Science Scene - Coal to Gasoline

After reading the following article from the "Energy Daily," my impression is a little bit of the cart before the horse.  While there is potential, right now the cure is more deadly than the disease.  Having a proven technology that can be implemented for carbon sequestering will make this more feasible, but that technology has not yet been demonstrated at a commercial level.  Below is the story:

With the backing of the state's leading officials, Consol Energy Inc. and Synthesis Energy Systems Inc. announced plans Monday to build what they say will be the nation's first industrial-scale coal-to-liquids plant in West Virginia--an $800 million venture aimed at capitalizing on concern about rising gasoline prices and U.S. oil imports through the production of coal-based motor fuel.

The mine-mouth facility would be located at Benwood, W. Va., and would be supplied directly from Consol's nearby Shoemaker complex near Wheeling. The plant would include a river terminal facility where products could be stored in tanks for eventual barge transport.

In announcing the project in Benwood, Consol and Synthesis Energy Systems (SES) officials were joined by West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) and U.S. Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D- W.Va.) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who touted the project's benefits as both a job-creator and a means of meeting the country's energy needs.

Noting that the United States is in the midst of a serious energy crisis, Rockefeller said with the coal-to-liquids (CTL) plant, "West Virginia is announcing to the world that we're not waiting around anymore.

"We're getting started with a CTL plant that will create jobs, meet modern environmental standards and develop our most abundant domestic resource--coal," said Rockefeller in a statement.

The Benwood project is not the first CTL plant on the drawing board for the nation or even West Virginia. Los Angeles-based Rentech already is planning a CTL plant in the state's Mingo County and also has an alliance with Peabody Energy to build major CTL facilities utilizing the coal giant's massive reserves in Montana and the Midwest.

However, Consol and SES suggested their project would be much bigger than rival plans, with the facility projected to produce some 100 million gallons of gasoline each year. The plant would initially produce methanol that then would be converted to gasoline.

And while other CTL projects face questions due to heavy greenhouse gas emissions, Consol and SES say they plan to develop carbon capture capabilities and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) in a deep saline aquifer.

The companies say their joint venture--dubbed Northern Appalachia Fuel LLC (NAF)--is finalizing agreements with a subsidiary of Aker Solutions ASA, an engineering firm, to design the carbon capture technology.

The companies say CTL fuel can be used with existing infrastructure, has low pollutant emissions and provides performance comparable to that of gasoline or diesel fuel.

However, the coal-conversion process produces huge amounts of CO2, the main greenhouse gas. A recent analysis by Michael Wang, a senior researcher at the Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory, concluded that without carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, CTL fuels would have two-and-a-half times the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions that diesel fuel has. Even with CCS, the Argonne analysis found that lifecycle emissions would be 19 percent higher than those from conventional diesel fuel.

The Benwood project will convert coal to syngas using a proprietary technology developed by SES. The plant's sponsors say they expect to produce approximately 720,000 metric tons per year of methanol for use as a feedstock for the chemical industry.

Following that process, Consol and SES say they expect Benwood to "be capable of converting methanol production to approximately 100 million gallons per year of 87 octane gasoline." The companies said NAF is currently in talks with ExxonMobil to license their proprietary methanol-to-gasoline technology.

The two companies also revealed Monday that they have signed a memorandum of understanding with both West Virginia and the Regional Economic Development Partnership, a local non-profit business recruiter, which will provide financing and tax incentives to the project over a 10-year period.

The companies said it would file for environmental and other permits "at a later date" and according to Consol spokesperson Thomas Hoffman, the plant's in-service date is slated for the beginning of 2012.

The West Virginia project follows an announcement by Calgary-based Alter NRG Corp. last week that it was advancing Canada's first CTL project. The company said it plans to gasify coal from its coal reserves in the Fox Creek area of Alberta into diesel fuel and naphtha.

The plant will be located just north of Fox Creek and process surface-mined coal into syngas through the use of a commercially proven gasification process. The plant will also be designed to incorporate carbon capture technology.

Tags: Coal, Gasoline, Feasible