations on man-
ufacturing. You may not think it is justified, but you have to
take it into account. I don't think I heard very much today or
yesterday about this limitation. And yet it's going to be here
with us more and more. For example, in the case of biomass,
when you start talking about putting thousands of acres under
cultivation of a single plant species, when you talk about con-
verting forests from this to that, this in itself of course does
not have an environmental effect, but it has an ecological ef-
fect on the planet's biosphere operation.
The same thing is true not only in the growing and the har-
vesting, the necessity for using herbicides, pesticides, and
fertilizers-the whole chemical approach, but it also has to be
taken thoroughly into consideration in terms of the processing
and the manufactUring and the utilization and the disposal of
end process materials and fmished products that we make
through our new technology.
If we go to alternative feedstocks of whatever source,
whether they be biomass or other materials, you are going to
face a new set of environmental problems, and this time round
the chemical industry, with the EPA and the Council on En-
vironmental Quality and all these agencies, is going to be
smart and take these into account as far in advance as it can.
It will throw them into its investment calculations and its
cost of operation calculations.
R. H. Bogan: In connection with Mr. Brokaws' remarks, I
think we have all gone over the hurdle now about environ-
mental control. Every plant that we have estimated for the
last five years has had environmental controls in the budget.
We have heard several complaints at this meeting of the high
capital-intensitive projections. Environmental control con-
tributes a major part of that capital intensity.
Don Johnson (Staley Company): We are a cord wet miller;
so I am more of an observer here as far as using these feed-
stocks is concerned, but I was surprised also with the comment
from someone in the Council on Environmental Quality.
Compare this with nuclear energy, for example, with the
problems with that. With fossil fuels, somebody pointed out
earlier, you are taking the stored carbon out of the ground and
making carbon dioxide, and that is where we are talking about
utilizing a material that is oxydizing anyway; we are recycling
it. It is going out anyway, and we want to channel it into a
more productive, more focused concentration than letting it
go on by itself.
102
Higgins
CONCLUSIONS
CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
OIL AND SHALE OIL
E. J. Higgins: Throughout much of the conference we have
failed to differentiate between feed and fuel. The feedstocks
are materials of chemical composition which provide the cor-
rect molecular species for use in making petrochemicals. They
are amenable to reasonable processing with available technol
ogy. The fuels are quite different. They are merely B.t.u.
which are environmentally acceptable.
On feedstocks we must continue research and development
in all the areas that will permit us to be more selective in the
use of feedstock in order to conserve the remaining reserves.
On fuels we can clearly replace much of the combustion equip-
ment or means of using this fuel so that we may use alterna-
tive energy forms. Unfortunately, the lack of a free energy
market has given us serious economic disincentives to change
to alternative fuels, but I think that today, with much more
concern about security of supply and the threat of regulation,
or the fact of regulation, industry is going to be moving in the
direction of replacing hydrocarbons with alternative fuels, be-
cause fuels do not have the same kind of specificity that feed-
stocks have.
The second area that we covered is the shortage of available
domestic energy, which is worsening. Unless this problem is
solved, the availability of suitable petrochemical feedstocks
cannot be assured. This statement, which we had no trouble
with at all, is not quite so obvious to the general public. The
public is not accustomed to thinking in the one-, two-, five,-
ten-, twenty-year horizons that we have to think in if we are
going to be able to plan our business. And the talk of short-
term oil gluts over the next several years is certainly not help-
ing matters any.
Somehow we have to help to convey our concern and our
concept oflead time to the public and to the legislature, both
ofwhom are afflicted with very short attention spans. They
are used to quick solutions and to legislating away problems,
and we have a situation here that is not going to yield to this
kind of tactic; so we somehow have to get our message across.
Few if any of the steps that we are recommending have less
than a five-year lead time. It is probably this long before we
are going to see even initial production of shale oil. As far as
the biomass is concerned, it seems to be the only viable solu-
tion until the middle ofthe next century, but has huge lead
times in the solution of the problems its use occasions.
Nearly everything that we are looking at also requires mas-
sive capital on a scale that boggles the mind. Without a sym-
pathetic climate in the government, the capital cannot be
generated. The alternative is a falloff in chemical production.
An earlier speaker quoted studies indicating that if petrochem-
ical output drops by as much as 15 percent two million jobs
will be lost in this country. Now this is the kind of informa-
tion that we have to get before the people who are setting
policy.
Our third general statement was that the nation must move
in the direction of committing remaining petroleum, natural
gas, and natural gas liquid exclusively to end uses where the
physical and chemical properties are essential. For example,
we stated that large stationary B.t.u. consumers should be
shifted toward coal combustion or nuclear energy to the ex-
tent that this is practical. Thus we will conserve the specific
molecular species which we need for a viable petrochemical
operation with available technology.
This statement however is not socially blind. It encompasses
end uses for which the properties are essential; it encompasses
transportation and home heating requirements, where the
physical portability of the fuels is important. So we really
have to be working in the direction of keeping the proper
molecular species for the chemicals industry and simply allo-
cating fuels with the right physical properties for the other
users, where the chemical species is not critical.
Then as a corollary to this allocation, which has a frighten-
ing connotation to it, we have conservation, which is vital in
all sectors of energy consumption.
If the nation as a whole made efforts comparable to those
which have been made in the process industries, particularly
in petrochemicals, I am confident that we could reverse the
trends in imports of petroleum from other parts of the world.
I think what we need to do through the MCA or through
other appropriate channels is to advertise the success we have
had in petrochemicals in reducing the consumption of dwin-
dling resources. Then we can gradually build up in the public
an awareness of and a sensitivity to reducing consumption.
The next point that we made was that in the future, as new
sources of energy and feedstocks such as shale oil, synthetic
crude, or biomass derivatives are developed, the industry
should be permitted to select the best feedstock on the basis
of economics. This plea for a free market, with the probable
need for an overt step on our part, is a prayer that the bureau-
crats, who are totally ignorant of the potential impact on the
gross national product of allocating the wrong materials to
petrochemicals, who are ignorant of the potential impact on
the overall energy consumption of the whole system, and who
are almost certainly not familiar with the impact on capital
employed and are also unfamiliar with the probable impact
on the competitiveness of the business on an international
basis, will resist the visceral urge to decide who gets what with-
out regard for differences in the chemical properties, for the
proximity of the sources, for the suitability of the available
technology to make use of the materials.
The next statement is that short-range government policy
must prevent the imposition of unnecessary, unwieldy restric-
tions on the development of needed petroleum supplies from
frontier areas such as the outer continental shelf, tertiary
recovery, and so on.
Again we are dealing with the problem of the forecast short-
term glut, where the problems of environmental concerns con-
front the energy needs of tomorrow. We are dealing with
vocal groups with real or imagined immediate problems in
opposition to objectives beyond the horizon year of most
voters and, therefore, of most Congressmen.
CONCLUSIONS Higgins 103
The environmental compromises simply must be made. In
offshore oil drilling, environmental concerns show signs of
being met constructively, because the industry has not had a
bad record. In the deep mining of coal there are environmen-
tal problems, but the outlook is reasonably optimistic. But
surface mining of coal is a much more difficult proposition.
There have been very visible excesses in the past.
Yet here we have a situation where the technology is avail-
able for reasonable control. We ought to be able to proceed
with development of surface mining, but not until shortages
begin to be felt will compromises be worked out.
President Carter is saying we ought to be treating the energy
crisis as a war, and, as far as surface mining is concerned, I
think we are sitting here with the cavalry confmed to barracks
because they shot up the town a couple of times. We can not
afford to be in that situation. Somehow we have to be a part
of reinforcing the urgency that we have to get on with the de-
velopment of energy resources.
The next general statement was that the government should
create a climate to encourage investment in the develop-
ment oflonger range supplies of energy and of feedstocks such
as shale oil, the products of coal gasification, synthetic crude,
breeder reactors, solar energy, and so on, with shale being
probably the closest to development. We need to have the
government provide a climate where people can have
confidence that calculated rates of returns are going to hold,
and, if not, it is not because of government action. The gov-
ernment should refrain from imposing unreasonable restric-
tions of any sort and should accept the principle that environ-
mental compromises must be made. It means possibly running
the risk of damage to some obscure kind of vegetation which
has gone unnoticed for eons, or possibly it means abandoning
the zero risk principle, which none of us use in our own lives.
In a longer view of some of the other sources of energy and
feedstocks that need to be developed, probably the best role
that government can play is through carefully selected research
grants chosen on merit and probability of success.
Next we thought that it should become a national objective
to have at least two million barrels a day of shale oil produced
by the turn of the century. The experts in our group con-
cluded that that is about the best we could do. There was
considerable concern that people would get the mistaken im-
pression that this was too little to bother with. Nothing could
be farther from the truth. This quantity of oil amounts to 20
to 25 percent of today's imports. Even with different invest-
ment policies and different national policies, I think that
with the present economic climate-the combination of
economic and investment climates-and the drives on the
part of private industry, we could not have produced this
much shale much qUicker than we are likely to do. But this
amount would indeed be a vital increment to our turning
around the curve that Dosher previously showed us.
In discussion in the petrochemical feedstock area, shale
was the one we have the least information on. We concluded
that the first utilization of shale would probably be as fuel.
It would displace other hydrocarbons and leave them available
for selected use as petrochemicals.
But even as a fuel, shale is not without problems. There is a
very high nitrogen content in shale oil relative to normal petro-
leum, and it is apparent that this high nitrogen content could
cause the use of shale as a fuel oil to conflict with the new
EPA regulation calling for a short-term averaging of ground-
level concentrations of nitrogen. One thing that the industry
needs to do very rapidly is to quantify the problem to see
whether it will be necessary to try for at least temporary
exceptions to the regulation in geographic areas where it is
really not appropriate.
I think there is a good opportunity to do something. There
was. some evidence within the group that after deep, severe
hydrotreating, shale oil could become an adequate and pos-
sibly superior petrochemical feedstock, and here again is an
area that may have some real promise and that needs to be
studied. It does not need to be studied as urgently as some of
the other problems, but I think that most of us who are doing
research and development in petrochemical generation need to
fmd out what the potential really is.
Our last statement is that if the energy problemis not solved,
then either oil imports need to grow continually, with serious
consequences to the stability of the U.S. dollar, or petrochem-
icals must compete for feedstocks in a fuel-short market,
104 Sarkanen
CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
where there will be some form of mandatory government
allocation.
In the foreseeable future it is probable that there will be a
limit to available imports, and so, lacking a solution to the
energy problem, government intervention is inevitable.
Klaus Timmerhaus: The last point that you raised here was
that if nothing is done then we are going to have continued
imports, further unstabilizing the economy in the United
States. What are the contingency plans that we would have to
come up with at this point?
E. J. Higgins: The only response that is available to the
petrochemical industry is to simply put the derivative users
on allocation. Then, when they very quickly start to put their
customers on allocation, extreme shortages develop. And the
shortages are obviously followed first by people competing for
the scarce commodities, which is known as inflation, and
then by rationing of some sort.
There is plenty of energy and initiative and ingenuity to
cope with the problem if we chould only choose our time
frame. But a long lead time is needed for any corrective step.
That time we do not have, I am afraid.
If something happens to disrupt supplies and to make it
impossible for the petrochemical industry to function in the
form in which it is now functioning, there is absolutely noth-
ing that anyone can do overnight. Legislation will come.
But all of the things that have to be done to avert allocation
and shortage can be done with very long lead time.
K. D. Timmerhaus: We need to keep in mind that anything
can happen and so it behooves us to try to come up with as
many contingency plans as we possibly can. You've outlined
several things in your talk this morning; for instance, you in-
dicated that we need to differentiate between feedstocks and
fuel. Again most technical people recognize this as a real need.
But will the public recognize this? Will they recognize"any
difference between the feedstock and the fuel when the gas
quits in their homes?
We have also indicated that we need to educate the public
and government to focus on some of the problems of the
energy situation. What type of plan would you or some of
the others propose that we could actually launch now?
E. J. Higgins: The only way we can have any kind of group
action from this kind of group is through some kind of in-
dustry association such as the MCA or the API. There is no
other way that the petrochemical industry can address the
public in a unified way.
H. G. Davis: We discussed this problem of getting things
over to the public and agreed that groups like the MCA are
frequently not going to be listened to. Bill Von Tress of Dow
pointed out that it is perfectly legal to encourage organiza-
tions of employees that are not part of the company and that
Dow has done this. You can encourage employees to orga-
nize for the sake of learning and passing on information to
their Congressmen. You can educate your employees much
more easily than you can the general public, and you can also
educate service groups.
This perhaps is more helpful; you can get surges ofletters
to Congress, well-informed letters, and they may be some
help. I think the MCA should go on; I think the AIChE
should encourage things like this and the ACS and other
organizations, but the grass roots educational approach is
probably the only one that's really going to do any good.
