Peak coal black coal resources could last more than 200 years based on rate of extraction in 2007. This does not account for brown coal stocks. According to calculations conducted for the Hunter Community Environment Centre in Newcastle, the Australian state of New South Wales 10,600 million tonnes of coal reserves would be exhausted by 2042, based on current industry growth and extraction rates of about 3.2 per cent a year. Coal output peaked in 1913 in Britain at 287 Mt and now accounts for less than one percent of world coal extraction. 2007 extraction was around 15 Mt. According to the
Coal gasification refiner wants to produce alkanes (i.e., hydrocarbons present in natural gas, gasoline, and diesel fuel), the coal gas is collected at this state and routed to a Fischer-Tropsch reactor. If, however, hydrogen is the desired end-product, the coal gas (primarily the CO product) undergoes the water gas shift reaction where more hydrogen is produced by additional reaction with water vapor: Although other technologies for coal gasification currently exist, all employ, in general, the same chemical processes. For low-grade coals (i.e., "brown coals") which contain significant amounts of water, there are technologies in which no steam is required during the reaction,