By combining several existing unit operations, scientists at Penn State Univ. have come up with a way to make liquid fuels from coal with almost no emissions — a feat that could clean up coal’s image.
“We have taken various processes, many of which are pretty well known and some of them are still in the R&D stage, and combined them,” says Harold Schobert, Professor Emeritus of Fuel Science at Penn State Univ. “We can feed coal into this plant along with carbon-free electricity and water and produce very clean synthetic fuel for jet engines and diesel engines, with almost no emissions from the plant.”
▲ The core of the new coal-to-liquids process involves extraction, solid-liquid separation, solvent stripping, hydrotreating, and distillation. This sequence of steps is not new, and when used to produce liquid fuels, generates large quantities of emissions. Image courtesy of Technology Journal.
Converting coal into synthetic liquid fuels such as jet and diesel fuels typically involves two steps. First, the coal is gasified in a steam-oxygen mixture to produce synthesis gas...
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