This was the only thing that we could come up with.
A. H. Manchester (Hercules): I feel there is an inconsistency
in some of Mr. Higgins's statements. You make a plea for a
free market where we should be able to select the best feed-
stocks available to us. But then you also state that we should
commit a significant part of our remaining petroleum reserves
to uses where either physical form or molecular form is impor-
tant, and this implies a government allocation of some sort.
What you are saying is that the users of feed stocks should not
have to compete with the energy users.
E. J. Higgins: What we are saying is that there should be,
to a degree, a restriction on the large-B.t.u. consumers. They
should be restricted to materials that can be used only for that
purpose. Thus all other uses would end up being used in a
competitive fashion. And that is really the only restriction
that Washington is already aiming at, the use of coal or nuclear
energy for power generation or for any major stationary
source. I think that makes national sense.
H. G. Davis: But you will have to agree that it is a little bit
difficult to say, "Let us allocate, but then, when you have
taken care of the problem, do not set any regulations on us."
E. J. Higgins: But if we can stop the frivolous use of the
materials that have physical and chemical properties that
make them important for certain end uses such as transpor-
tation, petrochemicals, and so on, we then end up with a
bigger pool of materials which can go into the market place
for end use for specific needs. Once you get that total pool
then it becomes a question of competition for the specific
chemical species. There is no problem in a free market place
of having a price differential between the sources that have
the proper chemical species and the ones that do not. We may
end in the petrochemical industry by paying more for feed-
stocks than the price of similar boiling-range material that is
going into heating oil or something else, but that is entirely
appropriate because we are asking for something that is
chemically specific.
H. G. Davis: Do you think that this is a realistic approach?
E. J. Higgins: I think that is entirely possible. We could
stop using natural gas and even fuel oil in uses that do not re-
quire a portable fuel and thereby we conserve the available
petroleum for a longer period of time, which gives us more
lead time to develop the technologies that will have to suc-
ceed petroleum technology.
H. G. Davis: Who will make the decisions on which users
actually change to other fuel? Are you going to specify
which homeowners are going to make the switch from gas
to coal?
E. J. Higgins: It would be naive for us to discuss allocating
homeowners. What we are talking about is the petrochemical
industry's being in there competing with any homeowner who
wants to burn fuel.
K. V. Sarkanen: I want to take issue with the statement
that biomass would become significant as a chemical feed-
stock in the middle of the next century. In the biomass
workshop the time frame which developed is completely dif-
CONCLUSIONS Buck 105
ferent. We should not forget that biomass is already providing
two million tons of cellulose and cellulose derivatives today.
The question is really when the crossover point will be
reached, the point when additional feedstock generation from
biomass will become possible. Now our time frame is around
1990.
E. J. Higgins: I think what I said there was that out in the
middle of the next century biomass will be all there is, not
that that's when it is going to start showing up. Biomass is
here now. There will be biomass applications that are clearly
going to move out other raw materials in my lifetime.
But what we are really looking at here is energy systems. We
are in a petroleum era right now, and whether it is a blip in
the span of man or a little broader bell-shaped curve, that's
what we're talking about.
A. M. Squires: In the coal workshop we hoped that we
would be able to preserve a priority for chemicals for a long
time. The time frame has to be pretty long because of the
long lead time that Ed mentioned-long for coal and long for
biomass and probably about the same really for either of
them.
The technologies are available for coal, more -so than for bio-
mass, perhaps, coal being even more difficult than the biomass
technology. Organizations like Shell and Pace predict that the
world's supply of oil will peak at about 1989.
Did the oil people come up with any maximum time frame
for when we really have to start getting an appreciable amount
of our feedstocks from coal because of price competition for
naphtha gas oil, what is left of natural gas?
F. A. M. Buck: The average credible forecast for the rela-
tive growth of petrochemicals compared to energy would be
that by the year 2000 some 11 percent of our national energy
budget would be devoted to petrochemicals.
K. D. Timmerhaus: Is that just feedstocks or the total?
F. A. M. Buck: Just feedstocks, I think. We concluded
that, when you are looking for specific material that con-
stitutes only 11 percent of your energy budget and you still
do not have any particular problem in getting the material,
your economics tells you it is most efficient to convert into
petrochemicals. And so when you pose the question when
does coal become a significant factor? It is difficult to answer
Perhaps it was Hugh who pointed out that as certain types of
coal conversion processes go commercial, we will begin to get
by-products, benzene and a variety of BTX aromatics. All
by-product material finds its way to market. So I think the
question is ill put, when you ask at what point, for example,
BTX aromatics from coal would begin to take over from BTX
aromatics from pyrolysis gasoline? That is not the question.
Both of those are going to get to the market. The material
that is going to get phased out will be benzene that is re-
covered from motor gasoline.
A. M. Squires: What you are saying is that iflogic prevails,
then we do have a pretty long lead time before we have to go
to another basis; that is, coal and other sources will gradually
take over as by-products come in and things of that sort.
E. J. Higgins: I would amend that to only if logic and
reasonable economics prevail.
John Dosher: In my paper I showed that I thought the
principal petrochemical feedstocks starting in about the
1990's would be nonpetroleum. I think there will be coal.
Shale oil may become a petrochemical feedstock only to the
point that it displaces other petroleum. The concept I see,
starting in the 1990's, is that if you look at the energy de-
mands and then you look at the petrochemical demands,
you are going to have to put either some coal-derived chem-
icals into that mix or shale oil into the mix. As far as I am
concerned, the petroleum age and the petrochemical industry
roughly end around 1990. At that point I would say that 50
percent or some greater portion of the net petrochemical
feedstocks added to the system are going to have to come
from nonpetroleum sources. Time is very, very important.
There is very little likelihood that we are going to have all
these feedstocks, and so I feel a lot more need for urgency
than is conveyed by this idea.
To talk about 11 percent of the energy budget is very mis-
leading. Some work that we have done shows that in 1990
roughly 7 percent of the total petroleum fed to refmers in the
United States will end up as a fmished petrochemical feed-
stock-benzene, ethylene, or something of this type. That's
not the amount of feedstock that went to the ethylene plant
as an intermediate. From 1990 to 2000 petrochemical de-
mands will continue to grow faster than energy demands.
One of the people on our panel asserted that the feedstock
demand would approach 40 to 50 percent of total petroleum
processed by the year 2000. We need to have alternatives to
petroleum in time for this severe competition.
F. A. M. Buck: If you are saying that by the year 1990
some significant fraction of the newly capitalized capacity
will be based on feedstocks other than conventional petro-
leum sources, I might agree with you.
In 1990 when we have some shale liquids coming to market
there will be somebody up in the Chicago area or somewhere
that says, "I can buy shale liquids today and on a long-term
contract and I have been having problems fmding some nice
straight chain oil to crack for olefins; so I will build this next
plant on shale liquids as a cracking feed." (There is now a
plant that makes ethylene out of shale liquid.)
By 1990 we project something like 40 or 45 billion pounds a
year of olefm capacity; that is 40 to 45 billion pounds a year
of ethylene. This would then be the beginning of the substi-
tution of other materials, but it will be a long, long time
before nonconventional feeds of this type completely domi-
nate the market.
With respect to your second point, you know that of course
when we talk about 11 percent or, today, 4 percent of the
energy budget's being petrochemical feedstocks, if we have a
catalytic reformer and we recover 2,500 barrels a day of
benzene and we add that 2,500 barrels a day, we do not say
that the feed to that cat-reformer is 30,000 barrels a day. I
believe that is the number you get if you take the feed for all
these processes. You get a fairly Significant fraction of our
energy budget, but that is kind of arbitrary.
We could say that a given sequence of cat-reforming and
aromatic extraction is a chemical plant and that the gasoline
which is made therefrom, and I suppose it constitutes the
remainder of 25,000 barrels, could be a by-product. We say
106 Buck CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
we only use 2,500 barrels a day of petrochemical feed, and I
think it is misleading to say that we use 30,000 barrels a day.
John Dosher: I am saying that over half of the new feed-
stock demand starting in 1990 will have to come from non-
petroleum sources. So I agree we have to plan, I think, on
nonpetroleum's making up at least half our moves sometime
in the 1990's.
Another point-between 1990 and the year 2000 it is con-
ceivable that benzene, ethylene, and so on, not the feedstock
to the reformer but the actual finished product, could be in
the range of 20 to 25 percent of total petroleum. There
would be some pretty severe competition with premium uses
of petroleum. We cannot procrastinate and hope to have a
viable petrochemical industry in the 90's.
K. D. Timmerhaus: Ed Higgins pointed out that we should
have a national objective of two million barrels per day made
from shale oil by the year 2000. To speed up production,
what would we need to do?
John Hand: The group that I was working in yesterday dis-
cussed quite extensively what kind of chemical product could
be expected from the stream of crude shale oil, how much
treating might have to be carried on to make shale oil trans-
portable to consuming areas, the types of hydrogenation pro-
cesses that might be employed, the catalyst that might be
used, the depth to which we need to go to remove the sulfur,
the nitrogen content of the shale oil, and whether when you
have gone to that extent in your treatment you then have a
superior feedstock for the petrochemical industry. Other
questions arose, such as methods of mining and the environ-
mental concern about the leaching of spent shale piles.
We need to know more about the economics of the pro-
duction of shale oil, and we can get this, we feel, only by
developing large-scale demonstration operations. These are
the things we need to move on rapidly with the least amount
of destruction in the way of environmental excesses or ob-
struction in the way of government regulations and bureau-
cratic paper shuffling.
Tom Richards (Olin): One of the topics that came up
earlier was what we can do to protect ourselves as these
shortages develop. The problem that many experienced up in
the Northeast last winter was that people who had planned
ahead of time and thought they were prepared when the gas
shortage happened found that their plans did not work out for
various reasons, most of which you know; so any contingency
plans would have to be developed in the light of possible legis-
lation or earlier action that may be taken that will affect these
plans. It was a rather frustrating thing to address because it
leaves us with a helpless feeling.
K. D. Timmerhaus: What you are saying is that you need to
develop contingency plans and then you have to develop con-
tingency plans to take care of those contingency plans that
do not work, and then you have to have contingency plans
on top of that yet, and that is what makes it very, very
difficult.
Tom Richards: For instance, in Ohio last winter people
drilled their own wells and constructed tanks to store fuel,
and then were not permitted for one reason or another to
make use of them. So it's more complicated than just build-
ing a tank and putting stuff in it.
K. D. Timmerhaus: I think we certainly have to recognize
this, and I do not think this is going to change too much un-
less we get some real changes in Washington, and that does not
look too likely.
David Goheen: I think I heard somebody say that petro-
chemicals as feedstocks would increase from four or five
percent to eleven percent. Why wouid they increase more
than they are now? Surely some of these increases would be
considered frivolous.
F. A. M. Buck: I will give a partial answer. None of us wants
to do things in life that are entirely frivolous, but we make
subjective judgments. If somebody wants to buy something,
I presume that's his best judgment of what he wants to do
with his purchasing power, and I'm not sure it's entirely fair
to say that it's frivolous.
Yet there are a lot of things made that are not essential to
our life. Perhaps if our economy gets more critical with re-
spect to forms of hydrocarbons, these things would disappear.
But in a larger sense we do make-and I know a lot of other
companies that do also-studies to see the direction of the
products that are required in the future. There are a great
number of products made from petrochemicals that are not
at all frivolous. One of the things that come to mind is the
waste drain and vent piping that is now used in very large
tonnage in new buildings. It is a substitute for copper or
galvanized steel, and it is simply more cost effective.
Again, we practitioners in the petrochemical industry are
very confident that there will be considerable increase in the
application of petrochemicals in the automotive industry as
it tries to cut down weight. And good-quality structural
polymers, polypropylene might be one candidate, cost about
1 cent a cubic inch, whereas other materials like zinc, die-
cast steel, or aluminum are about 10 cents a cubic inch.
It is a fairly complicated problem to forecast the demand by
our economy for materials made out of petrochemicals. Even
if the frivolous materials are not counted, there will be con
siderable growth in requirements of petrochemical material.
CONCLUSIONS Squires 107
COAL
A. M. Squires: The coal group developed two scenarios.
The first scenario was that oil and gas are going to remain
available for some years at least as chemical feedstocks and
that there will be political stability, with no major crises that
impinge upon people's ability to stay warm in their homes
and to drive their automobiles freely. There will be no major
price upheavals although of course there will be gradually
rising prices.
Scenario Two is the opposite. We will be kept off balance
by a series of jolts; there will be alternation between the ap-
parent glut of oil to be anticipated in the immediate future
(confirming much of the public's perception of prices as not
being realistic) and sharp jolts thereafter in the form of short-
ages and sudden price rises. There will be a paralysis in the
decision-making process in the polJ.tical sector.
