There is hope for an alternative to 100LL (even if it is diesel/jetA).

Marc Wiese, 76 RG 

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SYNTHETIC FUELS
Air Force Seeks Secure Domestic Source for Fuel
Proposals are due on May 2 for development of a plant on a Montana air base to convert coal into synthetic fuel. The U.S. Air Force is offering 700 acres of underutilized land on Malmstrom Air Force Base under a program for "Enhanced Use Lease" by a developer who will build and operate a coal-to-liquid-fuel (CTL) plant on the site. The program is intended to improve national security by reducing dependence on imported petroleum. "By 2016, we want to purchase 50% of continental U.S. fuel as synfuel," says Vicky Stein, Air Force spokeswoman. That amounts to 400 million gallons per year. "We will certify the fleet by 2011 to fly on synfuel," she adds. In fiscal year 2007, the service successfully tested with 280,000 gallons of fuel derived from natural gas made in Malaysia. Malmstrom AFB, Great Falls, Mont., is the only site offered to date for the CTL program, but the developer will be free to sell the products on the open market, says Stein. CTL technology is based on the Fischer-Tropsch Process, discovered in the 1920s and used since then by governments with more coal than oil, such as Nazi Germany and Apartheid-era South Africa. The process gasifies the coal, allowing extraction of impurities, and then converts it to a liquid using a catalyst. South Africa still produces about 160,000 barrels per day from two plants. China Shenhua Energy Co. Ltd. is nearing completion of a $1.5-billion CTL plant in Inner Mongolia, scheduled to begin operation this year. It will be the world's first to liquefy coal without first gasifying it, a process known as "direct coal liquefaction." Four CTL plants are being developed in the U.S. in Ohio, Wyoming, North Dakota and Mississippi. All will sell their carbon dioxide for injection into depleted oil fields to enhance recovery. Capital cost of a 25,000-bbl-per day CTL plant would be roughly $2 billion, says Corey Henry, vice president of industrial communication for the National Mining Association, Washington, D.C. Producers won't divulge production costs, but synfuel from coal typically costs S40 to $50 per bbl, plus 10 per bbl for disposal of the carbon dioxide, he says.

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BIODIESEL
Fat Fuel Will Fly Faster Than Chickens Ever Could

CDJ Corp. has a feather in its cap---a chicken feather to be precise. The company is completing the front end engineering and design (FEED) for a new refinery that will convert chicken fat into jet fuel. "It's not your everyday project," says Ronnie Macks, manager of project control for the Philadelphia-based professional service and engineering firm's Baton Rouge division. The plant will be built on the site of a former chemical refinery in Geismar, La. "It's always a challenge when you're doing something for the first time." The facility will be operated under the flag of Dynamic Fuels LLC, a 50-50 joint venture of Tulsa-based Syntroleum Corp. and Springdale, Ark.-based Tyson Foods Inc. When completed in 2010, the $126 million plant will use Syntroleum's proprietary technology and Tyson's chicken fat to produce 5,000 barrels per day of high-quality diesel fuel. One company executive calls it "the cleanest fuel on the planet." The fuel has ultralow sulfur, low nitrogen-oxide emissions and up to 50% fewer particulates than regular diesel, says Jeff Bigger, Syntroleum's senior vice president of business development. The construction contract will be let in the next month, says Bigger, who is also leading the construction efforts for Dynamic Fuels. Construction is expected to begin later this year, and the company expects to be producing the synthetic fuel in 2010. Dynamic Fuels has ordered some long-lead-time items, including reactor vessels, but it has not announced which companies received those contracts. The Geismar site was chosen because of access to roads, rail and the Mississippi River, Bigger says. A total of four Dynamic Fuel plants at other sites in the U.S. are slated to be built to take advantage of Tyson's plentiful amounts of animal fat. After the fat is brought into the plant, it will go through a washing process to remove contaminants. Then, in a reactor vessel, the company will use high-pressure hydrogen to reassemble the molecules so that they will perform like fuel, not fat, even at low temperatures. While biodiesel can also be made with animal fat, the patent-pending process makes the end product vastly different from biodiesel, Bigger says. For instance, the fuel will not coagulate at low temperatures like biodiesel, he says. Syntroleum is finishing up a test batch of the chicken fat-derived diesel at its Catoosa demonstration plant, near Tulsa, for the U.S. Air Force. Syntroleum has supplied the Air Force with synthetic diesel produced from coal and natural gas using a Fischer-Tropsch process. The fuel coming out of the Louisiana plant will be the same product chemically, Bigger says. While there is ongoing research and testing on using things such as algae and chicken fat to produce fuel, Dynamic Fuels is furthest along in the industry in bringing new raw materials into the biofuels market, says Paul Winters, a spokesman for the biotechnical industry organization BIO, Washington, D.C. The low cost of the animal fat gives Dynamic Fuels an edge over companies that are trying to produce ethanol from corn or biodiesel from soy, says Mike McDaniel, of Louisiana State University's Center for Energy Studies. "There's been a sea change" in the biofuels market over the last year, he says. The rising cost of food has led to the failure of some other biofuel projects, including a 60-million gallon-per-year biodiesel plant that the Ralston-Iowa Renewable Energy Group was building in St. Rose, La. Construction on the plant was suspended after the company failed to get financing for the project. The company invested $47 million in the project and finished construction on storage tanks before halting work.