The Coal Plant Of The Future -- An Outgrowth Of Government-Industry Cooperation

My talk today is an effort to project our thinking forward a few years to that point in the future when we will be producing gas and liquid fuels from coal. To those of you that are concerned with meeting today's production quota--my remarks may sound like a Buck Rogers projection. Not so. Although I'm talking about the future, please understand that my thoughts are focused on the near term future. The coal plant of the future will be an energy plant producing energy products to meet the needs of our modern society. This plant is an outgrowth of Government- industry cooperation. Much of the research work that makes such a plant possible was jointly funded, other work was a continuation into development of private research expenditures, other work was performed by private research organizations with Government funding, other work was performed in Government laboratories, both State and Federal. As indicated above, and in the title of my talk, I expect to describe the coal plant of the future. I will describe a plant producing Carbon, Oil, Pipeline gas, and Electricity--Project COPE. This plant copes with the Atomic-Nuclear Group. As stated above, this plant is an energy plant. Energy plants today are large-scale operations. Power plants of 5,000 megawatts are projected, refineries of 500,000 daily barrels are near term probabilities, 48" transcontinental gas pipelines are with us today and 25,000 daily ton mines are here as well. The COPE plant will be of the same general size and require 50,000 - 100,000 tons of coal per day.