The coal group believes the second scenario at the very
least to be the far more interesting and more difficult scenario,
and it leads to the following questions. How would we restore
robustness and flexibility to our energy supplies, especially
chemical feedstocks? How would we operate in an era when,
for the first time since England shifted from wood to coal in
about 1700, the cost of energy at the margin is greater than
the average cost that people pay for energy? And more
specifically for the chemical industry, what defensive planning
would be needed, what defensive research and development,
what learning operations would be needed in respect to new
technologies, such as demonstration plants, equipment
development, and so on?
There is general agreement in the coal group that oil or coal
must be promptly substituted for gas in obtaining process
heat. There does not seem to be complete agreement as to
whether or not it must be coal versus the option of using oil.
A defensive position would at the very least require prompt
action to gain experience in coal combustion, about which
we in the United States appear to remember very little. The
rules are very different today from the time when we acquired
our experience in coal combustion, especially on a small
scale. Fluidized-bed combustion of coal may be at a point
of takeoff in its uses and exploitation, especially on a small
scale.
Interest was also expressed in a low- and intermediate-B.t.u.
gas for process heat. The general view seemed to be that
liquid fuel from coal is less far along in development. An
interesting development may lead to supplies of methyl
fuel for the power industry to use in gas turbines, in peaking
gas turbines especially.
However, there was a general feeling that the chemical
industry will be in no special position in respect to retaining
for its own use any gas which it displaces from its own boilers
and process furnaces. This will enter the large pool of gas.
h would be a political question whether or not there would
be some allocations of petrochemical feedstocks.
Another approach to the question of substituting coal for
oil and gas in process heat and boilers is that it is perhaps
largely a question of timing and getting together what we need
when we need it. There was some concern, for example, over
the future availability of steel. We perceive that steel mills
are cutting down today and yet it seems reasonably clear
that in the 1980's we may well see an urgent need for rail-
road cars, rails, mining equipment, and so on and may well
be in the position of having to buy this from Japan.
With respect to the path of technological development in
very broad terms, the weight of opinion is that this path will
proceed to coal combustion first and then conversion of coal
to low- and perhaps also intermediate- B.t.u. gas fuels. The
intermediate-B.t.u. gas, of course, is essentially synthesis gas,
and if plants of this type were built, there would be very
interesting by-product implications for chemical feedstocks.
This leads me to the next development in the path as the
coal group perceived it and that was the development of
hydrogen-carbon monoxide synthesis. There appeared to
be considerable optimism about such syntheses and a feeling
that research in this area needs to be strongly encouraged.
Concerning liquefaction, there was on view that coal liquids
may not become very important quickly, since ethylene,
which has been made by cracking petroleum liquids for
probably 20 years or so, gives by-product aromatics which
would be hard for a by-product from coal liquids to compete
with. There was not complete agreement on this. Some
optimism was expressed for the relatively near term appear-
ance of supplies of coal liquids and for the hydropyrolysis of
liquids to give chemical feedstocks. There was very con-
siderable interest in flash pyrolysis or flash hydropyrolysis,
or flash hydrocarbonization of raw coal, with emphasis upon
recovery of methane and benzene.
There was at least one eloquent and strongly held opinion
that we need far, far more basic research in coal and coal
chemistry. This particular opinion held that many of the
present day approaches are contemptible and that the num-
ber of demonstration plants now projected is far too large
and involves many unintelligent approaches that we will
almost surely never use. Thus, in projecting demonstration
plants we should wait until we know more and can devise
better processes. At the moment at least we should reserve a
demonstration plant mainly for development of equipment
such as coal feeders, coal gasifiers required to provide hydro-
gen for hydrogenations, and the like.
I would be untruthful if I represented this as a majority
opinion, but it was an opinion that some of us felt carried
some weight. There was certainly also a feeling that some
demonstration plants are needed, and this of course raises
the extremely ugly question of how these ought to be fi-
nanced. By and large the groups is extremely uncomfortable
with government participation because so often this means
in effect government takeover and government direction.
The question of selecting demonstration plants is extremely
difficult, and there are long lead times. If we are to have a
Sasol, for example, it would require eight to ten years to de-
sign and build and bring into operation.
There seems to be a general feeling that the economics
simply are not there yet for a free-standing plant for chemicals
from coal; that is, a free-standing syngas operation with the
synthesis gas going into various chemical syntheses.
There was a minority opinion that such a demonstration
108 Squires CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
plant might be in order, it being argued that a joint venture
might be put together between a chemical company and a
utility company. But then a very strong view was expressed
that such joint ventures with utility fmancing structures would
require the absence of risks that utility financing implies.
Risks were analyzed for us as being of two kinds-risks of the
market and risks of technology. An undercurrent of opinion
was that some kind of government guarantee with respect to
technology might be in order. But the guarantees of markets
and prices get difficult.
The question of joint ventures becomes much simpler if
we are talking about a piggyback operation, where a chemical
venture gets a minor part of a product which is being gener-
ated primarily for utility use, such as a synthesis gas, with
the by-product stream coming from a SNG plant.
Another example, which seems to be reasonably far along
in its planning stage, is a method of making methyl alcohol
containing a number of impurities. This would be called
methyl fuel and would be used as gas turbine fuel by industry.
This plant would be capable of providing a methyl fuel at
20 cents a gallon, which works out to about $3 a million B.t.u.
This cost would be based on lignite put into the process at
40 cents a million B.t.u. Such a plant would provide a
hydrogen-rich stream for cleaning up for ammonia synthesis,
as well as, of course, some by-products of chemical-grade
methanol. This provides a prototype of the piggyback type of
operation, which might lend itself to joint ventures between
chemical companies and a utility company, with utility
fmancing for the biggest part of the capital.
The group perceived the necessity of Exxon's donor solvent
liquefaction pilot plant, and although it was not discussed, I
suppose the group would also applaud the H-coal pilot unit
at Catlettsburg, Kentucky. The very longlead times for making
ready such liquefaction processes were noted, although we
were reminded that the time needed might be collapsed very
considerably with some probably acceptable risks if we were
really to adopt a wartime crisis attitude toward these
developments.
The group spent some time on the need for communication
or better public relations on the part of the engineering com-
munity with the lay public and with the government.
I'd like to share with you one thought that was put forward
in the group, and that is that there is a decision-making paraly-
sis in the United States today, perhaps even in the entire
Western world. We had recommended to us two recent books
that discuss this question in countries like ours and England-
a book by Morris Janowitz called The Problem of Social Con-
trol and a book by Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions
of Capitalism. It may well be that we should be talking about
something more serious than just writing our Congressmen;
we might attempt to understand the historical position that
we are in and what a very difficult problem it is to reach the
rational decisions that might even lead to scenario one, wherein
oil is available for feedstocks and fuel, and politics are stable.
Then there was discussion of what we would have the gov-
ernment do if somehow we had the power to influence
decisions.
It was suggested that the government permit planning that
will hold good for at least 10 years; that the government
promote much more basic research and perhaps stay clear of
directing engineering activity, because the managements of
commercial organizations are much more competent in plan-
ning and directing; that the government simplify its working
procedures. Many companies have special divisions set aside
with people in them who do nothing but deal with the Federal
government. They know its rules, but they are insulated from
the parts of the company that are operating in the real world.
One of the problems in this context is that the Federal govern-
ment should be somehow encouraged to give greater recogni-
tion to prior right, to know-how, either secret or protected by
patent, because its present practices drive away some of the
most knowledgable people from bidding on their RFP's or
from attempting to work on the problems.
Another point was that if coal conversion were taxed as oil
exploration is, it would probably be economic today. There
was one extreme opinion in our group that the tax breaks for
oil explorations should be eliminated forthwith in order to
encourage the shift to coal.
CONCLUSIONS Davis
109
The government, because of its complex procedures, is never
able to act quickly. I remember in World War II we built a
gaseous diffusion plant and had it operating in less than three
years. That kind of speed would be unthinkable with present
government practices, where months, or even years, are re-
quired to write a contract. With government research and
development's being almost the only ballgame in town for so
many areas, this is certainly a source of great delay.
John Hand: We spent a great deal of time discussing what I
think is one of the essential questions in this whole problem.
Under current conditions there is almost no form of synthetic
fuel or any use of coal or shale oil for chemicals likely to go
forward on any large scale, because its economics would be
as favorable as the economies of continued use of petroleum
at present prices, or because the huge investment would result
in a marginal economic situation compared to that of petro-
leum. The investment would be so huge that the risk would
probably be greater than a single firm could afford. We do not
foresee much change in this economic environment for the
next six or seven years.
The glut of petroleum that people mentioned, such as
Mexican gas becoming available over the next year or so, is
going to take a little pressure off the gas situation, and yet I
think the group almost universally expects to see scenario
two, in which shortages will appear suddenly, and decision
making will be paralyzed.
We see severe shortages occurring in the late 1980's. With
the huge investments required for alternatives, with the steel
problem, and with the labor problem, if we started today with
an accelerated program we could barely make a dent by the
late 80's, and yet the economic conditions are such that we
are not likely to start for six or seven years. We have a real
paradox; we are all strongly biased in favor of the free market,
and yet we are very concerned that under free market condi-
tions nothing is going to happen. So there was a universal
feeling in the group I was with that some type of artificial
incentive is going to have to be applied in order to get things
going and get them going in a hurry.
I think we are going to have to have certain help in the
government. We are, however, going to have to say, "This is
the way that we are going to work." Otherwise, action will be
imposed upon us.
We also talked somewhat about divestiture, which, lover-
looked mentioning in our summary meeting. The conclusion
was that the people who have the capital and the know-how
to do something about this problem are the oil companies,
and if they are not allowed to participate in the development
of the coal industry, then the situation probably will get a
lot worse.
There is also the nuclear problem. If you assume that coal
is going to be developed about as fast as it can anyway, each
nuclear plant creates an additional demand for residual fuel
oil in the future. That residual fuel oil is oil that will not be
available for the petrochemical industry. If more residual
fuel oil has to be imported, the situation will be a lot more
critical for us.
One idea that I think came through in all our discussions
yesterday is that there are terrifically high investments in-
volved in any of the alternatives to petroleum-coal, shale,
and so on-and individual companies are reluctant to make
these investments, regardless of the economics, just because
of the high risks. And I got the feeling from this conference
and other work that I've done that the chemical industry, the
purely chemical companies, are waiting for the energy industry
to feed them petrochemical feedstocks. I think a positive
approach that the chemical industry could take is to go in
and participate in the investment in some of these-reduce the
risks and thereby accelerate the development of alternatives
by a considerable amount.
H. G. Davis: There was no disagreement with the statement
that the chemical industry would much rather make its chemi-
cals out of oil and gas than coal. Eventually, however, the
scenario goes toward coal and then to biomass. Refmeries and
chemical plants will be forced to convert their fuel sources to
coal, but they will have installations which cannot operate
on coal but could operate on CO and hydrogen for instance.
They will put in a Texaco burner and make a CO and hydro-
gen on which this equipment will operate very well. Then the
CO and hydrogen are there as by-products. They probably
will not be enough for an ammonia plant, but maybe they
would be very nice for an ethanol or glycol plant, with some
of the new technology that is being developed. Then perhaps
CO and hydrogen will become major sources if there is trouble
bidding for naphthas and the gas oils. The methanol that Art
mentioned would be another way of doing this.
In speaking about coal and deep hydrogenation we spoke
about creaming the material off the coal. Since you have to
make CO and hydrogen out of a lignite that is perhaps 40 per-
cent water and 10 percent ash, you could while drying this
take some of the liquids off in flash pyrolysis, or flash hydrog-
enolysis. I don't know what the process is, and we need some
development there. It did not work well 15 or 20 years ago
when Alcoa and Texas Power and light tried it. Yet cream-
ing the coal and getting some liquids might be the way that
liquids would develop.
Another development that was discussed at some length in
our group was the thermally neutral formation of paraffms
by the reaction of coal or tar with steam catalyzed by alkali
and by metals. Exxon is working on this sort of process with
alkali catalysts, and a much smaller company named King and
Wilkinson is working on it with alkali and a metal catalyst.
You can make not only methane but also ethane, prothane,
and others if you vary your catalyst. This method might
somewhat reduce the kind of investment that you have to get
to produce these raw materials.
Art commented on needing steel in the 80's; we need steel
right now. We need coal cars right now; our own company's
coal mines have coal piled up that they can not ship out be-
cause ConRail does not have enough coal cars to send them.
