Ind. Eng. Chem. Prod. Res. Dev. 1980, 19, 131
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GUEST EDITORIAL Concerns about “Meantime” Last month, I attended the “Scientific Forum” in Hamburg, Germany, as the U S . delegate in the area of alternate energy sources. The delegates of the 35 countries represented at the Forum concurred in general that, at least until the end of this century, the energy workhorses would be coal and nuclear. During one of the many coffee breaks, I mentioned to the chief USSR energy delegate some of our problems with respect to nuclear, particularly the recent disrepute held by some segments of the population. I-Ie said, “We don’t have such problems in the USSR-we tell the people it is safe”, to which I could only reply that we could hardly do this in our country. During the subsequent formal meeting, the Soviet delegate obviously modified his stand and stated that “In the Soviet Union, we educate the people that nuclear power is safe”. This occurrence led to some thinking on my part. Some elements of our society are telling the people that nuclear power is unsafe; but, unfortunately, there are very few elements in our society who are educating the public about the safety of nuclear power. I am at a loss to understand why nuclear power has come to such disrepute in the eye of the public at large. What magic power do the zero-risk people hold? It seems almost that a Rasputin-type of hypnotism 01” mysticism has been able to prey upon our primordial fear of the unknown, thereby most effectively influencing the minds of the public and, in an election year, the minds of our politicians. Four years ago, I contributed to this journal a guest editorial entitled “Concerns about Energy”. The concerns are even more urgent now. During the four years, many goals have been abandoned and, from the pyre of thousands of scenarios, a new goal has been promulgated-this one calling for 1.5 million barrels per day of a synthetic oil by 1995,l million barrels to be derived from coal and 0.5 million barrels from oil shale. This proposal implies that, by 1995, some 10% of our current oil usage will be from alternate sources, coal and oil shale. The projects are not small from the standpoint of material handling, since it will mean mining 20% more coal and subjecting one million tons per day of oil shale to an oil recovery step. It should be noted that we are currently producing some 700 million tons of coal per year; thus the need for new material handling systems for both coal and oil shale will be immense. This, of course, will1 mean a substantial initial energy investment; however, it should be pointed out that, as long as our m,oney is not leaving the country, we can afford substantial energy investments and operating costs because the money used internally is recycled, creating more employment and more tax base. Thus, it has been estimated that, for every energy dollar which is sent out of the country and not returned, we can afford to spend three to four energy dollars internally. So what is our outlook for the next fifteen years? Our nuclear energy picture is quite bleak a t the present and, hopefully, will improve. The conversion of oil-burning power plant facilities to coal combustion is a slow but necessary process, because our shortages are and will be those of liquid fuels. Furthermore, there is an obvious physical limit to such conversions, and, as was pointed out before, we could be facing a coal supply crisis, unless we simultaneously increase the rate a t which new coal mines are opened and more transportation facilities are developed. With respect to other alternate sources, I do not anticipate any sizeable impact from solar, geothermal, agricultural, wind, and tidal sources until after the end of the century. We have a tendency to look for simple solutions as a salvation to our energy crisis, without recognizing the magnitude of the problem. All the sources listed above can make a contribution; but the contribution will be largely local and it will be minor for a long time to come. Even conservation, both on a voluntary and involuntary (through higher prices) basis has not really worked during the last four years because we are still importing more foreign oil than we did four years ago, and that is what hurts our economy. What is worse is that, in the long run, either unavailable or excessively priced energy will create unemployment. Of all the alternate energy sources that one can envisage, there is one that has not been mentioned so far. We do know that we have some 30 billion barrels of conventional oil reserves in this country. We are doing a lot of drilling in the off-shore areas and, most likely, this will increase our conventional oil production. Tertiary recovery will also aid in extending our reserves during this critical time. However, we have not tapped at all extensively the really big oil source-and that is heavy oils. Although heavy oils are found in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana, the major deposits are in California, where the estimated reserves of heavy oil are on the order of 70 billion barrels. One can ask why we haven’t used this resource before. The answer is simple-as long as there are conventional oil sources available at a price we can afford, the heavy oils are going to stay in the ground. This writer believes that this resource can be used to provide the liquid fuels we need. There are obviously environmental and other problems, but these are technologically resolvable now. The heavy oils can be subjected to coking or desulfurization, followed by catalytic cracking or hydrocracking, or they can be subjected to deasphalting and demetallizing followed by catalytic cracking or hydrocracking. All of these are ‘known and established processes in the petroleum refining industry; but, as pointed out above, they have not been applied to heavy oils because, so far, it has been cheaper to use the conventional oils from foreign sources. The great concern is not what we do in the year 2000, it is what we have to do in the meantime before we have at least some input from alternate sources. It is the “Meantime” that we have to worry about, and let us fervently hope that the heavy oil program will not be buried in another thousand scenarios.
UOP Inc. Des Plaines, Illinois 60016
VLADIMIR HAENSEL Consultant, Science & Technology
