Energy Citations Database (ECD) - - Document #10180814
Very nearly two decades ago, our United States Department of Energy hired yet another little-known, almost semi-secret "skunk works" to asses the economics of producing liquid fuels from Coal.
First, a little about the little-known skunk works that were entrusted with the task of, quietly, documenting the fact that perfectly-suitable liquid hydrocarbon fuels can be efficiently made from Coal; as taught by the nearly-omniscient Wikipedia:
Mitre Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The Mitre Corporation (which generally styles its own name as "MITRE" in all caps) is a not-for-profit organization based in Bedford, Massachusetts and McLean, Virginia. It manages Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) supporting the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Department of Veterans Affairs. On March 5, 2009, Mitre was awarded one of two FFRDCs supporting the Department of Homeland Security ... .
Mitre operates branch offices around the world, most co-located with military bases."
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We'll leave our excerpts at that; but, MITRE is a fascinating organization, that, after having developed such gizmos as anti-missile and various radar technologies, among other things, as the full article reveals, split into two different entities, with different sets of responsibilities, not long after the subject USDOE report in this dispatch was made. And, that might, as we could see in some future reports, have further implications for the US government's semi-secret development of Coal liquefaction and energy conversion technologies.
We will, for now, let someone else go dig the dead ET's out of MITRE's freezer; but, we are led to suspect, from our research, that there just might be a few of them in there.
Herein, excerpts from the initial and following links reveal that, somehow locally unnoticed and unheralded, it was, in 1993, publicly disclosed, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that, not only were the economics of synthesizing liquid hydrocarbon fuels from Coal pretty-darned good, they were likely to soon get even better.
Comment follows excerpts from the initial and following links to:
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"The economics of liquid transportation fuels from coal: Past, present and future
Authors: D. Gray, et. al.; Mitre Corporation, McLean, VA
OSTI ID: 10180814; Report Number; SAND--93-7059C; DOE Contract: AC04-76DP00789
Resource: Conference: 10th annual international Pittsburgh coal conference: coal - energy and the environment, Pittsburgh, PA; ,20-24 Sep 1993
Abstract: This paper reviews the technologies for producing liquid transportation fuels from coal and traces their evolution. Estimates of how their economics have changed with continuing research and development are also given.
Introduction: Almost all transportation worldwide is powered by high energy density liquid hydrocarbon fuels produced from crude oil. The existing infrastructure for production, refining, distribution, and use of liquid fuels represents an enormous investment worldwide, especially so for the OECD countries that are transportation rich. Transportation fuels currently use over 50 percent of total world petroleum demand of 66 million barrels per day.
Prior MITRE studies indicate that crude oil supply will become severely limited after the year 2030 as increasing world energy demand, driven by population growth and economic development, depletes oil resources.
If conventional liquid hydrocarbon fuels that can use existing production and distribution infrastructures are still needed for transportation in the future, then alternate sources of these fuels will have to be utilized.
Two such sources are natural gas and coal ... , and coal resources are enormous.
This paper reviews the technologies for producing liquid transportation fuels from coal and traces their evolution. Estimates of how their economics have changed with continuing research and development are also given.
The key to converting solid coal to liquid fuel is hydrogen. Liquid fuels typically contain about 14 percent hydrogen whereas coal contains around 5 percent. This hydrogen deficit can be made up by forcing hydrogen into the coal under high pressure and temperature often in the presence of catalysts, the direct liquefaction approach, or by gasifying the coal with oxygen and steam to produce a synthesis gas containing hydrogen and carbon monoxide that is then passed over catalysts to form hydrocarbons, the indirect liquefaction approach.
For direct liquefaction, coal is slurried with a recycle oil and heated under a high pressure of hydrogen to produce a synthetic crude oil that must be refined into specification transport fuels by additional refining. The hydrogen required for this process could be produced by gasification of coal and residue ... .
For indirect liquefaction, the synthesis gas produced from gasification of coal is passed over Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) or other catalysts where a series of hydrocarbons ... is produced together with varying amounts of oxygenates (i.e., alcohols, such as Methanol).
These raw products must also be refined to produce specification fuels.
Direct liquefaction, invented in the early 20th century by Bergius, was used extensively by the Germans in World War II to produce high octane aviation fuel, and, since that time, research and development have completely transformed the technology.
The early direct liquefaction processes used high pressure single-stage reactor configurations. Research sponsored by the United States Department of Energy over the last fifteen years has led to the development of a catalytic two-stage liquefaction process (CTSL) that uses two high pressure ebullating bed reactors in series to solubilize coal and upgrade it to a distillate raw product. This generic CTSL process has been demonstrated extensively at the Wilsonville Advanced Coal Liquefaction Research and Development Facility in Alabama ... and at the Hydrocarbon Research Incorporated (HRI) facilities in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
Liquid distillate yields of over 70 percent on a moisture ash-free (MAF) coal basis are regularly obtained with bituminous coals ... . This translates into oil yields of over 3.5 barrels per ton of MAF coal.
Indirect liquefaction technology is commercialized in South Africa and produces about a third of that country's gasoline and diesel fuel.