The coal cars are so old that they break down all the time and
the companies have to shut down the mine when their stock-
pile is full. We find this rather uneconomical. When the wild-
cat strikes are not shutting the mines down, the large coal
pile is, and it's a good question as to which is worse the wild-
cat strikes or the lack of coal cars. We need steel right now,
and yet we are shutting down the steel industry. Our group
felt that if money were somehow left in industry by reducing
taxation or by applying tax incentives, this could be applied
110 Hand CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
by industry toward solving these problems, and the solution
could come a lot faster and better than it is going to come.
K. D. Timmerhaus: Since you are proposing the substitution
of coal for oil and gas, what are your proposals relative to the
environmental regulations that we have right now? How are
we going to handle those to try to meet our energy needs?
A. M. Squires: The only answer that we really had, I think,
was that we somehow have to improve the conversation that
goes on between the parts of the government that are anxious
to promote use of coal and the parts of the government that
say we can not pollute the atmosphere at all or that set rules
which are almost impossible to meet if you do use coal.
K. D. Timmerhaus: We do have expertise in trying to de-
velop processes which will at least minimize the pollutants
that come from coal; therefore we need to ask ourselves what
are some of the problems associated with it? What is the
research that needs to be done at this point? Also, does the
process of creaming hydrocarbons from coal bring pollutants
along with it?
H. G. Davis: Yes, it makes materials which are carcinogenic
also, as does anyone of the hydrogenation processes. The
answer has to be that all industry is doing a tremendous
amount of work on pollution, reducing it, fmding ways not
to create it, but the zero pollution from any of these things
is almost a thermodynamic impossibility, certainly an eco-
nomic impossibility. Again, you have to have a compromise.
How far do we need to go to make any kind of process like
this environmentally and politically acceptable? I don't have
any expertise in this field at all.
K. D. Timmerhaus: No, but I want to raise this as a ques-
tion that needs to be addressed. Certainly it is one that we
need to come up with some answers to, not here perhaps, but
at least they need to surface.
A. M. Squires: I think we are a backward nation when it
comes to knowing how to bum coal. I spent some time this
summer in Scandinavia and in England and they are incompar-
ably ahead of us in understanding how to bum coal and how
to minimize the emission of pollutants. There is new combus-
tion technology or the survival of old technologies that we
have forgotten. Some technology transfer is needed here. We
simply have to learn again what our grandfathers knew very
well and what the English have now automated in many cases,
in the case of small fires. Then of course there are the exciting
new developments in fluidized-bed combustion, which for
small plants is incomparably the best way to deal with the
sulfur problem. But this process does lead to a solid waste
problem. The most difficult problem that I see is the question
of trace metals and what happens to them. Where do they go?
What happens when you pile up a waste deposit of spent lime-
stone and coal ash that is coming from a fluidized-bed combus-
tion unit, and how do you protect it from leaching trace ma-
terials such as, for example, cadmium, arsenic, lead, mercury?
We just do not know very much; we do not even have a data
base. There is a rich variety of organically bound metals in
coal, and these differ widely from one coal to another. This
is certainly an area where research is needed.
John Hand: To assume that we can really make great head-
way in the environmental problems with research and tech-
nology is misleading. For coal, shale, and other alternatives to
go forward, we have to change the regulations, and I propose
that the way to do this is to recognize that the environmental
issue is a tax on our economy and lowers the standard of the
living of the people. There is talk ofthe quality of life; well,
clean air i ~ very defmitely part of the quality of life, but so
is bread on the table. I think the industry should start spon-
soring studies now to show what environmental issues are
going to do to the standard of living right now and in the
future if some things are not changed.
Within the strip mining laws, we as technologists can do
great things, but those laws still are great hinderances to de-
velopment. There was an incident.a year or so ago when the
refining industry developed studies showing that if you phased
out lead in gasoline you would throw so many people out of
work and create gasoline shortages. That law was rescinded.
I think that is the only message Congress hears-what does it
do to the voters?
H. G. Davis: I can think of a lot of public hell1th research
that will do more good than spending 40 or 50 billion dollars
on catalytic mufflers and 10 or 12 or 15 billion on stack ash
rubbish.
F. J. Van Antwerpen: John Dosher said we have to go back
to the government and tell them how we want to work; other-
wise it is going to be thrust upon us. Since I am in association
work, it intrigues me as to whether or not you have any ideas
how we can do that; whether the Coal Industry Association,
the MCA, the API are the ones that should get together or
whether AIChE should run some conferences among those
trade associations and give them the technical things that
bother us? The big villain in the picture seems to be the
United States government. And the only thing that has been
suggested so far is that we can write our Congressmen. That is
my first question.
My second is, in case your point about nuclear plants was
boggled on the tape, would you reiterate that point?
And my third question is how would the chemical industry
invest in coal development? If the petroleum companies stay
out of coal, the chemical industry ought to start investing with
the coal industry or the petroleum firms. How would they go
about doing that and still avoid antitrust and other problems?
John Hand: First, the nuclear industry in terms of genera-
tion of new plants has been practically shut down, due to,
among other reasons, a lack of government support. There are
no new plants being ordered this year that I am aware of.
While nuclear plants do not directly interact with the coal
industry, every nuclear plant that is not built would have
replaced a like amount of energy from oil. Over the next 15
to 20 years oil is still going to be the feedstock for the petro-
chemical industry; therefore, the loss of a possible nuclear
plant causes just that much more competition for the available
oil supply.
Second, I think chemical associations should sponsor studies
like the one I referred to earlier-a study that was sponsored
by the National Petroleum Refineries. Studies that show the
economic impact on the country of some governmental
regulations would, I think, if sponsored by associations, be
very beneficial.
CONCLUSIONS Smithson 111
Not enough objective information is being put before Wash-
ington about what the government is really doing to us, not
what it is doing to the chemical industry but what it is doing
to the voter, to the public.
In terms of what the chemical industry can do, I know the
antitrust problem, but I am not sufficiently knowledgable
from a legal standpoint to know just what the implications are.
For instance, there are shale oil projects that are looking for
joint venture partners to spread the risk, and I think it is in
the chemical industry's best interest to get those things started.
I can see a Union Carbide, a Dow, or a company within that
size range going up to people like Ashland and Amoco and say-
ing they would be participants to help get this industry off the
ground. I think that would be a very beneficial thing for
everyone. It would be in the interests of those chemical
companies, in my opinion.
John Grant (Guernsey Engineers): Generally in AIChE there
are eight or nine meetings of each local section, and there are
101 sections. That is a potential for 808 contacts with Con-
gressmen. Now in South Jersey we have a pretty wide area,
and there are about three or four Congressmen in the area.
I have yet to be turned down by a Congressman when I invited
him to come to speak to any association. Most of the Con-
gressmen have been receptive to the problems of engineers.
You certainly cannot expect to tum their opinions around in
a year or two, but you have to start somewhere. With a poten-
tial for 808 contacts and 465 members of the Legislature,
that is about two contacts for each member of the Legislature
a year. I am not saying we should completely devote our
efforts to these meetings, but they can certainly have an im-
pact at the grass roots level, because these Congressmen have
to at least listen to their constituents.
Roger Gaire (Foster Wheeler): I second the basic view that
AIChE should get more involved in developing position
papers both on a national and on a local chapter level.
For example, a position paper from this particular sym-
posium would, I think, carry quite a bit of weight. But why
not go through the AIChE; Why go through the MeA? I
think it is about time that we had our own impact on the
government.
M. G. Geiger (King Wilkinson): I would suggest that AIChE
consider forming an energy information division, and in doing
this first of all to start informing our own membership. We
have been talking to each other for about two and one-half
days here, and tomorrow we are all going back to important
jobs and other concerns. We should inform the membership
and through the local sections get the members out talking to
the public. For instance, Johnny McKetta made something
like 375 speeches last year. There are eight or ten people in
this room who could make ten speeches a year. Could any of
us make 37 speeches a year? You start to inform the public
on a grass roots basis; then you get those people through their
civic clubs, their churches, and so on, to start writing their
Congressman on an informed basis.
The National Riflemen's Association is effective because
its members write letters. The snowmobilers are effective
because they write several hundred thousand letters. Some of
us used to think that the Sierra Club was a pretty neat orga-
nization or the Friends of the Earth. They have been effec-
tive in Washington because they had all the little guys writing
letters. I think AIChE ought to go the same way.
K. D. Timmerhaus: There certainly are other members of
AIChE who are trying to inform the public. I personally tried
to do this last year, but I did not match the number of talks
that Johnny gave. I also found something else-that many of
our chemical engineers in AIChE are not informed about the
energy situation. To do an effective speaking job, we must
have the information. You really have to get in there and dig.
Also, individual members are going to have to be careful
because they can be accused of being self-serving. I think you
will recall that AIChE did take a position last year on the nu-
clear issue, and, because of that position that was made by
Council on the nuclear situation, I received 365 letters from
members saying, "How did you take that position?" How
could you take that position?" You were misinformed on that
position." Many of our own members are not in agreement
on the energy crisis; we need to do some education.
Now, I do not disagree at all that this is something that the
Institute can do. It certainly is going to continue to do it.
But last year I sent out numerous questionnaires asking, first
of all, should AIChE do this? And the response came back,
between 95 and 98 percent, yes, AIChE should do this. Then
I also asked, are you one of the people that will do this and
will you give me your name? Would you like to hazard a
guess at the percentage I got back on that? Six percent;
there is some of our problem.
Engineers work for companies, and they are quite often
reluctant to get out and talk about situations that relate to
their companies. But if we all sit underneath the bushel
basket and do not let the facts shine, we may be looking at
another bushel basket, an empty one.
John Grant: In some of the work we have been doing in
New Jersey in energy, I have been really happy to see that
there are a lot of enlightened managements around. The two
that come to mind are Exxon and National Starch. They
have allowed their people time off to do a lot of the necessary
legwork, and these people are not afraid to make their views
known whether or not they are compatible with their particu-
lar company's emphasis. So in that sense those companies
have my respect, and I think there are a lot of other chemical
and energy companies that are in the same position. Maybe
some engineers are just assuming that they can not speak
freely.
K. D. Timmerhaus: Certainly the engineers as the employees
of various companies need to get in on this. I think the ad-
ministration of many industries is recognizing that perhaps
there has to be a stronger voice.
Jack Smithson (Department of Energy): I think that AIChE
has made an attempt to become a serious technical voice in
the Washington system, and I applaud that. I think it follows
that it cannot become a political action group at the same time
because it will then lose its credibility completely.
There is no question that lettGr writing to Congressmen is
the way to go-even form letters, but individual letters would
be better.
Let me give you an example of what we have to put up with.
112 Giancarlo CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
A certain Congressman back in the summer of '74 in response
to what he foresaw as an energy crisis spent two weeks of his
vacation pumping gasoline. Having completed the two weeks,
he then called a press conference and announced that Ameri-
cans do not want to pay more money for gasoline. How you
overcome that mental attitude I do not know.
F. A. M. Buck: In Professor Squires's excellent summary of
his section he focused on what he called the backward state of
the art in the United States in coal burning. I wonder if we
could get some views on the state of the art.
Cal Reed (Shell Oil Company): As for the ability to reduce
pollution from combusting of coal, we do have many processes
under development regarding the gasification of coal, one of
these being the Shell Koppers process. These processes, par-
ticularly the high-temperature ones, can convert most of the
sulfur into Hz S so that it may be removed with conventional
treating downstream.
As far as water pollution is concerned, the amount of water
used in these processes is being reduced tremendously, and we
have done a large amount of work on how to treat this pol-
luted water, so that the ability to convert coal into a useful
energy source without pollution is well advanced, particularly
in terms of things like a combined cycle plant, where the
low-B.t.u. gas would be burned in a gas turbine to generate
electricity, and steam would generate electricity also. I do not
have any specific data on the actual combustion of coal, but I
did want to point out that coal gasification can reduce the pol-
lution due to coal combustion.
Tony Roeger (Texas Eastern): I would just like to make the
group aware of the fact that ERDA is spending millions of
dollars on developing fluidized-bed combustion technology
with introduction into private industry.
K. D. Timmerhaus: But of course the question is are we
getting the results and answering the questions that need to
be answered?
Sam Giancarlo, Arthur G. McKee: With regard to the
comment about ERDA and fluidized-combustion, McKee is
the project manager overseeing about a half dozen of these
projects with fluidized combustion. One of our responsibili-
ties is to see where this type of project stands and whether or
not we're getting the results. With some of these newer
processes we simply need time. There is one process that is
about ready to be demonstrated and there are about five
others that are a couple of years away yet.
