DEFE0023863 Final Report, Technology for GHG Emission Reduction and Cost-Competitive Mil-Spec Jet Fuel Production using CTL
- OxEon Energy, LLC, North Salt Lake, UT (United States)
- Intramicron, Inc., Auburn, AL (United States)
- Energy & Environmental Research Center, Grand Forks, ND (United States)
- Sustainable Energy Solutions, Orem, UT (United States)
Ceramatec Inc, in collaboration with IntraMicron (IM), the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) and Sustainable Energy Solutions, LLC (SES), have completed a three-year research project integrating their respective proprietary technologies in key areas to demonstrate production of a jet fuel from coal and biomass sources. The project goals and objectives were to demonstrate technology capable of producing a “commercially-viable quantity” of jet fuel and make significant progress toward compliance with Section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA 2007 §526) lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions requirements. The Ceramatec led team completed the demonstration of nominal 2 bbl/day Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis pilot plant design, capable of producing a nominal 1 bbl/day in the Jet-A/JP-8 fraction. This production rate would have a capacity of 1,000 gallons of jet fuel per month and provide the design basis of a 100 bbl/day module producing over 2,000 gallons of jet fuel per day. Co-gasification of coal-biomass blends enables a reduction of lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from equivalent conventional petroleum derived fuel basis. Due to limits of biomass availability within an economic transportation range, implementation of a significant biomass feed fraction will require smaller plants than current world scale CTL and GTL FT plants. Hence a down-scaleable design is essential. The pilot plant design leverages Intramicron’s MicroFiber Entrapped Catalyst (MFEC) support which increases the catalyst bed thermal conductivity two orders of magnitude, allowing thermal management of the FT reaction exotherm in much larger reactor tubes. In this project, single tube reactors having 4.5 inch outer diameter and multi-tube reactors having 4 inch outer diameters were operated, with productivities as high as 1.5 gallons per day per linear foot of reactor tube. A significant reduction in tube count results from the use of large diameter reactor tubes, with an associated reduction in reactor cost. The pilot plant was designed with provisions for product collection capable of operating with conventional wax producing FT catalysts but was operated with a Chevron hybrid wax-free FT catalyst. Process simplification enabled by elimination of the wax hydrocracking process unit provides economic advantages in scaling to biomass capable plant sizes. Intramicron also provided a sulfur capture system based on their Oxidative Sulfur Removal (OSR) catalyst process. The integrated sulfur removal and FT systems were operated with syngas produced by the Transport Reactor Development Unit (TRDU) gasifier at the University of North Dakota EERC. SES performed modeling of their cryogenic carbon capture process on the energy, cost and CO2 emissions impact of the Coal-biomass synthetic fuel process.
- Research Organization:
- Ceramatec, Inc., West Valley City, UT (United States
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)
- Contributing Organization:
- Ceramatec, Inc. Salt Lake City, UT OxEon Energy, LLC, North Salt Lake, UT Intramicron, Inc., Auburn, AL Energy & Environmental Research Center, Grand Forks, ND Sustainable Energy Solutions, Orem, UT
- DOE Contract Number:
- FE0023863
- OSTI ID:
- 1439110
- Report Number(s):
- DOECeramatec-0023863 Rev A; OSTI ID 1417725 update
- Resource Relation:
- Related Information: Update to report DOECeramatec0023863
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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