turns coal to gas
By BERNIE FETTE
Battalion Reporter
Texas A&M University petroleum engineers are ex-
irimenting with a process that would allow them to
quire energy from underground lignite without dis-
rbing the earth’s surface.
Conventional strip mining extracts lignite only to a
depth of about 250 feet. To get coal from farther down,
e Texas A&M engineers are experimenting with a
jrocess known as UCG (underground coal gasification).
Ron Brimhall, one of the petroleum engineers work-
g on the project, said the primary advantage of this
Irocess is that “it will allow the extraction of an energy
source that otherwise could not be extracted.”
The UCG process works like this:
— A series of wells is drilled into the lignite seam
d the coal is ignited through one of the wells.
Air is forced into the burn well, which regulates
(ic bum.
The gas, which contains carbon monoxide, hydro-
en and methane, is piped to the surface through other
;lls.
About 15 percent of the gas is burned to gasify the
mainder for extraction, said Dr. James Jennings,
icther Texas A&M petroleum engineer, who is super
sing the experiments at a site near Rockdale.
The Rockdale site is a only research plant, Brimhall
ud, and not a pilot plant for commercial production.
Brimhall said the first stage of the UCG experiments
as conducted by University engineers at a site near
asterwood Airport in 1977.
“fve only been with A&M since January of this
lar,” Brimhall said. “I came here primarily as a
lember of the faculty but I knew A&M had this
ogram going and it’s something I’ve been wanting to
I.
The top of the lignite seam at the Rockdale site is 227
by Lynnfei^ below the surface, and is 14 feet thick.
“there are some 10 billion tons of lignite under
ound in Texas and there’s a tremendous amount of
crgy in this lignite,” Brimhall said. “What we’re
ing to do is develop a technology that may be useful
extracting it.
“We re trying to do two things; first, we re looking at
e technological process itself to see if we can develop
_____ process which is applicable to Texas lignite. The
jjecond thing is to study the effects of the UCG process
pi the environment, as well as the effects of the
environment on the process.
) fT)( ^ iere 31-6 environmental effects of strip mining that
*jIiJiJ people don’t like.”
They have yet to determine whether the UCG
>urs this
Southen
umber of
?d by his
process will have any adverse effects on the environ
ment, Brimhall said.
“The energy market has indicated that this type of
process could make a contribution to the energy pic
ture,” Brimhall said. But he doesn’t believe the
process will solve any energy problems in the near
future.
The experiment has uncovered problems as well as
progress.
One of the problems is with well completions due to
the high temperatures the pipes and other materials
have to withstand. Brimhall said they are working with
changes in design to remedy the problem.
“Another problem we’ve experienced is the influx of
water underground,” he said. “It’s like trying to bum a
match underwater.”
But since water produces a positive effect as well as a
negative one, some water must be injected into the
well. It is needed for its hydrogen content to produce
the methane gas. Too much water cools the process
though, which results in a lower quality gas.
The gas aquired from the producing wells has not
been of the quality expected. The engineers were
hoping for gas with a heat rating of 120 BTU (British
thermal units), but so far the gas has averaged 65 BTU.
Gas with that heating value is not suitable for industrial
use.
Brimhall said he believes that injecting a mixture of
oxygen and steam instead of compressed air into the
wells might result in a higher grade gas. This may be
tried in a future stage of the experiment, he said.
“We re just about to phase out the project for this
year,” he said. “We’ve been out at Rockdale since June
and it’s been a 24-hour-a-day project.”
Although the experiments are rather new to Texas,
they have been performed elsewhere.
Brimhall said the Texas A&M experiment is trying to
perfect a technology that originated in the U.S.S.R.
and apply it to Texas lignite. He said Russian engineers
and chemists have been working on the process for
more than 40 years.
Work on the process is also being done in West
Virginia and Wyoming. Arco, Gulf Oil and Texas
Utilities are all involved with the research.
“We have about eight or 10 commercial sponsors
that are supporting our research,” Brimhall said. “But
we don’t get any government funds other than what we
get from the state to support some of the work.”