CONCLUSIONS Sarkanen 113
BIOMASS
K. V. Sarkanen: I have never in my life attended a livelier
workshop than the biomass workshop was yesterday. Since it
was pointed out at the biomass workshop what a dirty fuel
coal is and how troublesome it is to remove S02, I would
like to point out that biomass does not contain any sulfur,
and not only is it a potential feedstock but it is also a nice
fuel. It is used to the degree of 2.4 quads in the United
States, which of course is not very much. The total potential
according to Dr. Bogan, and I am not as optimistic as he is, is
20 quads. So like oil and coal, wood is both a fuel and a
potential chemical feedstock.
The amount of biomass is quite considerable. In order to
have the potential of 20 quads we need quite a bit of wood.
We have wood in the form of residue. We can of course haVl
plantations. We have underutilized hardwoods. In fact, we
have a massive amount of biomass available for use. Covering
all the needs of the chemical feedstocks is not dependent on
the amount of biomass but on the economics.
We were very fortunate to have Dr. Katzen participate in
this discussion because he has made a very careful evaluation
of the economic feasibility of producing cornmon chemicals
such as methanol, furfural, etc., from wood. Although most
of these chemicals are not really competitive in terms of
economics, we have a changing situation. It seems that the
price of oil is going to increase much faster than inflation.
An estimate is that in 1985 we might have $25 a barrel on a
1975-dollar basis for oil. Now coal will follow somewhat
more slowly, and sooner or later the economic evaluations
which look discouraging today will reach a crossover point,
perhaps starting in the 1990's.
In passing I would like to point out that for one particular
petrochemical there is a likelihood that biomass could be
competitive with coal and oil today, and that is phenol. I
was rather surprised to learn how difficult it is to convert
coal to phenol. But that is about the only exception among
the chemicals, outside the cellulose derivatives, which might
have economic feasibility today.
We felt very strongly that the development of this feed
should be monitored by continuous evaluation of wood base
for processes to point out where the research needs are.
As the oil reserves become more and more depleted, it
was suggested here that a certain portion of oil because of the
nature of the molecules should be designated for use in petro-
chemicals, but we know that the voters don't care about
molecules; they might make the opposite decision, that all
oil has to be used in automobiles and home heating. This
would of course make today's economic relationships ir-
relevant and would force us to look for alternative feedstocks
in areas where they are uneconomical.
As compared with oil and coal, which are both obtained
from point sources, biomass is dispersed. Therefore we have
a tremendous problem in biomass production, and this is
where we recommend a strong research effort. There is a
realistic indication that the productivity of forests, for in-
stance, could be increased by a factor of eight. We have to
get started in order to develop a high-yield plantation oper-
ation. Of course all sorts of other energy plantations have
been suggested-water hyacinths and kelps, for instance-
but I think that we will stay away from these, exciting as they
may sound.
There is one potential source of chemical feedstocks for
which we do not need to increase harvesting, by-product
chemicals from the pulp industry. From these chemicals we
have two potential starting materials-sugars, which come
from hemicelluloses, and lignin.
For sugars the potential if we assume that we would recover
half of these is about 10 million tons. These are however not
automatically available in the kraft process, which is the
dominant process in the pulp industry. They are converted
to saccharinic acids, and we do not know really what to do
with saccharinic acids today. In order to recover these sugars
we would need to add to the chemical pulping process a pre-
hydrolysis step.
As far as lignin is concerned, it can be precipitated by fluid
gases from the black liquor and obtained in a dry form. We
have the potential of 20 million tons of this material, which
could be converted to phenol, for instance.
There is a very recent and exciting development which
114 Goldstein CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
would be advantageous in terms of chemical recovery as well
as of conversion to lignin-based chemicals. This is the hydro-
pyrolysis process. Developed by the St. Regis Company, it
consists of simply heating the black liquor under pressure
and obtaining the organics in the form of a char and a liquid.
Depending on the conditions, you can vary the proportions
of these. The liquid portion possibly could be used as a
chemical feedstock.
I should point out that the pulp industry is not going to be
very active in developing this feed. Problems might occur if
we isolate sugars as a by-product, since we do not have very
clear-cut ideas about what to use this by-product for. Should
we ferment it to ethanol? Should we recover furfural xylitol?
We should definitely take another look at levulinic acid,
which was briefly produced by the Crown Zellerbach Com-
pany and then discontinued.
lignin has developed some conventional uses, particularly in
sulfanate, but these are not very large. I think the most ex-
citing possibility is the potential of converting to phenol and
benzene, possibly better than the potential of obtaining
phenol from coal.
We should further ask ourselves whether it is worthwhile
to use biomass for making synthesis gas. This is an old tech-
nology used, for instance, in wartime in Europe, when many
cars were run on synthesis gas. However, it has never been
practiced on a large scale. The limitation for large-scale plants
is the impracticality of collecting enough biomass in one
place.
Nevertheless, pilot plant studies should be perhaps recom-
mended here; there is no need for demonstration plants,
since the process is not important enough. Since wood is a
scarce material in any location, one should visualize it as an
auxiliary feedstock in a coal-based synthesis gas plant. This
would provide flexibility for the use of wood and other bio-
mass materials.
Another use of biomass which might have potential is
fermentation to methane. This is being practiced with feed-
lot waste, and it seems to be a reasonably successful operation
to date. in viewofthe iargeamount ofagncuiturai residues
available, this process really deserves further experimentation.
There could be a sizable source of synthetic natural gas from
agricultural residue.
Pyrolysis-what can we do with pyrolysis? Perhaps the most
exciting observation in the laboratory is that at high temper-
atures biomass can be converted to acetylene in reasonably
good yields. I think this idea deserves further study.
Yet for our chemical feedstocks we cannot be as optimistic
about low-temperature pyrolysis. We get oil and gas and tar,
but we do not really know what we should do with them in
terms of a conversion to other chemicals. Obviously research
is needed in this area to see whether low-temperature pyrolysis
could be made more specific.
Finally we have hydrocracking. It has been tried in the
conversion of wood to fuel oils. Perhaps we could use it to
pull out some useful chemicals, but of course this would be a
high-risk venture.
I would like to conclude my presentation by drawing your
attention to natural rubber. It is in a good position.
About starch, it was pointed out yesterday that we do not
need to reserve starch for food stuffs. We can produce it in
large quantities, and so it has good potential for fermenta-
tion alcohol. We can improve the production by using spe-
cially developed com. These are very exciting possibilities.
There is also the possibility of expanding polymeric deri-
vatives of starch. Some possibilities in protein were put
aside some years ago. I think they should be looked into
again. Protein from some specific agricultural plant might
be a very useful feedstock.
We should not throwaway coconut oil and similar oils,
which were once useful chemical materials. Perhaps we will
be needing drying oils in the future more than we did during
the petrochemical era.
Irving Goldstein: First of all I would like to emphasize again
that biomass is a renewable resource. We are not talking
about depletion when we talk about biomass as the answer to
our feedstock problems. This material is stored solar energy
on an annual renewable basis, and it is available to us, un-
like either petroleum or coal. Depending on whom you talk
with, these two will be depleted within 50 years, 100 years, or
200 years.
The next thing is-specifically which of the many types of
biomass show the most promise as alternative feedstocks?
I want to emphasize that, as far as biomass production is
concerned, about two thirds of the biomass produced on
land is in the form of wood. Furthermore, the wood is a more
concentrated form of biomass, granted that biomass in gen-
eral is a dispersed resource compared with coal or oil. Agri-
cultural residues may be present to the extent of three or
four perhaps five tons per acre after you have removed the
grain or fruit or whatever you are tilling the soil for. Wood is
present in 50, 100, even 150 tons per acre, depending on the
site and the size of the vegetation present; so it is much more
concentrated and for that reason we are confronted with
fewer harvesting and transportation problems with wood
than we are with agricultural residues.
That does not mean that I do not reinforce wholeheartedly
Kyosti's cali for additional research and development on collec-
tion, harvesting, and transportation methods of this biomass.
We have to make it more available at some processing site.
This brings us then to the question of economics. I too am
pleased that we were able to have some real hard-core chem-
ical engineering economics applied to the production of
chemicals from wood, but I was very disappointed that Ray
Katzen gave only those parts of his report dealing with single-
products production from biomass at any time. What he
neglected to say and what is in his report and is available to
all is the fact that under present market prices an integrated
plant producing ethanol with phenol and furfural as coprod-
ucts is economic and profitable.
And so that brings me to the fact that you have to use all
the products of a process. It would be equivalent to running
a refinery for light distillates only or running a meat-packing
plant for steaks if we tried to make a single product from the
biomass. We have to use all the biomass that is brought into
the plant to make useful products.
I want to second Kyosti's call for a continual monitoring
CONCLUSIONS Goldstein 115
and economic evaluation of the relative position of biomass
and alternative sources of chemicals. As process improvements
are made in each of these areas we ought to renew our analysis
and economic comparisons.
Another area where process improvements are needed is
in the tremendous capital costs that Ray Katzen showed
are inherent in the processing of biomass; so I would call for
more research and development aimed at increasing process
yield, at increasing reaction rates, and at using all the other
tricks which the chemical engineer can find to reduce his
capital investment.
We discussed yesterday some restraints involving biological
processing of biomass. Fermentation, enzymatic processing
of this material, does have potential. The relative economics
are very difficult to foresee. I as a chemist am inclined toward
chemical hydrolysis of cellulose, but there are many people
working on enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose. I think we
have to continue the research and development to keep our
options open.
I agree that it is premature in the entire biomass area to call
for a demonstration plant. What we have to do is sharpen our
technology and be ready to have an improved demonstration
plant when the time comes.
But what chemicals should we be making from biomass?
Since some of my checkered career has been spent in the
regenerated-cellulose industry and some with a major pulp
and paper producer, in the area of trying to push some of the
goodies out of the black liquor, I have some insight into
chemicals from biomass.
Let us start with by-products from existing process oper-
ations. I do not disagree that there may be as much as 30
to 40 million tons of biomass dissolved in pulping liquids.
But what has not been mentioned is that this material is serv-
ing an irreplaceable function in the pulp and paper mill
economy.
In order for the kraft process to recover inorganic chem-
icals economically, it is necessary to recover them in the
form of a melt under a reducing atmosphere. The organic
component of the black liquor not only provides the energy
to do this but also reduces the atmosphere necessary to do it.
So if we take chemicals out of the black liquor, they are going
to have to be replaced with substitute energy forms and sub-
stitute reducing chemicals.
There of course you have a trade-off between the value of
the replacement fuel and the value of the replacement reduc-
ing agent, whether it be hydrogen or carbon, against the value
of the chemicals that you can extract.
My foray into this was to extract high-value chemicals,
such as catechol, from a portion of the black liquor and then
to let the rest go. Even then I was accused by the plant engi-
neer of upsetting the energy balance in the plant. So I do not
think that we can say that this is a ready source of major ma-
terial supply for the chemical industry.
The next area, that of using biomass in its highest state of or-
ganization (that is, in polymeric form), from an energy conser-
vation point of view at first glance seemed the most efficient
use. You have already built up a large molecule. Why not use
it in that form instead of having to start with monomers
and build up polymers? The problem is that biomass is an
intimate mixture of three polymers, and in its existing form
it is relatively intractable for processing. So we have to
separate the polymers, and this requires a great deal of energy.
By the time we have made the dissolving pulp or the chemical
cellulose from which regenerated cellulose and cellulose
derivatives are made, we have invested much more money
in that material than we would have in making paper pulp
(and we are talking about a cost of the cellulose of perhaps
20 to 30 cents a pound). Then we have to modify it for
whatever purposes we want to meet our end specifications.
While I am convinced that there will al'Nays be a place for
materials of this kind, what it will boil down to is a question
of cost-performance economics.
If you want certain properties in your fiber or in your mold-
ing plastic, you are going to be willing to pay a certain price
for them, and if you can get this property by what perhaps
might appear to be a more energy-intensive route but in the
long run proves to be a less energy-intensive route, you are
going to go that way.
I do not know that the American public is ready to go back
to starched shirts made of cotton; I do not know that it is
116 Goldstein CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
ready to go back to woolen suits that smell in the rain and
do not hold a press. I think that there are going to be cost-
performance demands on the chemical industry which will
make modern fabrics always in demand.
I might liken this comparison to remodeling an existing
old house versus building a new house. The old house might
have advantages in the form of space or location, but it is
going to be very expensive to remodel it. Even then some
conveniences of a new house might never be achieved in
remodeling an old house.
So I think decisions of this kind are going to be settled
in the market place. I would not want to make a suggestion as
to the outcome.
What I would like to call to your attention is the fact that
we have developed in this country a very sophisticated chem-
ical industry based on certain feedstocks from petroleum,
chief among them ethylene. The most important organic
chemical in our economy is ethylene, about 25 billion pounds
a year. If you have ethylene, you can make almost anything
else.
