Coal: The Other Black Gold

University of Texas-Arlington researchers are hoping to use a prevalent substance found in Texas to reduce future fuel costs — coal.

Funded by the UT System Technology Ignition Fund and the Department of Energy, several UTA engineering professors plan to customize a process in July of converting lignite, a lower grade coal, to oil and have the system in place by August, said Richard Billo, engineering research associate dean.

“In a year or two, we will be able to make a positive impact on the fuel process,” Billo said. “We anticipate gasoline prices will top out between $6-$8 in the next few years before they start coming down.”

A patent pending micro-reactor, which was invented by engineering associate professor Brian Dennis, will help make creating oil from lignite coal faster, smoother and less costly process.

“We are doing experiments to see if that micro-reactor can accelerate a slow process,” Dennis said.

His micro-reactor will be used during a fraction of the process, and he said he hopes it will speed up one of the slower parts of refining.

Dennis, who has worked on the micro-reactor for two years, originally created the reactor for his research in biodiesel and has only recently tried to convert it to lignite coal.

Several years ago, Republican congressman Joe Barton asked some university engineering researchers if they could figure out a way to make a micro-reactor for coal lignite. Billo said Barton wanted to do something about growing gas prices and helped the university get a grant for research.

“With gas prices rising at record rates, we should be working to unlock American energy supplies,” Barton said in an e-mail statement.

“UTA is playing a big role in this process. The exciting work being done by researchers in the Engineering Department at UTA to turn coal into oil could revolutionize the way we generate energy in this country.”

Billo teamed up with West Virginia University because it had an effective system called “The West Virginia Process,” which refines coal through the same process crude petroleum goes through, said Elliot Kennel, West Virginia University carbon product research coordinator.

“Our process is not the only process,” Kennel said. “But we think it is one of the simplest and one of the cheapest.”

By applying the micro-reactor and tailoring “The West Virginia Process” to adapt to Texas’ lignite coal, the researchers hope to improve the current process and lower the cost of oil, Billo said.

Billo said he hopes to build a factory to process the “plentiful supply” of lignite in Texas by next summer.

“The [oil] prices will go up, in my opinion, until we bleed ourselves to death or find a substitute. I think we can produce at $30 per barrel,” Kennel said. “The perception has been that government needs to protect the public from new sources of energy.”