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    I'd like to thank the reputabl..., 2008-07-28 23:36:41 | Main | drilling nonsense..., 2008-08-02 10:04:39

    it's not exactly chocolate cake:

    oil shale is very impressive [pdf]:

    Oil shale is said to be rich when it contains 30 gallons of petroleum per ton. An equal weight of granola contains three times more energy. The vast, immense, and unrivaled deposits of shale buried in Utah and Colorado have the energy density of a baked potato. If someone told you there were a trillion tons of tater tots buried 1,000 feet-deep, would you rush to dig them up?

    Very funny, but ok. Shell has that in-situ experimental station in Colorado that conservatives are ape about (more oil than saudi arabia!). How's it work? They have to heat the rock to 700 degrees for 3 years. The rock has to be dry while they heat it, so they need to freeze a wall of rock around the deposit, to keep moisture out, and then dry the rock, then you can start baking your flourless cake:

    To produce 100,000 barrels a day would require raising the temperature of 700,000,000,000 pounds of shale by 700 degrees F. How much power would be needed? A gigabunch—in rough numbers, about $500,000,000 per year. The least expensive source for electricity is a coal-fired power plant. How much coal, how many power plants? To produce 100,000 barrels per day, the RAND Corporation recently estimated that Shell will need to construct the largest power plant in Colorado history, large enough to serve a city of 500,000.

    I don't think it will work.


:: posted by buermann @ 2008-08-01 15:07:35 CST | link





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