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Jet fuel goal of Tyonek coal to liquids Cook Inlet would be one of two major Accelergy initiatives in North America; in Pennsylvania coal, coal waste would become fuel Kristen Nelson Petroleum News
Tyonek Native Corp. has a memorandum of understanding with Accelergy Corp. for a coal-to-liquids project on the west side of Alaska’s Cook Inlet (see story in Oct. 24 issue) aimed at turning the area’s plentiful coal into jet fuel.
Rocco Fiato, Accelergy’s chief technology officer, told legislators at an Oct. 13 joint hearing of the Alaska Legislature’s House and Senate Energy committees that the company has two major initiatives — North America and China-Asia Pacific.
China has built more than 30 Fischer-Tropsch projects, Fiato said, and hybridizing those projects with Accelergy technology would improve efficiency and economics; output there is gasoline and diesel, he said.
In North America Accelergy is primarily working on high-performance fighter aircraft fuel with the Department of Defense.
“We’re working on the base fuel requirements for the Air Force and then also for jet A, the sort of fuel used by commercial carriers at Anchorage International,” he said.
Accelergy got interested in Cook Interest because of fuel needs at Elmendorf.
But the company has also had discussions with FedEx and some of the commercial carriers operating out of Anchorage.
Fiato told legislators they “have the opportunity to make Anchorage International a long-term sustainable terrific resource. Or you can blow it: It’s really going to be up to you guys as to how you manage your energy resources as to what the outcome is here.”
If Alaska can become a low-cost producer of jet fuel, then the airport can be a sustainable and growing business, Fiato said.
While Pennsylvania is contributing 50 percent of the cost of a project in that state, Accelergy isn’t necessarily looking for state money from Alaska, but is looking for a clear expression of state interest, he said.
The first monies needed are for analysis of the Beluga coal, and Tyonek believes that since the state benefits as the royalty owner, it should participate in funding for that analysis.
New military requirements The fully integrated Accelergy process uses both coal and biomass. It produces isoparaffins through bioprocessing and cycloparaffins and aromatics from coal, combining them in fit-for-purpose fuels for the U.S. Air Force.
Fiato said coal’s molecular structure is not found in natural gas or in biomass.
“If you surgically, catalytically transform coal into liquids, you can produce very specific molecules called cycloparaffins,” which have the high thermal stability needed for advanced fighter aircraft, he said.
The processing of coal also produces aromatic molecules that provide lubricity, keeping metal parts intact in the fuel systems of aircraft. The other components are isoparaffins from biomass.
“And it’s managing the composition across those three families of organic molecules that ultimately is the key to being able to play in the Air Force world of synthetic versions of their current suite of fuels,” he said.
That’s the program Accelergy is working on with the Air Force Research Laboratory. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory has also signed up with Accelergy to do certification and the company is in discussions with the U.S. Navy.
Full synthetic the goal Fiato said the program Accelergy has under way with the Air Force “is aimed at certifying something called fully synthetic JP-8. Up until now, everyone in the U.S. who’s been playing in this sector is limited to a 50-50 blend, synthetic plus petroleum derived.”
Accelergy has been working with the Air Force to certify its fully synthetic coal-plus-biomass fuel, he said, with a target date for certification in the first quarter of 2013.
Once Accelergy has that unique certification it will allow the company, “and the resource holders in the states that we work with,” to get into the entire U.S. military fuel market.
Pennsylvania, Montana and North Dakota have endorsed Accelergy’s program and are partly sponsoring it, Fiato said.
He said Accelergy doesn’t need state money because it has major financial backing from Goldman Sachs, but “Goldman and the other investors want to see state commitment.”
In addition to Pennsylvania, Accelergy currently has commitment from Montana, which is willing to sponsor one-third of an effort to build a coal-only plant.
Collaborating with Tesoro Accelergy is collaborating with Tesoro on the first commercial bio-refinery plant, described in the company’s presentation as a 100-barrel-per-day facility which will be at the 60,000 barrel per day Tesoro refinery in Mandan, N.D.
Fiato said he’s been informed that the Mandan plan has now been upped to a 500-bpd facility.
