An article in The Australian today suggests that the ever increasing price of oil is encouraging Asia, holders of one-third of the world’s coal deposits, to have a good hard look at coal-to-liquids (CTL) plants for the production of synthetic petrol and diesel.
The article states that CTL offers cleaner fuels than those produced from oil. I’m assuming the author meant CTL produces fuels with higher purity than those produced from oil because as we all know CTL produces 119% more CO2 than petrol (previous post). Ideally all new CTL plants will incorporate some form of carbon sequestration to offset the CO2 produced but that I think that is fairly unlikely given the extra cost it would incur in such a price sensitive market.
One of the companies linked to CTL in Asia in the article is Shenhua Group who will start China’s first large-scale CTL plant, in the coal-rich region of Inner Mongolia, this year. The others are Sasol and Royal Dutch Shell.
Source: The Australian
Filed under: Alternative fuel, Greenhouse gas, Synthetic diesel, Synthetic jet fuel | Tagged: coal-to-liquids, CTL, Royal Dutch Shel, Sasol, Shenhua Group Corp
