Flying Planes with Coal?

Airplanes powered by coal -- at first blush it sounds about as attractive as the toddler chainsaw. But Accelergy in Houston says it has come up with a way to convert the ubiquitous rock into an economical, clear, and arguably clean form of jet fuel.
The company will initially try to sell fuel to the U.S. military -- the Air Force has already begun initial testing -- and has also started to field inquiries from China and some commercial aircraft and engine manufacturers. Biomass can also be substituted for coal, or at least part of it, in the recipe, depending on the desired characteristics of the final fuel.
The Department of Defense will likely set its standards for synthetic jet fuels in 2013, and CEO Tim Vail claims that Accelergy's fuel will be able to meet those standards.
The key is a process fine-tuned at ExxonMobil in the mid-1990s that turns coal or plant matter directly into a liquid, according to Vail. Unlike the often-criticized Fischer-Tropsch process devised in the 1920s, Accelergy's process does not get convert coal into a synthetic gas before transforming it into a liquid. Eliminating gasification greatly reduces carbon dioxide emissions, as well as the total amount of coal (or biomass) consumed to produce liquids, he said. And it's cost-effective.
"You can be profitable in the $50-to-$60-a-barrel range," extrapolating from the mathematical models devised by Exxon in the '90s, Vail said.
So what makes this environmentally friendly? It depends on how you look at the problem. While coal is a relatively dirty form of fuel, it's also one of the most pervasive.
The world has an estimated 998 billion tons of proven coal reserves, with the largest reserves located in the U.S., China, India and Russia.
While the U.S. and Europe have begun to reduce coal consumption, emerging nations will invariably use large portions of theirs. Converting it into liquid jet fuel reduces carbon dioxide and particulate matter that would get released by burning it, Vail argues.
17/05/10 Michael Kanellos/Greentech media, USA

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Categories: Foreign May 2010, Indian Aviation- In General May 2010, New May 2010