Hopes that the Air Force would abandon CTL may have been premature. There is a backdoor approach in the works. According to Politico,
Democrats have all but pushed coal out of the clean energy debates, but the coal lobby might have found a new tap into the U.S. Treasury: the Pentagon.
The Defense Authorization Bill now being debated in the Senate includes a provision that would allow energy companies to sign 10-year contracts with the military to produce synthetic fuel.
The article goes on to describe the history behind the coal-to-liquids push at the Air Force. It quotes former Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne as saying:
It was really about minimizing the impact on American society for the energy crisis and using the marketplace as a lever to induce a different future. That’s one of the things a military department can and should do.
So the Air Force seeks “to induce a different future” for the US: one of worsened global warming. Is that what a military department “should do?” Perhaps it’s not surprising that the Bush Administration is using the Pentagon as a back-door for pushing an energy deal that is so destructive to the climate, since a ruined climate means more regional wars and crises for the Pentagon to deal with (see “The moving Fingar writes: Reduced Dominance Is Predicted for U.S.“)!
A pro-CTL group reports the Pentagon isn’t waiting for the above bill. DARPA plans to spend $4.5 million to support demonstration projects.
In other news, General Electric president Jeff Immelt in a joint announcement with Google today said Thursday of jumpstarting the clean energy transition, “I don’t think this is hard. I’d say health care is hard. Solving the U.S. health care system (is hard). Energy actually isn’t hard. The technology exists. Doesn’t need to be invented. It needs to be applied.” Too bad the Air Force hasn’t gotten that message.
–Earl K.
Related posts:
- The liquid-coal military industrial complex
- Memo to Air Force: Stop misleading the public on liquid coal
- Coal-to-Liquid Is a Dead End
- Forget 7 generations: Tribes gamble on coal, despite climate risks
- Video: The Folly of Liquid Coal
- Congress should say NO to coal-to-diesel
- The WSJ (and Climate Progress) on Liquid Coal
- Liquid Coal Hearing Report
- Liquid Coal Goes Down In Flames In Senate
- The Post Gets Coal-Liquids Story Mostly Right
- Plug-in Hybrids Beat Coal-to-Liquids (Duh!)
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
The firms involved in coal-to-liquid are busily Greenwashing by claiming a gasification process can use bio-feedstocks. It’s possible but won’t happen anytime soon – there are no systems for growing and gathering feedstocks. The proposed CTL plants are sited at the mine mouth.
You can do many things with electricity. Flying airplanes isn’t one of them. This is why the future of airlines is so questionable. It is also why the air force is interested in liquid fuel from coal. they need secure sources of liquid fuel. Coal provides one.
Robert Armstrong, if we dramatically reduce our use of petroleum for personal transportation, then the US will be producing plenty of it to fuel the Air Force. The highest priority should be the shift away from fossil-derived fuel for cars. It solves the Air Force’s problem for decades. While it is difficult to see biofuels powering but a small fraction of car miles, having them power airplanes seems quite plausible.
About the last thing we need is a coal-to-liquids push. It solves nothing that cannot be better solved by other methods.
Fischer-Tropsch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch
can be applied to any biomass feedstack. Doesn’t have to be coal.
Sugar to jet fuel:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080918170827.htm
David Benson, that’s true, but there are several points to consider.
(1) The particular plants being proposed for the Air Force would run on coal. Please note in the cited article, it said for example,
(2) Until the biomass is grown organically and without fossil fuel inputs, biomass will have greenhouse pollution associated with it (e.g. from the fertilizer produced from fossil fuels). This is minor compared to the next point.
(3) Biofuels of whatever form perpetuate internal combustion technology, which is inefficient, wasteful, and polluting. (On the last point, see Mark Jacobson’s E85 papers for example.) We need to move to Zero Emission Vehicles in our cities at least to make our air clean to breathe; burning liquid fuel in internal combustion engines will always be problematic for clean air.
If one had sufficient biomass, the best thing to do with it is to produce electricity to power plug-ins. Turning it into methanol, gasoline, ethanol, butanol, or whatever is inherently inferior.
(4) Because of point 3 above, the Air Force’s attempt to ““to induce a different future” is not just a setback for the Air Force, it is a setback for the entire US, which could see better solutions thwarted by the “quick hack” approach being taken.
David Bensson, sugarcane, where it grows, is considered tremendously productive, but have you ever seen estimates at how efficiently it converts the sun’s energy into sugar?
Aldo V da Rosa’s textbook Fundamentals of Renewable Energy Processes has chapter 13 on biomass with some figures worth knowing. For example, he writes
And sugar cane is considered once of the best energy crops!
He goes on to say,
Earl Killian — Jet airplanes need jet fuel. I gather some experiments show that 50% will do, mixed with something else.
I agree that the conversion efficiency is low, but this is certainly better than CTL!
Internal combustion engines are going to be around for a long time. Can you imagine an electric powered farm or semi tractor? How about ocean vessels?
Here is an article about algae to jet fuel, at surprisingly low cost:
http://www.icis.com/blogs/biofuels/archives/2008/09/solazyme-algaebased-biofuel-ok.html
Here is another plan gong forward to produce liquid fuels:
http://windfuels.com/index.htm#
David Benson, yes, sugar to jet fuel is better than CTL. Sorry for overreacting. Thanks for the links.
Earl, you said:
[If one had sufficient biomass, the best thing to do with it is to produce electricity to power plug-ins.]
I offer the following: (knowing you are not advocating biomass to kilowatts)
I am using 4300-7300 Btu/lb content of ag residue (range due to moisture content) found on the Bioenergy Feedstock Development Programs at ORNL web page. Then, I chose the Alabama Power Co. Barry plant’s coal-burning units which burned a total of 4.3 MM tons to generate 10 billion kwhr in 2007. That equates to 10,252 btu/kwhr. Not an efficient plant, but I am now going to convert its feedstock to biomass fuel.
The biomass demand to generate the coal-fired generation from Barry would be:
@ 4300 Btu/lb = 8,600,000 Btu/ton
@ 7300 Btu/lb = 14,600,000 Btu/ton
Total Btu demand to the boilers is 102,287,738,000,000 Btu
Wet ag residue = 12 million tons
Dry ag residue = 7 million tons.
Earl, I use those only to try to keep the idea of boimass feedstock for electric generation in perspective.
I agree with your post regarding sugar as feedstock for liquid fuels and I believe we both agree on the massive complexity of assuring aviation it will have adequate and quality fuels but coal to liquids (as the Air Force envisions) is not the answer.
The long term fuel availability for global aviation may have to include nuclear power to split water to free up the hydrogen to react with CO2 sequestered from fossil fuel burning plants to create carbon monoxide then fed into a Fishcer-Tropsch to produce diesel and refined products.
The reverse water-gas shift:
CO2 + H2 = CO + H2O
Sounds too radical to suggest on this blog? But, I offer a vision provided by Jules Verne:
“I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable.”
Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island (1874)
Senator McCain did not invent the Blackberry. And, Jules did not invent nuclear powered submarines. But, his vision far surpassed anything McCain offers.
John McCormick