Slashdot Mirror
World's Largest Private Coal Company Files For Bankruptcy (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Peabody Energy Corp filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection on Wednesday after a sharp drop in coal prices left it unable to service debt of $10.1 billion, much of it incurred for an expansion into Australia. As demand for metallurgical coal fell, particularly in China, Peabody's financial woes intensified. The company took a $700 million write-down on its Australian metallurgical coal assets last year. At home, the U.S. shale boom of the past few years made natural gas competitive with thermal coal, and the Obama administration's environmental regulations raised operational costs. Mr. Peabody's coal train might not be hauling away any more of paradise. Peabody, the world's biggest private-sector coal producer, said it expected its mines to continue to operate as usual and said its Australian assets were excluded from the bankruptcy. "This process enables us to strengthen liquidity and reduce debt, build upon the significant operational achievements we've made in recent years and lay the foundation for long-term stability and success in the future," Peabody Chief Executive Officer Glenn Kellow said in a statement.
We can use the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert the coal to more usable forms. We aren't going to just let all those delicious hydrocarbons go to waste.
The Fischer-Tropsch process can turn coal into liquid hydrocarbons, but it is not energy efficient. Its feedstocks are hydrogen (currently mostly produced at a loss from methane, i.e. natural gas) and carbon monoxide (produced from the coal). If you have the Hydrogen, you can just use it directly, e.g. in a fuel cell, and burn the coal for electricity or heat. The Fischer-Tropsch process is only interesting if you need liquid fuels, say for operating tanks or aircraft, and don't have more efficient sources.
Stephan
https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/...
Levelized cost, which includes the cost of building, operating, maintaining and decommissioning the facility.
This may not bear any sensible correlation to the price your utility charges you, depending on how dickish they feel that can get away with being.
=Smidge=
We can use the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert the coal to more usable forms. We aren't going to just let all those delicious hydrocarbons go to waste.
Link for anyone interested...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
accept if you run the numbers that's not possible within the next 20 years. Even with China pumping out insane amounts of solar panels renewable's are hardly making a dent in the market. China, Africa and India's energy consumption growth numbers are just insane, for example just to keep up with china's growth you have to build the whole UK power grid every year.
It made sense when South Africa used it extensively in the 1980s - it provided a way to get fuel for cars when the world refused to sell it to us. We had coal, we didn't have oil - and nobody would sell it, so we made our own from the coal.
But I would not suggest the US implements vast-scale segregation and human-rights abuses in order to create a new market for coal... though if the company's asked nicely I'm sure Trump would consider it.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *