As we suspected, and as we suggested to you, some recent reports that the our US Air Force had backed away from it's commitment to develop, through the several university efforts we documented for you, a domestic aviation fuel supply infrastructure based on coal liquefaction are false; perhaps deliberate disinformation.
According to this very recent, very credible Aviation Week article, the Air Force is moving ahead, on schedule, to develop a domestic supply base of liquid fuel derived from coal.
Better: They are, as we have documented to be feasible and practical, developing complementary fuel conversion technologies that will work in concert with the coal-to-liquid conversion fuel supply base to, through biotechnology applications related, directly or indirectly, to coal conversion efforts, recycle Carbon Dioxide into additional liquid aviation fuel.
As follows:
"USAF Progresses On Alternative Fuels
Oct 5, 2009
On track to certify its aircraft fleet to use synthetic Fisher-Tropsch (F-T) fuel by 2011, the U.S. Air Force has launched a similar certification effort for hydrotreated renewable jet (HRJ) biofuels and is now becoming interested in fuels from cellulosic feedstocks.
Despite the growing interest in biofuels, DESC (Defense Energy Support Center) has several pilot programs under way to produce synthetic JP-8 from coal and natural gas using the F-T process, Huntley (Kim Huntley, DESC commander) says. The Energy Department, meanwhile, has a $700 million program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-to-liquid F-T fuel production though carbon capture and sequestration and the addition of biomass, aiming for demonstration by 2012 and deployment by 2020.
Under congressional mandate to buy greener fuels, the Air Force is putting the finishing touches to a greenhouse-gas life-cycle analysis model that will allow it to calculate the “well-to-wake” carbon footprint for each batch of fuel. Harrison (Bill Harrison, deputy director of the Air Force’s new Energy Office) says benchmark studies are under way for coal-and-biomass-to-liquid F-T jet fuel and soy to HRJ.
So: "Despite the growing interest in biofuels, DESC has several pilot programs under way to produce synthetic JP-8 from coal and natural gas using the F-T process, Huntley says."
And, note that, although they are working on the profoundly wasteful concept of "carbon capture and sequestration", they are also at work on the much more forward-thinking concept of Carbon Dioxide recycling via "hydrotreated renewable jet ... fuels from cellulosic feedstocks".
As we've documented via more than several authoritative citations, botanical cellulose can be processed, along with coal, in a coal-to-liquid production facility of appropriate design and specification, and thereby provide an inherent, integral route of Carbon Dioxide recycling for a coal-to-liquid conversion industry.
