03.08.2009

A measure of the ability of a diesel fuel to flow in cold weather conditions. Defined as the lowest temperature at which diesel fuel will pass through a fine wire mesh screen of the test apparatus

A thermal cracking process to break up large molecules into smaller ones with the generation of quantities of petroleum coke.

The gas obtained when coal is heated in an airtight place. It consists mainly of hydrogen and methane. Coke oven gas is burned to produce heat in industrial plants and in homes. It was formerly used for illumination. Coke oven gas is made by heating coal in a by-product coke oven that heats to about 2000 °F (1100 °C). As the coal heats, coke oven gas and other by-products are given off. The gas leaves the oven through pipes and is stored in large tanks called gas holders

Coalification is the alteration of vegetation to form peat

When coal stocks rise too much in the US, due to reduced exports and lower local electricity generation, coal storage space diminishes, putting pressure on coal prices, which in turn lowers the ceiling for coal-to-gas substitution. In order to stabilize this ceiling to natural gas prices, coal producers will likely have to increase the amount of coal shut-ins. The alternative to additional coal shut-ins to rebalance the coal market would be further coal stock building by utilities

This is still an untried process of liquefying CBM. Australia is especially keen to be able to turn CBM into LNG to ship out to Pacific and Atlantic Basin markets. The first world CBM-to-LNG plant is due to be built by Gladstone LNG in Queensland. Extracting the gas from the coal bed is relatively straightforward. The biggest problem is that the gas is often accompanied by large amounts of water that have to be disposed of. Also, although the gas wells are relatively cheap to drill, they produce gas at very low volumes. A large development requires thousands of wells. The slow rate of output from coal-bed methane wells creates a potential problem for converting the gas to LNG, because an LNG “train”, as the liquefaction facilities are known, requires a steady throughput of gas to keep it running, and economies of scale mean the most cost-effective trains have to process very high volumes.

A technique applied to drillstem testing.  Closed chamber testing provides data security and secrecy (minimal or no flare), and can measure minute quantities with high accuracy