When SASOL (South Africa Synthetic Oil Limited) made the decision to build these plants the only commercially available coal gasifier that met the requirement of processing high ash South African coals was the Lurgi dry-ash gasifier. Today, however, research and development in coal gasification has resulted in the commercialization of highly efficient entrained gasifiers such as Shell and Texaco.
These systems, that gasify coal at high temperatures and pressures, can process all coals to produce a synthesis gas containing virtually only carbon monoxide and hydrogen (and) have net efficiencies for synthesis gas production of about 80 percent, and greatly improve the overall efficiency, hence the economics, of indirect liquefaction.
The other area that has led to significant improvements in the efficiency and economics of indirect liquefaction is the development of advanced F-T (Fischer-Tropsch) synthesis technology.
Shell has developed advanced fixed-bed reactor technology for F-T synthesis and has constructed a
plant in Malaysia for the production of diesel fuel and waxes fi'om off-shore natural gas.
SASOL has developed an advanced Synthol reactor that uses a fixed fluid bed concept as opposed to the circulating fluid bed currently at use in the SASOL plants.
SASOL has also developed a slurry F-T reactor that promises to be even more cost effective.
The United States Department of Energy is also funding research aimed at developing both an advanced slurry F-T reactor system and an effective F-T catalyst to use in the advanced reactor. This system will be compatible with the low hydrogen to carbon monoxide ratio synthesis gas produced in the advanced entrained coal gasifiers mentioned above.
Also the slurry reactor can be operated in a regime that produces wax. This can be subsequently
hydrocracked very selectively to optimize diesel and gasoline.
Economics: At the MITRE Corporation, we have been developing computerized simulation models of
coal liquefaction technologies for several years as part of our funding support from Sandia National Laboratories and the United States Department of Energy. In these models, test data from ongoing research and development is used to develop conceptual commercial plants for both direct and indirect coal liquefaction. Construction and capital costs of the plants are estimated together with operating costs. Using a constant set of economic parameters, the required selling price (RSP) of liquid fuels is calculated.
An example of the results obtained from using the simulation models to develop conceptual commercial plants for direct and indirect coal liquefaction is summarized in (an accompanying) table. Both conceptual plants use the current state-of-the-art technology.
The direct liquefaction example is based on (a) Wilsonville run ... with Black Thunder sub-bituminous coal as feed. The plant is sized to produce about 70,000 barrels per day of hydrotreated liquid product. For direct liquefaction, coal is used for both the liquefaction reactors and the gasification to produce the hydrogen.
For the indirect commercial plant example, Shell gasification is used to gasify Illinois #6 coal to produce synthesis gas, that is purified and passed to slurry phase F-T reactors where raw F-T products are produced.
Performance data on the slurry F-T reactor is taken from research results obtained by Mobil.
The products are refined in a dedicated F-T refinery to give high quality finished gasoline and diesel fuel.
The alcohols (co-)produced are valuable octane enhancing additives for the gasoline pool.
For indirect liquefaction, the development of improved entrained coal gasification and advanced slurry F-T synthesis has reduced the RSP of gasoline and diesel from coal by about 28 percent compared to the conventional SASOL plants that use Lurgi gasifiers and Synthol circulating bed F-T reactors.
(Don't miss that point: In 1993, we knew, as herein at least semi-officially, that we could make "gasoline and diesel from coal" at a cost "28 percent" less than that from the multiple, and already-commercial, SASOL Coal conversion factories in South Africa.)
Direct liquefaction produces a hydrotreated product that must undergo additional refining, either in an existing petroleum refinery, or at the liquefaction site to produce finished transportation fuels.
The extent of additional refining required to produce finished fuels from the current two-stage configurations is still under investigation. Considerable research was conducted by Chevron in the 1980's on refining of liquids from the EDS, H-Coal, and early two-stage processes. The Chevron research showed that direct coal liquids could be used to produce high quality transportation fuels ... .
The indirect plant simulated in this analysis produces finished gasoline and diesel.
The reason for this is that the simulation model includes a dedicated F-T refinery where the raw F-T products are upgraded using polymerization of the light olefin gas, mild hydrotreatment of the liquid, reforming of the naphtha, and hydrocracking of the wax. The resulting gasoline and diesel could either be used as fuels directly or as a blending stock with petroleum fuels.
The difference in the product characteristics of direct and indirect liquefaction make them complementary. The paraffinic indirect naphtha can be blended with the aromatic direct naphtha to minimize the amount of refining required. Similarly, the aromatic diesel from direct liquefaction can be blended with the paraffinic diesel from indirect. Thus a hybrid plant concept where both direct and indirect technologies are sited at the same location may have considerable merit.
Conclusion: Coal can be used as a resource to produce liquid transportation fuels that make use of the existing liquid fuels refining, distribution and end-use infrastructure. Although the costs of these fuels are higher than current crude prices, significant progress in reducing the costs from these processes has been made in the last few years through continuing research and development.
(Cost reductions) of about 25 percent ... of fuels from coal liquefaction processes have already been made, and this trend in cost reduction is likely to continue as long as research and development in these technologies is maintained."
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As we've been documenting in our reports, "research and development in" Coal conversion "technologies" has, in certain murky circles, been "maintained"; thus, no doubt, furthering the "trend in cost reduction".