The Air Force is flying a range of crafts, from supersonic fighter jets to hulking cargo planes, on a synthetic fuel blend derived largely from coal. The problem is, that stuff is as bad for the environment as the old-school fuel. And it's expensive. Enter Darpa,which is kick-starting a new $4.5 million research effort to figure out how to turn coal into liquid fuel cheaply.
The hiccup with the existing, so-called Fischer-Tropsch method of squeezing fuel out of coal or natural gas is that "you end up kicking a whole bunch of additional carbon dioxide out into the air. More carbon dioxide, in fact, than you do just using and burning the refined products you get from crude oil," Lt. Col. Robert Bateman explains in Intel Dump. "In other words, we can be less dependent upon foreign sources, but at the same time we would be increasing our contribution to changes in temperature which will likely require us to commit military forces (which is never good) elsewhere."
But Darpa not only "believes that innovative CTL (coal-to-liquid) concepts may exist that result in zero carbon dioxide emissions," the agency also thinks the amount of water required can be cut down. Fischer-Tropsch processing currently uses about 1 kilogram of water for every kilogram of coal converted to oil.
Oh, and Darpa wants the costs cut in half, too. Proposal abstracts are due by the 24th of the month. So get going.
[Photo: Op-For]
