Coal-to-oil fuel hits the road

 

by SHAWN A. HESSINGER
TAMAQUA BUREAU CHIEF

07/21/2007

AUBURN — On the recommendation of his 14 year-old-son, Waste Management & Processors Inc. President John W. Rich Jr. decided to take his company’s plan for an $800 million coal-to-oil plant in Gilberton on the road.

The result was an 1,800-mile trip last week through at least seven states, winding up at the Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., using a diesel fuel similar to one the plant would produce in an effort to spread the word.

“I was talking to him and I said if you want to promote this thing why don’t you just get a truck, put some bumper stickers on it and drive it across the country,” said John Rich III.

His father did him one better, having slogans promoting the company’s proposed gasification and Fischer-Tropsch Liquefaction process put on the side of a diesel pickup and setting out with his teenage son to put the idea into action.

Rich Jr.’s company hopes to secure a federal loan guarantee for 70 to 80 percent of the construction costs for the facility in order to attract investors for the project.

The company claims the new plant would be the first to combine the gasification and Fischer-Tropsch Liquefaction processes to convert waste coal into a zero-sulfur, environmentally-friendly diesel fuel.

Though the younger Rich had been accustomed to accompanying his father on family vacations, the promotion trip he had dreamed up turned out to be a bit different.

The trip included five days of driving with stops in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and travel through Virginia, West Virginia, Missouri and Kentucky.

Days generally began at 8 a.m. and ended at 8 p.m. with most of the time spent on the road.

“It wasn’t too bad once we got going,” the younger Rich said.

The trip did include stops in the nation’s capital and Petersburg, Va., the site of a famous Civil War battle.

For fuel, with no plant yet constructed, the Rich’s used a synthetic diesel similar to the type to be produced from waste coal.

“This was provided to us by the Air Force,” said Rich Jr. pointing to two remaining barrels of the fuel outside his Auburn farm.

Fuel carried in a 100 gallon tank on the back of the pick-up was pumped into a 26-gallon tank a few times during the trip and Rich announced his vehicle got 17.7 miles to the gallon, better than mileage using regular diesel on the return trip.

Produced in a lab in Oklahoma, the fuel was not made with waste coal, Rich said, but would be virtually the same product whether made with coal or biomass.

The product was mixed with 50 percent jet fuel to produce a mixture more environmentally friendly than petroleum based diesel.

Despite its source, lettering on the side of the truck announced “Our fuel is delivered from coal to liquids technology” and “This vehicle is powered by clean coal technology”.

At the parking lot outside the raceway, Rich and his son handed out bumper stickers announcing “I’m pumped for coal to liquid fuels” and a fact sheet about the process.

Though environmentalists have expressed concern about carbon dioxide emissions during the production process, Rich has said those emissions are also present in petroleum refining processes and will be captured in his own proposed process to be sold as a byproduct of the plant.

Rich has also touted the process as a way to wean domestic users off of foreign oil and has said he has secured interest from both the Air Force and the state of Pennsylvania to use his product once the plant is in operation.