Coal liquefaction for Australia?

[Bobby]

Coal liquefaction (Coal-to-Liquids, or CTL) converts solid coal into liquid hydrocarbons—synthetic petroleum—to produce diesel, gasoline, or petrochemicals. Through direct hydrogenation or indirect gasification, it enhances energy security for coal-rich nations. While providing a crucial alternative to crude oil, it faces significant challenges from high capital costs, energy intensity, and environmental concerns, notably greenhouse gas emissions.

[Bobby]

https://wentworthreport.com/2026/04/02/ ... te-models/


Australia wakes up to brown coal bonanza —
1,000 years of energy, if only we didn’t believe faulty climate models. By Joanne Nova.

Five weeks after it started, suddenly Australians are noticing the bonanza under our feet all along.

That most hated thing, the unthinkable brown coal, could save the day if we would only stop beating it down with blunt sticks and Voodoo dolls.

In 2016 Geoscience Australia estimated we have so much brown coal we could keep burning the deposits we already know about at the current rate for our whole lives, and our children’s lives, and their children’s lives too. We could keep going for 40 generations. …



Brown coal could fill an awesome gap in our national energy profile.
Imagine we could make all the diesel, jet fuel and petrol we needed
and we were not doing it because we were afraid of 0.0001% more beach-weather a century from now?

China is already converting 400 million tons of coal each year and we’re afraid to copy that because some teenage girls will cry?

We ignore brown coal only because our ruling class wants to believe the faulty climate models, having never done any due diligence on them. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[Bobby]

https://wentworthreport.com/2026/04/01/ ... long-term/

Liquid hydrocarbons are irreplaceable in terms of energy density and convenience of handling.
We have lots of coal. So, coal-to-liquids is the obvious future:

There are two choices in coal liquefaction processes: Bergius and Fischer-Tropsch, both invented in Germany in the 1910s.

In the Bergius process, hydrogen is forced into coal molecules at a temperature of 450˚C and a pressure of 170 kg/cm2 (165 atmospheres or 2,420 psi).

The Fischer-Tropsch process burns coal in pure oxygen to produce a synthesis gas that is catalysed to long chain hydrocarbons in an oil bath. Bergius is the better process. In WW2, German synthetic fuel production was dominantly via the Bergius process:


Cost per liter of a Bergius plant? About A$1.21 per liter (~US$135 per barrel).

The wholesale price is affordable. What about the capital cost per consumer? The drive-away price of a Toyota Corolla Hybrid is $37,000. Its fuel consumption rate is 25 kilometres per litre. If the vehicle does the normal 20,000 km per year, that is 800 litres to get there. The capital cost of a litre of annual production is $2.63. If we multiply that by the 800 litres of fuel consumption per annum, the Corolla’s share of the cost of the Bergius plant to supply it is $2,100. This is 5.7% of the drive-away price, less than the cost of a refrigerator or some TVs, and a fraction of the $8,000 you can pay for extra trim for the Corolla. Car buyers should be given the option of buying a perpetual fuel supply for their vehicles.

It is the same story with wheat-growing. Medium-rainfall country in the WA wheatbelt is currently selling for $7,500 per hectare. Each hectare is expected to produce 2.5 tonnes of wheat per hectare, using 15 litres of diesel per tonne in no-till cropping, equating to 38 litres per hectare.

At the moment, that diesel supply is on a hand-to-mouth basis. The farmer might get his crop in, but will there be diesel for sale come harvest? To reduce risk he could buy in the diesel for harvest at the time of planting and keep it in tanks on the farm. Better yet, he could guarantee supply in perpetuity by paying $2.63 per annual litre of production from a Bergius plant for an outlay of $100 per hectare, increasing his capital outlay by 1.3%. The cost of disruption is far, far greater than the outlay for fuel supply to the farm. The same is true for mining, trucking and all the other activities of productive people. And it applies to aircraft:

[Bobby]

The war in Iran has shown us how dependent we are on fossil fuels.

Australia will collapse into the stone age without it.