I submit that it would be a lot easier to interface this in-
dustry with a replacement or alternative feedstock in the
form of ethylene from biomass than it would be to convert
everybody to wearing rayon or wearing regenerated proteins
or something like that, especially if we do not have the liquid
feedstocks available from the other sources either because of
economics or because of lack of availability of these materials.
I think that in the future we can have a chemical industry
as we know ittoday and still get raw materials from biomass.
Starch has been mentioned as a possible source of this
material. Starch of course is a polymer glucose just as cel-
lulose is. What the starch proponents forget is that growing
grains is very energy intensive. There are some studies which
indicate that the energy invested in land preparation and
fertilizer is greater than the energy you get out in the form
of the grain. I would submit on the other hand that all the
hundreds of millions of acres of forest land not requiring any
intervention by man is producing a similar material without
any investment of energy on man's part. I think that this
would be a more suitable source of biomass than starch.
I would like to second Dr. Hearon's remarks yesterday
that we should always look for a selective approach rather
than a hammer-and-tongs approach. I would much prefer
to convert selectively the components of the biomass to our
feedstocks rather than to break them all the way down to
carbon monoxide and hydrogen and then start to build them
up again.
So I think I would like to conserve as much of the stored
energy in these large molecules as possible and break them
down no further than is necessary. If people can fmd better
ways of breaking them down into smaller molecules than by
hydrolysis and fermentation to ethanol and dehydration to
ethylene, I suggest that we devote some research and develop-
ment funds to this area. Perhaps we will find a happy medium
between breaking down to carbon monoxide and hydrogen
and using the large molecules of preformed polymer, if you
will, which have certain disadvantages for certain applications.
In conclusion, I know that there is no single answer to our
problem. I think a mix of contributions from all the various
sources that we have mentioned here this morning, coupled
with the market forces operating at any given interval, will
be the answer to alternative feedstocks.
Unidentified: I did not hear, but perhaps I missed it, in
either of the statements any comment on whether there is
any possibility of getting back, perhaps with totally new
technology, into the fairly extensive chemical fermentation
industry that we had before World War II. We spoke only
about ethanol, but there were many other products. We have
a great many new techniques now, we have mutations at
demand that give better organi$ms, and presumably we can
make continuous fermentations if we work at it. Is there
research going on in these areas?
Also what do the speakers think about the kind of develop-
ments that are being done by, for instance, the Army labora-
tories at Natick? I am trying to prepare woodchips, sawdust,
branches, and so on through better grinding techniques, so
that you could perhaps have enzymatic hydrolysis such as
they are working on. This would at least approach an eco-
nomic use.
Irving Goldstein: As far as the first question is concerned,
my microbiologist friends tell me that if I gave them glucose
as a substrate they could do anything with it. And I agree
that our fermentation teChnology has great potential and is
far advanced. Right now they do not have a cheap enough
source of glucose to do many things that they could do if we
would make the glucose available to them for two or three
cents a pound.
H. G. Davis: Instead of putting a price of two or three
cents a pound on glucose to compare it with the price of
ethylene, let us give a ratio perhaps or something of that sort,
because two or three cents now might lead to quite a lot
higher price later.
Irving Goldstein: I have not given any thought to that
because we have not got to the point where we can really
make ethanol let alone ethylene, except with coproducts.
I think that is probably some years in the future; so any
ratio would depend on what the price of ethylene is then and
would also be a function of specific requirements ofthis yet-
to-be-determined fermentation route other than ethanol.
The ethanol route is the tried-and-true one because it is an
ancient art and we have done an awful lot of it. Whether or
not you can go to lactic acid and use that as a chemical build-
ing block in preference to ethylene, I do not know. I would
feel that on the basis of our present technology we might be
better off sticking with the ethylene no matter how we get it.
But I would not want to rule out fermentation products in
lieu of complicated chemical manipulations starting with
ethylene as a building block. There are more complicated
molecules that you could very readily get by fermentation,
which would probably be much cheaper if you had to start
with a hydrocarbon as we do now. This is what I meant as
an alternative. And this of course could change the prop-
erties of our chemical intermediates.
The second question-related to the enzymatic hydrolysis
approach by the United States Army Natick Laboratories-
I have touched on that briefly and I think I made my posi-
CONCLUSIONS Goldstein 117
tion clear that we do not really know now whether or not the
enzymatic approach or the acid hydrolysis approach will
turn out to be the more efficient way of going. I am com-
mitted to the acid hydrolysis approach, but I am not un-
involved in the other. I am on the overview committee of
the Army project at Natick, through the National Research
Council; so I am familiar with them, and I think we ought to
give them as much support as they need to find the answers.
I am proposing a multifaceted attack on these problems at
present before we get locked in on any specific configuration,
before we run out and start building a demonstration plant
to solve our problems.
K. V. Sarkanen: I agree with Irv that there is a tremendous
potential in fermentation and it should be studied. As for
the studies at Natick, I must say that I already expressed
myself but I am very dubious about the range of applica-
bility. I did mention that glucose is three times more valuable
as a part of cellulose than as a sugar, and I can not see why
you should try to devalue glucose by taking it away from the
cellulose molecule. However, there is a limited applicability,
although I think that the whole program has been grossly
exaggerated. The application would be when the cellulose
is in the form where it does not have any fibrous properties
any more. This is true for pulp mill sludge and also for some
grades of waste paper, but this is not certainly a large-scale
application.
K. D. Timmerhaus: Let me address one question to Irv.
You talked about biomass collection, and you said that the
most concentrated source was forest wood. There has been
very little discussion about the collection of garbage in large
cities, but there is a tremendous concentration of garbage in
cities all over. This is certainly another biomass material.
Irving Goldstein: Yes, and the solid waste problem is
certainly a tremendous problem. Here it is a question of
economics. The material in many cases has a negative value
when it is going to be used as landfill, and you have the
opportunity to obtain it for the transportation costs. Gar-
bage certainly is a very good candidate for gasification because
you have a much more complicated mixture of materials
than in waste wood and it is also mixed in with inorganic
and metal materials. I see no reason why you could not put
in a gasification plant to take advantage ofthis material.
Then of course you could do anything you would do with
CO and hydrogen you had got from any other source. How-
ever, I would prefer to keep this a waste disposal problem
because of the complicated mixture of other materials, rather
than to call it a very exciting opportunity for fmding a chem-
ical feedstock.
Vic Edwards (United Energy Resources): I wanted to make
a number of comments. On the suggestion of writing letters
to public officials, there may be a risk of conflict of interest if
you are employed with a private company. There are conflict-
of-interest laws concerning contacts between some private
companies and Federal or local officials. So the form in
which those contacts are made is important.
The second point was that someone quoted a figure of
50 billion dollars per year of expenditures on catalytic muf-
flers. Now that must be incorrect because if we have 10
million new vehicles per year that would correspond to $5,000
per automobile.
My third point is that it is my impression a number of
joint ventures between oil and chemical companies have
been reported in the literature recently.
Fourth was that government loan guarantees are becoming
available to encourage investment in alternate energy tech-
nology. I do not know the extent they have developed, but
they are at least at the point of being bills in Congress. I see
Hubert Davis shaking his head; so perhaps I am mistaken.
My fifth comment is about a reference to higher density
of wood biomass per acre, contrasted with agricultural magni-
tudes of three or four tons per acre, making wood more
attractive as an economical feedstock. But I would say these
figures are true only if we are not thinking of wood as a
renewable resource but if we are thinking of it as a short-
term fossil resource. Unless the plant investment were more
or less expended at the time, the biomass that would be stored
in that hundred tons per acre would be consumed in the col-
lection radius of the plant.
The rate of productivity of woody biomasses is not neces-
sarily as high as for other types of biomass crops that have
been discussed; so on a renewable basis other crops may be
superior. However, wood does have the advantage of being
grown on what is classified as a lower grade of agricultural
land that is not suitable for crops but that may be more
productive on a rate basis, as opposed to a mass-in-place basis.
Another comment-I have not heard much discussion of
the trend of shifting production industries from one location
to another. Just as there has been a growth in the petro-
chemical industry in the Gulf, in the South, over the past few
decades, there may be a growth in the petrochemical industry
in Venezuela, in the Middle East, and in other oil-producing
regions of the world.
Another comment concerning traditional fermentation
processes and what sorts of accomplishments we can expect
from the significant advances in microbial genetics and micro-
biology-the variety of areas where there are really very sig-
nificant improvements in microbial and fermentation en-
zyme technology-I would say that we can not expect the
same sorts of yield improvements we have seen in things
like penicillin, where the initial yield was so far below the
theoretical. So I do not think we will see the same degree
of yield increases with things like the ethanol and acetic acid
or acetone butanol fermentation processes. However, we
might see a significant increase in rates, and that could of
course affect investment very favorably.
Finally, I know that eastern European countries have to
some extent used an agriculturally based chemical industry
as well as a petroleum-based chemical industry. Can anyone
tell me to what extent their chemical industry is based on
biomass-type feedstocks, agricultural residues, and so on?
Irving Goldstein: The Russians are operating wood hydrol-
ysis plants by a high-temperature sulfuric acid catalytic hydrol-
ysis. What they are doing with their glucose (they have the
option of fermenting it to ethanol or using it for other sugar
uses) I do not know, nor do I know what percentage of their
chemical economy is involved in that, but these are single-
118 Timmerhaus CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
product plants. The lignin they get from the high tempera-
ture of sulfuric acid hydrolysis is a very intractable material.
This is what the wood chemist calls a clazen lignin-anything
which is insoluble in sulfuric acid. About half the papers on
lignin that have appeared in the literature over the past ten
years have emanated from eastern Europe as they have at-
tempted to make something out of that intractable material.
And I must say they have had little success.
The only other question I would like to respond to was
the statement about the value of concentrated woody biomass.
Specifically I am referring to sites which would not need any
regeneration and would come back in the hard woods that are
already on there and so would be renewable on a continual
basis with no intervention from man except a periodic harvest-
ing. So we do not have to capitalize any site preparation
costs or any management costs. As soon as you get into a
plantation and you start investing in site preparation or
management, then of course the value of your product after
so many years is subject to various economic principles.
K. V. Sarkanen: I want to address myself quickly to the
same question. I do not think that the maximum biomass
production of forest plantations has been sufficiently re-
searched. It is not certain at the moment that forests could
not reach the same photosynthetic capability as agricultural
plants. It remains to be seen. Great progress is being made
in this area.
Leonard Johnson (University of Idaho): Before we leave
the biomass area, we should recognize we have been a little bit
narrow in the scope of our thinking. We have assumed that
the residues that we are talking about are free and do not
have another value. That mayor may not be true with agri-
cultural residues, that are often returned to the soil. With
forest residues we have got some lands that we are assuming
might be available or might be set aside by legislation. We
have some political problems that we need to face about the
source of the biomass.
I think we also need to talk in tenns of a collection and de-
livery system that we referred to as needing research. People
from the chemical feedstocks industry can start to tell the
people that are researching or would like to research that
area exactly what fonn they want that raw material in.
Dick Gillespie (Hakon Chemical): I am from New York
City and as you know we have a few theaters up there and
we play some comedies and we play some tragedies and once
in awhile we play even with the lights out. But the biomass
people at this conference seemed to me to be like players who
are still fussing around with the script. They are waiting for
the government to fund the dress rehearsal, and I suggest that
there are more shows in town than just the petroleum show,
which is the current hit. There is the oil shale show, and there
is the coal show. I think the play is on and it is time for the
biomass people to stop mouthing their pipes and begin to
play them. All the world is a stage, and I think the people
that buy the tickets buy them according to the law of supply
and demand. It is corollary return on risk capital.
We are on the stage and I think that we ought to begin our
roles. The biomass people are not going to play the star roles,
but I think it is time they played their bit roles. The garbage
in New York City should not be considered a waste disposal
problem. It is a biomass product, and I think that, as we
begin the bit roles and play them, then we can rise to the
starring role. I think it is time for opening night right now.
SUMMARY
K. D. Timmerhaus: I certainly think the comments that
Dick Gillespie made are appropriate. One of the real problems
that we have in all engineering and certainly in chemical
engineering is that we have had meetings of this type where we
have talked together, gotten together, discussed among our-
selves, moaned and groaned about the problems that exist on
the outside, and then we have gone back home again. I cer-
tainly hope you will do more than just go back home again
because there is no benefit from this unless we do something.
If there are no further comments I will try to summarize
the whole two and one-half days in roughly five minutes.
We have talked about some of the problems that are asso-
ciated with these three different areas. The largest problem is
the uncertainty about the future and about government atti
tudes and the regulations. Public attitudes are some of the
most uncertain, but I think we can rest assured that, when
there is a decision to be made between allocating energy to the
petrochemical industry or to keeping homes warm in the
wintertime or keeping lights on, latter two uses will win
out.
The future is going to depend quite a bit on the incentives
that will be available to the energy industry for trying to find
other energy sources, for further drilling for gas and for
petroleum. If they do not get those incentives, then of course
we will shift to coal, maybe much sooner than necessary.
The economics of various alternatives was kicked around at
great length. Shale oil it was pointed out was roughly com-
petitive. Of course, another problem is financing of these
types of investment. These investments are going to be large.
They are not going to be able to be taken care of by one
company alone, even if it happens to be a large company. The
feeling is that it should be done in the private sector, but the
private sector cannot alone provide all the funds; therefore,
suggestions have been made about joint ventures between
government and industry.
There was another suggestion made that we come up with a
joint venture between the petrochemical industry and the
energy industry, and this of course is now being looked at.
Another area that was brought up is the environmental prob-
lem in switching from natural gas and petroleum. Regulations
for emissions from coal and the various emissions into our
streams are going to affect the movement both into coal and
also into biomass.
It was mentioned that biomass is a completely clean fuel.
Yet every time you process a stream you wind up with a
waste stream. Somehow you have to take care of that fmal
waste stream; whether you put it in the ground or in the
water or in the air, it winds up being displaced.
We talked about a lot of technical problems. Certainly in
oil shale we still have a variety of technical problems. We have
CONCLUSIONS Timmerhaus 119
a variety of different processes. We need to find better tech-
niques for mining, for processing, and for actually retorting
the material. Can refmeries handle this type of material, or do
they have to be completely revamped? How do we transmit
shale oil, which does not flow too well?
We also have problems with coal, certainly in combustion
and in reaction of various processes. How do we get the best
chemicals from coal?
Again with biomass we have a variety of different processes.
The suggestion was that we needed much more basic research.
We need to ask the right questions so that we can do the right
work.
Finally we also talked about education, about public rela-
tions. We need to get our message across to the decision
makers in Washington. The decisions are going to be made
by somebody else; so we need to provide the decision makers
with the best information possible.
Our recommendations have to be rational, to take into con-
sideration the needs of the public. If we are self-serving, we
are going to have some real probleI)ls in trying to sell our ideas
to decision makers. Certainly we can have the trade asso-
ciations work on public relations. We can certainly have
AIChE work. But one of the strongest ways that we can do
this is to have a grass roots movement. I hope that all of you
will go back to try to get a grass roots movement going.
A Congressmen likes to stay in office. If you were in his
position, you would look to see where you had the most votes,
and that is the direction you would go.
Let me conclude by saying we have had many agreements
and many areas of disagreement relative to actions and activi-
ties for the future. However, we clearly have agreement that
collectively we have a major challenge ahead of us, particu-
larly in the petrochemical industry, if we are going to retain
at least some desirable aspects of our present way of life. A
tremendous amount of work has to be done, but the time to
complete that work is already short, much too short.
120 McKetta CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
LUNCHEON ADDRESS
THE PRESIDENTIAL ENERGY POLICY
JOHN H. McKETTA
E. P. Schoch Professor of Chemical Engineering
University of Texas, Austin
President Carter and his staff obviously do not realize that
the energy crisis is only a symptom of a bigger problem. The
Carter plan recommends more governmental rules to alleviate
the energy problem, even though we are in the crisis because
of senseless, inflexible governmental regulations. Some details
within the Carter plan are commendable-a single department,
conservation, more use of coal. But there is much-either by
commission or omission-that is of questionable value.
Some judgments are either good or bad, depending on the
evaluator. Any evaluation is biased by one's stance relative to
democracy versus socialism, to free enterprise versus central
control. Those who favor socialism and its inherent strong
central government will generally applaud Carter's approach.
Those who believe in democracy and its promised freedom of
enterprise and other lifestyles will be sickened in reviewing
the detailed proposal-page by page. Both groups, however,
will find ample details for conflict based on regional, industrial,
and social provincialism and on their appraisal of the balance
required between conservation and expanded supply.
I hope no one automatically sneers when I plead for reliance
on the free market mechanism as our main tool to both cut
our growth in demand and boost our supplies. We have seen
the free enterprise system work its concrete, measurable
miracles every day for two centuries. Of course, the free
market can be a socially brutal system. But so is slavery!
So is excessive governmental regulation-or even England.
President Carter's plan is founded on the principle of central
control, and it seemingly acts on the belief that the govern-
ment should take from those who can afford to-or must-use
energy and distribute the proceeds to those least capable of
caring for themselves or unwilling to do so.
The Carter programis based essentially on the theories of the
original Ford Foundation energy plan ("A Time to Choose,"
1974), which was directed by Dr. David Freeman. Dr. Freeman
is also Dr. James Schlesinger's number one adviser on energy.
They err in several respects. First, they believe that there is
no relation between energy use, GNP and employment. Their
theory of economics in these areas is extremely out of phase
with the actual relationship among these three variables.
Second, they prepared their program on the basis that we are
running out of oil and gas. This is certainly untrue, since
the outer continental shelves of the United States are virtually
untouched, except for the Gulf coast area, which has been
extremely highly productive. We have not yet taken advantage
of any of the multibillions of barrels of oil from shale and tar
sands, nor have we delved into the new area of enhanced re-
covery, which could produce billions of barrels of oil from the
already discovered fields that have been depleted from primary
and secondary recovery methods.
President Carter's program,proposes to saddle the people
with new taxes, not to bring in more fuel supply but as Dr.
Schlesinger said, "to have flexibility to do something else
with it later on." Most Americans are unhappy with what the
government has been doing with the money up to this date.
If all of President Carter's plans were enacted, this country
would be paying $60 billion a year more in taxes for energy
by 1987 but would be saving only the equivalent of one
million barrels of oil a day. Remember that not one cent of
LUNCHEON ADDRESS
McKetta
121
this money would be available for further oil and gas ex-
ploration, production, and development. A simple arithmetic
calculation shows you that the taxpayers would be paying
about $164 a barrel of oil under the Carter plan.
President Carter asked for voluntary conservation from the
public, communities, and industry. He really promises nothing
in return. The President indicates the true fact that the
energy crisis can be compared to a national emergency such as
a state of war. He should have asked for voluntary conserva-
tion bordering on hardships and sacrifices, and then he should
have promised something concrete that he would do on his
part.
The voluntary conservation bordering on hardship and
sacrifices by the public would include many of the following:
a. Eliminate the use of air conditioning in automobiles.
b. Cut back on heating (62
0
maximum) and air conditioning
(78
0
minimum).
c. Cut out the use of clothes dryers-this is one place where
solar energy is very effective.
d. Cut out the use of escalators-cut down the use of
elevators.
e. Cut out buying disposable containers.
f. Buy smaller, more efficient automobiles.
g. Increase car pooling tenfold.
h. Retain the 55 mile speed limit (the average car uses 15%
less fuel at 55 than at 75 mph. More important, we have
found that we save 10,000 lives per year in addition to
250,000 bbls/day of fuel.)
i. Increase mass transportation threefold.
j. Use re-refined lubricating oil instead of first grade.
k. Make sure that new buildings are better insulated.
1. Make sure that new office buildings have windows that
can be opened.
m. Burn solid waste and garbage in your communities.
n. Raise the legal age of car driving to 18 years of age.
o. Decrease the use of cars on Saturdays and Sundays.
p. Decrease highway driving to absolute necessity.
After making these requests, the President should promise to
match the voluntary conservation by the public with some
corrective actions by the U.S. Government as follows:
a. Cut out forced busing of school children.
b. Cut out catalytic mufflers from automobiles (except in
Los Angeles Basin and downtown New York City and
Chicago).
c. Put lead back into the gasoline.
d. Change the Interstate Commerce Commission laws that
permit deadheading and indirect routing of trucks.
e. Ease up on environmental restrictions to permit burning
of more coal without sulfur removal equipment.
f. Cut back on unnecessary governmental regulations.
g. Go back to the free enterprise system and let the market
place decide the price of energy.
h. Encourage energy producers to produce more energy, for
example:
* Triple coal consumption by 1990
* Have 1,000 nuclear reactors by 2000
* Bring back the breeder reactor program
* Discover and produce 10 to 15% more oil and gas by
1990
* Open the outer continental shelf to find more oil and
gas
* Open more Federal lands for coal mining
* Encourage shale and tar sands development
* Support research and development on solar energy,
on the breeder, on fusion, on windpower, etc.
Just these few items could increase the energy supply by
3.5 million barrels a day of oil equivalent and decrease the
demand by 2.5 million barrels a day by 1985. But this will
require a Congress and administration to set a policy with
conviction. It is up to them to indicate strongly to the people
of the United States that the welfare of this country is more
important than reelection to office.
If the Carter plan is adopted as is, I predict that up until
1980 we may continue with voluntary allocation. By 1980 we
will have severe mandatory allocations for all uses. (I call this
rationing, but Dr. Schlesinger feels that there is a difference.)
By 1985 Congress will be very actively planning on national-
ization of the energy industry.
I predict further, that if the Carter energy plan is not dras-
tically altered,
a. We will not average 10 percent conservation per year.
b. Inflation will have grown faster than 0.4 percent (ad-
mitted by President Carter and his adviser Charles Schultz).
Inflation will grow as much as 4 to 6 percent faster than
normal.
c. We will be producing less energy and importing more by
1985.
d. We will have 15 to 20 percent unemployment by 1985.
e. We will have a depression by 1985 as bad as the one we
had in 1929.
Dr. Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist in
1977, said
"The Carter proposal is a monstrosity. Its end result would
be less energy and more wasteful use of energy. The con-
sumer would pay high costs .... producers of all products
would be forced to use energy inefficiently .... the Carter
proposal is a prescription for stagnation."
Since President Carter's energy policy plan is as bad as
stated above by Dr. Friedman, it will no doubt be passed in
large amount by our U.S. Congress. Congress is presently con-
sidering this policy. It is necessary that you and I let Congress
know how we feel. I urge you to write your Congressman-
go see him. Send letters to President Carter-to the editor of
your newspaper-to magazines you read. When you hear or
read irresponsible or just plain wrong arguments about energy,
you should respond. Get yourself fully, completely, sincerely
involved in this energy crisis. Tell the people the hard truth-
that you and I and our families and our friends and our
fellow citizens are slipping into an unimaginable catastrophe.
There is every possibility of great social upheaval and actual
revolution.
Ifyou don't carry the message, who will?
122 Perry CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
PETROCHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
RICHARD C. PERRY
Manager, Energy Policy
Union Carbide Company
Union Carbide being for a long time convinced that coal was
the chemical raw material of the future, I spent several of my
better years trying to make something out of coal as a feed-
stock. We mined it; bumed it underground; carbonized, gasified,
and hydrogenated it. We did everything we could conceive of,
but it remained an intractible rock. Nevertheless we must con-
tinue to examine the viability ofcoal, as well as the possibilities
of other alternatives for chemical raw materials in the future.
The handwriting on the wall is clear. The National Energy
Plan, whatever that may tum out to be, is going to have a
major impact on determining the rates at which the several
different altematives are developed. The Congress largely agrees
with the Administration that Government should be injected
into the management of U.S. energy production and consump-
tion through regulation and Federal tax policy. According to
proposals, the Government will intrude between producers and
consumers, deciding which resources are being put to good use
and which uses are poor and pricing them so that the good uses
prevail. The Government would also judge what is a valid
return for producing a particular resource and what is a valid
price for particular consumers to pay for energy or raw mate-
rials. The goals of the National Energy Plan, as they stand
today, call for reducing the u.s. energy growth rate to two per-
cent a year by 1985, restraining levels of oil imports to six
million barrels per day, and doubling the use of coal to over one
billion tons a year, all by 1985.
To implement this plan, a massive bureaucracy came into
being on October 1 with the new Department of Energy. With
an annual budget of over ten billion dollars, more than the
combined profits of the oil and gas industries in the U.S., and
some 20 thousand people, it might delude us into believing
that energy planning is therefore centralized. Not so.
In addition to DOE, most ofthe responsibilities of the former
Federal Power Commission rest in a new agency, the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission. Taxing responsibilities for
these new energy polices will be implemented by the Treasury
Department. The Department of the Interior retains leasing
obligations, and the environmental impact of the shift to coal
is the responsibility of EPA. The administration of nuclear
development rests with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
and the international trade implications reside with the Special
Trade Negotiator, Mr. Strauss. So the focus on energy admin-
istration is far from sharp.
As the National Energy Plan was originally proposed by the
Government, the petrochemical industry found itself in a posi-
tion of supporting the objectives of the program.
Yet on a more specific level, we had some strong concerns
about a number of the mechanisms proposed-not only the
extent of Government intervention in the marketplace but the
fact that the Plan did not recognize the difference between
feedstock use and fuel use. In assessing user taxes and propos-
ing conservation measures and ways to force shifts to resources
other than oil and gas, the planners treated feedstocks as if they
had no characteristics different from those offuels, as of course
is not the case.