The ultimate goal of the project is to develop the
process for commercial production, Brimhall said. The
realization of that goal is about 20 years in the future,
he said.
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TEXAS INSTRUMENTS, INC.
IF YOU’RE NOT IN TECHNOLOGY YET, THINK IT OVER.
IF YOU ARE IN TECHNOLOGY, TALK TO TEXAS INSTRUMENTS.
ANNOUNCING
AN
OPEN HOUSE
AT
Memorial Student Center, Room 212
Sunday, Nov. 2 4:30 p.m.-9:00 p.m.
Monday, Nov. 3 10:00 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
DIVISIONS TO BE REPRESENTED:
DIGITAL SYSTEMS GROUP GEOPHYSICAL SERVICES, INC.
EQUIPMENT GROUP SEMICONDUCTOR GROUP
GUEST SPEAKER
Memorial Student Center, Room 212
Sunday, Nov. 2, 7:30 p.m.
I Dr. John R. Hanne, Asst. Vice-President and Manager of Advanced Technology R&D, Digital
|Systems Groups, Texas Instruments, Inc. will speak on:
SEMICONDUCTOR TECHNOLOGY: FOUNDATION FOR
DISTRIBUTED DATA PROCESSING”
Refreshments — Displays — Door Prizes
Interviews to be held Nov. 4 & 5, TAMU Placement Center
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'Gators thriving,
endanger dogs
THE BATTALION Page 11
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1980
Robert E. Lee High School
In Tyler, Texas
Invites
all Lee Graduates to
Homecoming
November 7-8,1980
Zacharias Greenhouse will be
holding Ite 5th ANNUAL
HALLOWEEN BALL
on THURS., OCT. 30
REMEMBER LAST
YEAR? 693-9781
United Press International
PORT ARTHUR — Alligators are
an endangered species, but resi
dents of southeast Texas would like
a ’gator hunting season to thin them
out.
Some hunters, like Jimmy Borel,
say the problem is so bad they’re
losing their hunting dogs to the al
ligators.
“I picked up a brick and hit that
‘gator square in the head but it nev
er fazed him,” said Borel in recal
ling the death of his Labrador re
triever that had jumped into the
canal to cool off.
The Port Arthur resident has an
ally in his campaign to open alligator
season — Bob LeBlanc, Port Ar
thur’s Pleasure Island commis
sioner.
During the early teal duck season
in September, LeBlanc was hunting
between High Island and Sabine
Pass. He sent his dog to look for a
crippled teal that had splashed
down in the nearby grass.
A large alligator ambushed the
dog within 30 yards of LeBlanc’s
duck blind. Fortunately, the elderly
dog’s skin was loose enough that it
managed to tear free from the al
ligator, which had clamped steel-
trap jaws around the dog’s midsec
tion.
With duck season opening Nov. 8
in most of Texas, hunters fear an
increase in confrontations between
alligators and hunting dogs in coas
tal counties.
Although the alligator is an en
dangered species officially, the Tex
as Parks and Wildlife Department
says the reptile is anything but en
dangered, at least along the upper
Texas coast.
“Our studies since 1977 show that
Orange, Jefferson and Chambers
counties may have an alligator
population exceeding 100 gators per
square mile,” says Bill Brownlee,
TP&W program director for en
dangered species.
“At least half of the state’s al
ligator population is located south of
Interstate 10 in that three-county
area, and that’s a conservative esti
mate. The figure could possibly go
as high as 70 percent,” Brownlee
reports.
Last year’s TP&W census re
vealed 35,000 to 38,000 alligators in
Jefferson, Orange and Chambers
counties.
Since Jefferson County has the
most prime marshland, Brownlee
said it contains the highest alligator
population in Texas — although de
nsities in Orange and Chambers
counties may be just as high.
The J.D. Murphree Wildlife
Management Area, virtually within
the Port Arthur city limits, is home
to as many as 2,000 adult alligators
and possibly an equal number of
juvenile ‘gators in the 8,400 acre
public waterfowl hunting area.
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