Increasing Security and Reducing Carbon Emissions of the U.S. Transportation Sector: A Transformational Role for Coal with Biomass

摘要

The Air Force has set a goal to supply fifty percent of its CONUS (lower 48 United States) fuel requirements from domestic synthetic sources by 2016. One option for doing this is the production of liquid fuels from coal via gasification and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis, a process known as coal-to-liquids (CTL). In addition, the Department of Defense (DoD) will require that providers of synthetic fuel practice carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions capture, sequestration or reuse/reform. Although CTL, when coupled with carbon capture and sequestration during fuel production, can limit CO2 emissions to a level approximately equivalent (+4% to -5%) to that of the existing petroleum-based fuel supply chain, the DoD wishes to explore options that will further improve its environmental performance by reducing the carbon footprint of the plant to be below that of a conventional petroleum refinery. The coconversion of coal and biomass to liquid fuels (CBTL) has been recently proposed as a possible option to accomplish this. The option to use various process (including algae) for reuse/reform of CO2 emissions with CTL/CBTL process has been proposed, but is not in the scope of this report.