Coal-To-Liquids Fact Sheet

 

Over the road diesel fuel made from American coal via gasification/Fischer-Tropsch synthesis will benefit our economy, our environment, and our national security; but the primary reasons for its popularity will be its performance as a fuel, and its affordability and the fact that well to wheel, it is cleaner and safer than diesel derived from crude oil.

F-T diesel can be delivered through the existing diesel infrastructure and used in existing engines. F-T diesel's tailpipe emissions are lower even when compared with the new Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) made from petroleum. These performance advantages will be most apparent when F-T diesel is used unblended, however, when blended, enhances conventional petroleum-based products and is free of carcinogens.

Recently, concerns have been voiced about the carbon dioxide created in the process of producing F-T diesel from coal. While by-product carbon dioxide is produced in all energy conversion processes, gasification based technologies provides for the management of Co2. The nature of gasification, the first step in the coal-to-liquid (CTL) process, concentrates the Co2 stream and, as such, the Co2 can be sequestered, should that become necessary in the future; sold as a by-product; used for enhanced oil recover; or, mitigated by incorporating a bio-mass feedstock. In this regard, the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory recently analyzed a proposed CTL plant and concluded that, by replacing 30% of its feed coal with biomass, well-to-wheel carbon dioxide emissions from its ultra clean diesel product would be no greater than from conventional petroleum based diesel, even without Co2 capture. Co2 is a by-product of the gasification step and present whether we are producing electricity, chemicals, fertilizer, liquids, or any product produced from syngas. WMPI does not support coal-to-liquids projects unless the project or project developers can show that the liquids produced are cleaner, safer, and cheaper than the foreign oil based liquids which the CTL project will be displacing.

In addition to its attributes as a superior fuel, there are of course very compelling national reasons for our country's interest in CTL diesel. First, every barrel produced in the U.S. from domestic feedstocks represents more than a barrel of crude oil that will not have to be imported from unfriendly or unstable regions of the world. While it will take some years to build up to a significant level of CTL production in the United States, even the initial plants---(the beginning of the U.S. fleet)--- will send a clear message to oil exporting countries that the United States has both the ability and the will to produce an alternative to imported crude oil. Most important, it will also send a signal to our troops around the world that the rest of the country is beginning to shoulder more of the burden for national energy security.

Coal is our country's most abundant hydrocarbon resource. It only makes sense that CTL ---(its highest value form)--- be enthusiastically included in the energy products made from it.