“And the desire is to get into meaningful quantities of production for something called Title II of the Defense Production Act,” used by the Department of Defense to bring in new technologies, he said.
Fiato said that by contrast, what is planned for Alaska is an 8,000 bpd pioneer plant.
The primary feedstock for the Mandan bio-refinery will be Camelina seed oil, but it is also anticipated that the plant will use algae oil, waste grease and soy oil.
The output will be isoparaffinic distillate for jet fuel, diesel and gasoline, with sales to the Defense Logistics Agency and Tesoro.
Front-end engineering and design are expected to be complete in December, with construction to begin in March; startup is slated for February 2012.
Fiato said Tesoro will also be a target group for the company’s Alaska project.
Pennsylvania would be a demo plant The plan for Pennsylvania, just in the front-end feasibility stage now, would be Accelergy’s “first fully integrated demo plant.”
Fiato said the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has become a strong backer of the Pennsylvania project because instead of carbon capture and sequestration, the Accelergy process uses carbon capture and recycle.
He cited studies out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which found carbon capture and sequestration “prohibitively expensive.”
He said that when CCS is applied to a power plant, you “need to generate 25 percent more power just to take care of CO2. And all you’re doing is physically burying it underground.”
The Accelergy process makes beneficial use of CO2, but it also uses waste coal — something of interest to Pennsylvania because that state has a large resource of waste coal from tailings.
Pennsylvania has demonstrated a technology for using waste coal, but just to produce electric power “and the efficiency is still in the electric power kind of efficiency range,” while the Accelergy process is a high efficiency process which uses waste coal to produce transportation fuels, Fiato said.
Integrated demo unit The Pennsylvania integrated demo unit would process CO2 for fuels and bio-fertilizer.
Camelina seed oil or coal from syngas would be used for isoparaffin production and the system would produce fully synthetic JP8 jet fuel for Department of Defense applications.
Bio-fertilizer comes from the algae used in the biomass process, which can be dried and mixed with conventional fertilizer, a combination which boosts average crop yields 20 to 30 percent, Fiato said.
The Pennsylvania ICBTL, integrated coal-biomass-to-liquids, plant would be built at the site of an existing power plant and close to a source of high-sulfur bituminous feedstocks. A standalone power plant would produce fuel while converting CO2 to fuel and fertilizer.
Fiato said the Accelergy process “represents state of the art for coal conversion,” and does that economically and in an environmentally sensitive way.
“Minimum greenhouse gas requirements are met; other emissions from the plant are innocuous,” he said.
While a coal-fired power plant produces fly ash, the solid that comes out of an Accelergy facility “is a non-leachable grit that’s proven to be useful in either construction materials” or other applications where grit is used. Sulfur comes out as elemental sulfur.
The Pennsylvania schedule calls for a feasibility study and meeting ExxonMobil prequalification for the coal in 2010-11; pre-FEED and FEED permitting in 2012; procurement and construction in 2012-15; and shakedown and startup in 2015. ExxonMobil approval is required because some of the technology used in the process is licensed from Exxon.
Moving ahead in Alaska Fiato said the company’s North American project proposals are the Pennsylvania ICBTL project and the Accelergy-Tyonek CBTL program in Cook Inlet.
The Cook Inlet project would be 100 percent synthetic jet fuel. The next step is the resource assay for Cook Inlet coal and to get some form of Alaska jet fuel into the military testing program.
Costs for initial Tyonek work will run about a billion dollars: $250,000 for a site specific study on Beluga coal at areas selected by Tyonek; $320,000 for a Tyonek coal assay; and $430,000 for bench-scale production and initial military testing of Tyonek fuel samples.
Accelergy has proposed a 50-50 cost allocation with Tyonek to complete the Beluga study and product certification.
The objective for Accelergy’s Tyonek and Cook Inlet initiative “is to get the local coals run through and produced up in a form that can go through tier 1-tier 2 testing at the Air Force Research Labs in Dayton.”
“That’s a very critical first step. We need to know that the molecules are right. We can tell you that they will probably be right, but Exxon certainly will not sign off until we actually show them that they’re right,” Fiato said.
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