Quote:
Originally Posted by sammyg2
This plant cost $2.1 billion in the early 80's (probably equivalent to about $6 billion today) and earned $40 million a year on it's best year. That's a payback of around 28 years, if every single year is at or near a record as far as profitably.
Not much of a payback, but maybe they've figured out how to do things much better today  |
Sammy,
Thanks for the $ support. I know hte history, but I did not have it handy. BTW, do you think I can get a $330 million interest free loan that I make no payments for the first thirty years. Where do I sign up
You current scenario also assumes $0 operational costs (feedstock, salaries, etc). Add in the cost of operation and you have a very looooong payback.
As I noted elsewhere, we can do this. Do we want the pain that goes along with it?
While it has been a while since I looked at the economics closely, in the past, the best use of coal is either a feedstock for chemical manufacturing (higher value added products than fuels) or generation of electricity. Existing liquid feedstocks (i.e. crude oil) is best reserved for desirable liquid transportation fuels (gasoline, diesel, etc) as all you really need to do is separate the fractions, provide (relatively mild) treatments to convert fractions to usable products, and use them.