>>21380863It sounds like a great idea and just shows the versatility of coal. Coal, oil, and gas are all just hydrocarbons which means, in principle, they should all be interconvertible between solid, liquid, and gaseous states.
However, it is much easier to turn coal (solid) into a liquid (petroleum) or a gas (natural gas) than it is to convert natural gas into, say, a solid.
Coal takes the cake when it comes to interconvertibility with other hydrocarbon fuels.
So, another win for coal.
China wants as much energy independence, for national security reasons, as it can have, and it has a lot of coal and a lot less petroleum and natural gas, so they lean heavily on coal and, as in the article you point out, are doing coal to liquids to secure more domestically produced liquid fuels.
