Thursday, October 22, 2009

Air Force drops support for coal-to-liquid fuels

In another policy shift resulting from this year's change in the presidency, "The Air Force has quietly dropped plans to facilitate construction of coal-to-liquids fuel plants under an effort to use domestically produced alternative jet fuels," Ben Geman reports for Energy and Environment News.

The Air Force had been trying to develop a coal-to-liquid industry as a secure, domestic source, and promoters of the industry see military supply contracts "as a way to ensure a market for expensive commercial-scale CTL plants, which have not been built in the United States, although several companies have planned facilities," German reports. The Air Force uses 10 percent of the country's jet fuel and is still looking for alternative fuels, a spokesman said.

CTL plants have long been feasible, and are common in South Africa, but emit high levels of greenhouse gases, and carbon capture and sequestration technologies "have yet to be commercially deployed," German notes. (Read more; subscription required)

1 comment:

elrojo said...

producing liquid fuel from coal is a technology older than world war 2, when the germans used it to manyfacture ingine fuel. during that war we had a plant at Louisiana, Mo., producing synthetic fuel from coal. we also had a plant at gorgas, alabama producing gas from coal. technology is old, arguments get revived every time there is a crisis