The Defense Department buys more jet fuel than any other organization in the world. So the Pentagon’s higher-ups are just as sick as the rest of us — more so — about sky-high fuel prices. Small wonder that the brass is asking for proposals to supply 200 million gallons of synthetic jet fuel, as part of big-league field tests in 2008 and 2009.
The request, notes Inside Green Business, comes from the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC), which oversees the Pentagon’s fuel purchases. It’s part of a larger military investigation into an eighty year-old process for converting coal or natural gas into liquid fuel called Fischer-Tropsch. It’s what helped the German Army make 124,000 barrels of fuel per day during World War II.
The possible purchase would send 100 million gallons each to the Air Force and Navy for testing on ships, airplanes and other operational units, according to a DESC source. The alternative fuels would likely be blended with existing DOD fuel types, such as the Air Force’s JP-8 and the Navy’s F-76, in a 50/50 mixture or similar ratio, according to the source. “There won’t be enough alternative fuels to do a one hundred percent [alternative] blend for at least a decade,” the source says, “but even reducing petroleum fifty percent in this country is huge. What DESC is saying is we don’t want [carbon dioxide] greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.”
The source says each of the military services wants to maintain its current single-fuel policy, under which all vehicles are run with as similar a fuel type as possible. DOD officials want to use 50/50 blends “widely” for the service tests at first, with an eye to potentially retooling the ratio for optimum efficiency later on…
There may… be problems finding a supplier, or even a combination of suppliers, that can satisfy the request for alternative fuels. “No domestic infrastructure can [currently] handle that much” demand, says the DESC source, adding that the purchase would likely be from a combination of coal-based Fischer-Tropsch fuel and fuel derived from tar sands and oil shale, which have been eyed by government and industry planners as potential sources of synthetic petroleum. There currently is no widespread market in the U.S. for such petroleum alternatives, although the source says “hopefully this will be an impetus for private industry to use synthetic fuels as well. Because the private sector doesn’t have the research and development budget we do, they’re waiting to see how our projects go so they can adopt whatever we develop.”
“What DESC is saying is we don’t want [carbon dioxide] greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.”
What a bullshit quote.
Weather you burn “syntetic” carbonhydrates (made of, in an engeryintensive process of, -you guessed that- other carbonhydrates), or not syntetic carbonhydrates doesn´t make a bit of difference to the ammount of CO2 you put into the atmosphere.
They have all ready bench tested jet engines running on the coal fuel. air test will begin this summer on the air forces most dependible aircraft……the 50 year plus old B-52. Two of the old war house engines will run on the new fuel, the other six on standard jet fuel in cse something goes wrong. so some day we will be fighting ywenty first century wars in sixty year old bombers, fueled by world war two coal gas! Every thing old is new again.
My recall may not be perfect, but if I remember correctly, we had a Fischer-Tropsch plant operating in Louisiana in the ’50s (I think actually two plants), which produced fuel at a cost 10% cheaper than refining crude. These were promptly closed under pressure by guess who? Again, if recall serves, the cry was against using NAZI technologies – somehow the NAZIs can be invoked at will to denigrate anything…
The technology showed up again; found in a library in UT El Paso back in the eighties.
What davids said.
Looking forward to the testing.
Kalroy
If the Fischer-Tropsch process is able to produce quality fuels at a cost that is similar to that from imported oil, I would suggest that our country needs to ramp up production as quickly as possible. Keeping the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on Middle Eastern oil in our country would have an incredible effect on our economy.
We must also remember that this Middle East oil is being produced by countries that are potentially our enemies and that it is ludicrous to be financing the countries that support the organizations that wish to see our country destroyed. Our single largest supplier of oil may now be Canada, and Mexico may be supplying a significant percentage as well, but there is still far too much oil coming to us from unstable regions.
Its all fine and nice to say you are going to make coal into liquid fuels. However the energy needed to do the conversion is going to be prohibitively expensive, in terms of pollution and damage to the ecosystem. Nice try, but get used to driving smaller cars and start looking at loosing the ability to project force at a distance through aviation. The biggest Carrier taks force in the world is useless if the aircraft cant get off the deck. Aviation as we know it is just about over. Especially for travel. What ever fuel is eventually left will be earmarked for military use as the world starts slaugtering each other for resource.
Petey, stop reading peak oil end of the world scenarios. We’re not about to run out of fuel. The price of oil today has more to do with political matters than production matters.
And coal can be burned without causing damage to the environment, and can be converted to liquid fuel without using up too much energy (that’s the whole point of the process–the nazis wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been an efficient way to make fuel). Besides, of any country on earth, the USA is the one that WILL spend the extra dollar to make sure we keep our power projection capabilities.
Speaking of synth-fuels, Germany finaly all but collapsed when the 8th air force comcentrated their bombing on the german synth [coal] plants.
In the future, I believe 75 to 85% of whats in your small fuel tank, running the {SMALL} ETH-85 powered ENGINE THAT KEEPS YOUR PLUG IN BATTERY RECHARGED, when you drive over 200 miles in one day. THE FEUL THAT POWERS YOUR CAR will be celose ethanol with 15 to 25% gasoline. Think of it as a 300 miles per gallon auto!
Then again when the middle east oil fields run dry in fifty years or so and and the rest of opec is no more. The world will turn to the more costly[65 to 75 bucks a barrel] oil shale for their oil needs.
By most acounts there are 262 trillin barrels of oil locked up in oil shale around the world. of this 262 trillion barrels 222 trillion barrels are right here in the united states. so fifty or seventy years from now The united states becomes Opec and every one will hate us even more! No matter how fair we treat the rest of the world.
Then again it might be nice for our grand kids knowing they will have no income tax because the money to run the federal goverment will be coming from these sales!
Jet Blue’s president suggests mine mouth atomic powered coal to fuel conversion.
The German coal to gas process would produce gasoline for $1.50/gal in 1980 – but this was a manual process. Similar processes take days to adjust or “line out.” Add computer control and good product is produced after less than an hour.
Add low cost atomic power to avoid wasting coal to heat the process and the ability to “dump” waste back in abandoned areas of the mine and you have a win/win situation.
The president of Jet Blue’s advisors have worked out all the math, including subsidizing the operation to get it started – looks good to me.
Now how do you keep the government from killing the project with bureaucratic stupidity?
Peak Oil will not happen, that just a myth like the Piltdown Man. Oil isn’t actually derived from sedimentary rock at all, it actually is produced in the upper mantle of the Earth (100+ kilometers down) and is far more abundant than the oxygen in our atmosphere to react with it:
The Evolution of Multicomponent Systems at High Pressures: The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum
Sorry, hyperlink didn’t work, here is the web address for that link:
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/17/10976.full
The Earth uses the Fischer-Tropsch synthjesis, and we can use it, on anything with a higher content of carbon, than, hydrogen, in Molecular terms. i.e. you can use sugar, starch, and wood or paper for making ethanol, but cole, coke, rubber, etc. for making crude oil. And the heavy oil and asphalt/tar you can use for making lighter fractions. But, we bwill never run out of oil anyway…. And sequestred co2, can be used to make oil too, if you react it with mmorev reduced carbon. So the Al Gore bunch, are not about saving the Earth, but about making new taxes.
Al Gore has never been corrrect, except, “politically”. Carbon is not a polutant, only politics and toxic chemicals are,