The implications ofhikes in the cost ofoil above world levels,
as well as the international trade implications of such a pro-
posal were of great concern to us in the chemical industry. We
were also concerned with the potential diversion of various
feedstocks to new uses, particularly in the development of
synthetic natural gas in an attempt to bail out the natural gas
shortage such as occurred last winter.
Another concern was proposed Federal intrusion into the
states' rate-making authority for electric power in such a fashion
that costs would be shifted from one class of users to another
in an effort to protect small residential consumers from cost
increases.
These were our primary concerns in the Plan as it was orig-
inally proposed. Anumber of themhave since been recognized,
as the House and Senate have refmed the legislation. I believe
the industry has delivered its message. Presumably it has been
received, and hopefully will be incorporated in the fmal product.
The ultimate shape of the new energy policy will be deter-
mined by House and Senate conferees before the end of the
year, but it looks nowas ifit will be more limited in scope than
originally proposed.
It is reasonably certain though that some elements of the
Administration's Plan will remain.
1. A crude-oil "equalization" tax designed to raise the price
of domestically produced oil to world levels by 1980 will be
enacted. This would apply to all oil and will be indexed to keep
pace with OPEC price changes.
2. The taxing provisions in the original version of the bill
that were aimed at limiting fuel use and shifting types of fuels
used will probably remain, with the important exception of
hydrocarbons used as petrochemical feedstocks.
3. A user tax on oil would raise the price to some industrial
consumers up to 3 dollars per barrel above world prices. De-
signed to accelerate industrial conversion to coal and other
renewable energy resources, this tax is likely to apply only to
substitutable uses of oil or gas-specifically under industrial
boilers. It should not apply to petrochemical feedstocks or
to cases where there are no other substitutable process uses for
oil or gas.
In whatever form the National Energy Plan fmally appears,
however, there will be several major impacts on the chemical
industry.
The greatest impact will be on feedstock and fuel pricing.
From now until the mid-1980s, these price impacts will over-
shadow any supply shortages that might be anticipated.
In fact, the problem for the next several years, ironically, is
likely to be oversupply. It will take several years to absorb
the new crude supplies coming from the North Sea, the north
slope of Alaska, and Mexico. Unfortunately, this surplus will
LUNCHEON ADDRESS Perry
123
create in the minds of consumers doubt about the long-term
nature of the energy problem.
It does not appear to us that there will be an energy supply
problem until the mid '80s. At that point we think it more
likely that the next energy shortage will not be of oil or gas,
but of electric power. This is of great importance to the chem-
ical industry. Especially with the resource-base shift here on
the Gulf Coast, we are concerned about the stability and com-
petitiveness of electric power supplies in the '80s.
Domestic oil and gas prices, for both fuels and feedstocks,
will rise toward world prices, in some instances exceeding
those prices. They will do so more rapidly than had been
anticipated in the absence of an energy plan.
Since the energy policy now seems to recognize the im-
portance of the highest-value utilization of hydrocarbon
resources and does not impose any restrictions or discriminatory
penalties on oil or gas feedstocks, we do not see any supply
problems peculiar to the feedstock picture. The impact then
will be felt in the competitive marketplace, particularly on the
international side of the petrochemical business. The U.S.
petrochemical industry has enjoyed a strong export business
in the past, since oil and gas prices were controlled. For years
the industry has been contributing positively to the U.S. balance
of payments. Imports have also been increasing, but not in an
unrestrained fashion.
The whole question of international competition for U.S.
petrochemical companies is brought about by the rapid price
increases expected over the next several years. One would
think that this aspect of the energy policy would be taken
into account and anticipated by the U.S. trade policy. But as
far as we can tell, no interrelationship has been perceived or
remedy developed. Price increases will affect interproduct
competition as well as intraproduct competition. We are talk-
ing here about the impact of man-made resources, synthetic
products, less energy intensive products, compared with those
that are more energy intensive.
We think that as the U. S. prices of oil and gas rise toward
world levels, the product mix of U.S. chemicals will shift in
fllvor ofm o r ~ hi-Sbl-Y <iifferelltiated chemicals both at home and
for export. U.S. industry is uniquely positioned to supply the
more-sophisticated-technology, value-added products necessary
to counterbalance prices and the competitive challenges in the
commodity petrochemical field posed by developing countries.
While synthetic products versus natural products and re-
sources will have to be reexamined critically over the next
several years, we do not believe higher feedstock and fuel prices
will bring about a major shift from synthetic to natural mate-
rials because of the greater energy efficiency of petrochemical
products. Price increases in all forms of energy are likely to
have at least as great a cost and price impact on most substitute
materials as they will have on chemicals and plastics. light-
weight and durable plastics, for example, are increasingly at-
tractive to potentially huge customers such as the auto industry
and so will more likely gain against natural products than lose
to them.
In additon to the price impact, the National Energy Plan will
accelerate the development of alternative feedstocks. We see
this development taking place slowly, over a period of decades
rather than year by year, as shifts to coal, shale, biomass, and
natural rather than synthetic products might occur. However,
the stage must be set now for this sbift. It is important to get
on with the development of the technology to aceompolish
this goal, so that when the economics falls into place, we can
move quickly and efficiently toward implementing feedstock
and energy alternatives.
Without pre-empting the conclusions of the conference, we
at Union Carbide, on the basis of the current rate of tech-
nological innovation, see the next 20 to 2S years as consisting
of four general phases of development culminating in a U.S.
feedstock mix significantly less dependent on oil and gas.
Phase One is the position in which the industry will be for the
next six or seven years. As a start, the resource base will shift
from gas and oil for industrial and utility boilers to coal and
uranium. In addition, alternative-feedstock research and
development and commercial demonstration projects will pick
up, particularly to increase the efficiency of the use of crude
oil as a feedstock. An important step in this direction will be
the operation of an advanced cracking reactor at our Seadrift,
Texas, plant by mid-1979. The ACR directly cracks atomized
crude oil with high-temperature steam and combustion gases
at very short residence times. In this way we get higher ethylene
yields per barrel of crude oil, higher energy efficiency, reduced
ethylene prices, and greater flexibility of raw material choices
for making both ethylene and acetylene.
Phase Two would be characterized by the increased use of
coal-based synthesis gas to make chemicals. Coal-derived feed-
stocks could then replace natural gas and some petroleum feed-
stocks, starting late in the next decade and making as much as
20 to 2S percent of U.S. petrochemical production by the
tum of the century. Union Carbide began to restudy synthesis
gas chemistry in the late '60s, and we are currently developing a
unique process for making ethylene glycol from synthesis gas.
This is a promising path for future ammonia-based chemicals
and oxygenated hydrocarbons.
In Phase Three supplemental crude oil will be introduced for
use as both fuel and feedstocks. This supplemental crude oil
will be produced from shale oil and from coal. Although this
supplemental liquid fuel will playa larger role toward the end
of the century, even then it will probably represent less than
five percent of total crude oil used in the United States.
In Phase Four chemicals will be produced from biomass or
solid waste. Widespread use of such renewable resources is
not expected until well into the 1990s. Biomass supply is a
function ofland-use policies, and biomass harvesting is ex-
pensive and inefficient. Solid organic waste is more available,
but the costs of collecting and transporting it and converting it
to feedstocks are still very high. Both can some day be made
into synthesis gas to produce oxygenated chemicals and am-
monia, or biological synthesis can be carried out to produce
alcohols.
It all adds up to a significant period of change for the chemical
industry. The rate of change, to a large degree, will be up to
the particulars of the fmal National Energy Plan. If the pre-
determined regulatory mode prevails, and if we continue to
underprice natural gas and provide insufficient energy invest-
ment incentives, the rate of innovation will be slowed. There
124 Perry CHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK ALTERNATIVES
must be a rational National Energy Plan so that alternative
feedstocks may be planned with a reasonable degree of con-
fidence. Otherwise, the investments just will not be made.
There is no industry in the country that has a bigger stake
in this National Energy Plan than the chemical industry. You
are all aware of the amounts your companies spend on energy
and raw materials. In our case it is about 25 cents out of every
sales dollar. The development of this policy is of critical im-
portance to all of us, for there can be no satisfactory solution
for the future of raw material supplies without a satisfactory
solution for the energy future as well.
The stakes are high, but we have a history of innovation, of
creativity. There are a number of technical responses to the
problem, but the creation of an energy policy by Government
has to be rational for us to respond properly. We are confident
that the industry can respond. But it is in a lot better position
to respond if it can deal to the greatest extent possible with
market forces rather than with massive government regulation.
And to help make this rational policy. We need to continue to
get our views on the National Energy Planheard. At the present
time the whole thing is going in the wrong direction, and we
have only a short time to turn it around.
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
Baldwin, L. L., 22, 23
Bogan, R. H., 77, 83,84, 96, 101
Bowman, III, W. H., 41,42, 57,58
Brinn, Marvin, 19
Brokaw, H. P., 100, 101
Brown, Carl, 50, 51, 52
Buck, F. A. M., 5,6,7,8,18,19,20,
21,22,23,105,106,112
Butkovich, George, 13,16
Chambers, Carl, 21
Chandrasekhar, Ram, 56
Clancy, Gerry, 49
Crawley, J. E., 57
Crecca, John, 22,44
Damon, David, 49, 51
Davis, H. G., 25, 26, 27, 28,46,47,
49,52,53,54,55,56,104,109,
110,116
Dickmann, Donald, 90
Dosher, John R., 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,
34,44,47,48,49,50,52,105,106
Edwards, Vic, 117
Feldmann,H. F.,41, 42, 43,44,50
Fryback, Mel, 18, 19,20,21
Gaire, Roger, 55,92,111
Geiger, Marlin G., 111
Giancarlo, Sam, 112
Gillespie, Dick, 118
Goheen, David, 77, 81, 82, 83, 85,
87,106
Goldstein, irving, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65,
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
86,87,88,89,90,96,97,98,114,
115,116,117,118
Grant, John, 111
Hand, John, 3,4, 5, 17,20,21,22,
24,106,109,110,111
Hawley, Martin, 18,56,85,92
Hearon, W. M., 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 99
Higgins, E. J., 9, 10, 11,12,17,18,
19,20,21,23,24,102,103,104,
105
Hoffman, Ed, 54
Jentz, N. E., 41, 44,52,56
Johnson, Don, 101
Johnson, Leonard, 118
Katzen, Raphael, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70,
71,72,73,88,89,91,92
Keister, R. G., 13, 14, 15,22
Koppel, Paul, 60
Lee, Don, 21
Leggett, Waldo, 53, 54, 59, 60
Manchester, Andrew H., 90, 91, 104
Marinelli, Robert, 55
Martin, Hawley, 85
McKetta, John J., 120, 121
Me1aas, Bruce, 13,14, 19
Miller, Dwight, 85, 86, 87,88,99
Mohr, Larry, 49
Mongan, Lawrence, 18,57
Nichols, Duane, 52, 54, 55
Olson, Jack, 53
125
Perry, Richard C., 122, 123, 124
Quinn, Sandy, 44, 51
Radovitch, J. M., 93,101
Reed, Cal, 112
Richards, Tom, 19, 106
Roeger III, Anton, 55, 112
Roth, C. J., 13, 16
Sarkanen, K. V., 74, 75, 76, 86, 87,
91,92,93,98,99,100,104,105,
113, 114, 118
Sawyer, J. W., 48, 49,53
Soltes, E. J., 93, 94, 95, 96
Srnithson, John, 89, 111
Spear, Charles, 55
Spuhler, Frank, 22, 23
Spuhler, Harold A., 1, 2
Squires, A. M., 35, 36, 37,38,39,40,
45,46,48,50,51,57,59,60,105,
107,108,109, 110
Stiles, Al, 17,49,50,86
Timmerhaus,Klaus, 2,17,104,105,
106,110,111,112,119
Van Antwerpen, F. J., 110
Van Horn, W., 99
Von Tress, Bill, 53
Weissman, Walter, 56, 57
Wentworth, Ted, 58, 59
West, A. Summer, 1
Whiteside, Jack, 23, 24
Yu, Jackson, 52, 53
COAL VOLUME 3
PROCESSING
TECHNOLOGY
This latest report comes at a time when the
Federal Government is determined to enact
and enforce a strong energy policy. As part
of this policy, coal will become an increas-
ingly dominant factor in our overall energy
usage. The Federal Government has already
invested millions of dollars into research
and development of coal processing. This
outlay plus that already being expended by
industry promises a stepped up activity in
the field.
198 pages
Members $10; others $20.
Coal Processing Technology. Volume 2.
1975. 150 pp. Members, $10; others, $20.
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