Evaluation of Ultra Clean Fuels from Natural Gas

Technical Report · Tue Feb 28 00:00:00 EST 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/893603· OSTI ID:893603

Abbott, Robert; Casey, Edward; Esen, Etop; Smith, Douglas; Burke, Bruce; Nguyen, Binh; Tam, Samuel; Worhach, Paul; Alam, Mahabubul; Song, Juhun; Szybist, James; Acharya, Ragini; Zello, Vince; Morris, David; Flynn, Patrick; Kirby, Stephen; Bhatia, Krishan; Gonder, Jeff; Wang, Yun; Liu, Wenpeng ; Meng, Hua; Velu, Subramani; Jian-Ping Shen, Weidong Gu; Bickford, Elise; Song, Chunshan; Wang, Chao-Yang; Boehman, Andre'

ConocoPhillips, in conjunction with Nexant Inc., Penn State University, and Cummins Engine Co., joined with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in a cooperative agreement to perform a comprehensive study of new ultra clean fuels (UCFs) produced from remote sources of natural gas. The project study consists of three primary tasks: an environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a Market Study, and a series of Engine Tests to evaluate the potential markets for Ultra Clean Fuels. The overall objective of DOE's Ultra Clean Transportation Fuels Initiative is to develop and deploy technologies that will produce ultra-clean burning transportation fuels for the 21st century from both petroleum and non-petroleum resources. These fuels will: (1) Enable vehicles to comply with future emission requirements; (2) Be compatible with the existing liquid fuels infrastructure; (3) Enable vehicle efficiencies to be significantly increased, with concomitantly reduced CO{sub 2} emissions; (4) Be obtainable from a fossil resource, alone or in combination with other hydrocarbon materials such as refinery wastes, municipal wastes, biomass, and coal; and (5) Be competitive with current petroleum fuels. The objectives of the ConocoPhillips Ultra Clean Fuels Project are to perform a comprehensive life cycle analysis and to conduct a market study on ultra clean fuels of commercial interest produced from natural gas, and, in addition, perform engine tests for Fisher-Tropsch diesel and methanol in neat, blended or special formulations to obtain data on emissions. This resulting data will be used to optimize fuel compositions and engine operation in order to minimize the release of atmospheric pollutants resulting from the fuel combustion. Development and testing of both direct and indirect methanol fuel cells was to be conducted and the optimum properties of a suitable fuel-grade methanol was to be defined. The results of the study are also applicable to coal-derived FT liquid fuels. After different gas clean up processes steps, the coal-derived syngas will produce FT liquid fuels that have similar properties to natural gas derived FT liquids.

• Research Organization: Conoco Inc
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: FC26-01NT41098
• OSTI ID: 893603
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
02 PETROLEUM
03 NATURAL GAS
09 BIOMASS FUELS
10 SYNTHETIC FUELS
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
BIOMASS
COAL
COMBUSTION
ENGINES
HYDROCARBONS
LIFE CYCLE
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT
LIQUID FUELS
MARKET
METHANOL
METHANOL FUELS
MUNICIPAL WASTES
NATURAL GAS
PETROLEUM
POLLUTANTS
TESTING
WASTES