Coal To Liquids (CTL)

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DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of coal utilization as an energy resource. In particular DARPA is interested in processes that will ultimately enable the United States to economically extract energy from its coal resources in the form of liquid fuels using coal to liquid conversion technologies that are environmentally friendly and cost competitive with petroleum based fuels.Amendment 1 to DARPA-BAA-08-58 Coal To LiquidsThe purpose of Amendment 1 to DARPA-BAA-08-58 Coal To Liquids (CTL) is to delete the third paragraph of Section 1.1 entitled “Program Overview” and replace with the following:Delete: SECTION 1.1 PARA 3 :The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) currently uses on average over 300,000 barrels of petroleum based liquid fuels per day. In addition, the United States has over 275 billion tons of estimated coal reserves. Thus it is a reasonable expectation that, with existing CTL technologies, the DoD need for liquid fuels could be met using U.S. coal reserves for several thousand years.Replace with: SECTION 1.1 PARA 3:The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) currently uses on average over 300,000 barrels of petroleum based liquid fuels per day. In addition, the United States has over 275 billion tons of estimated coal reserves. Thus it is a reasonable expectation that, with existing CTL technologies, the DoD need for liquid fuels could be met using U.S. coal reserves for several thousand years.Rationale for Greater than (>)Thousand year Estimate:The greater than (>) thousand year estimate is based on neglecting current domestic use. Even so, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) currently uses on average over 300,000 barrels of petroleum based liquid fuels per day. The United States currently has an estimated 275 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves. Conversion of these reserves using existing CTL technologies would provide several thousand times more fuel than the DoD uses in a single year which is where the greater than (>) thousand year estimate was derived. However, if DoD only used 10% of the converted coal to liquid fuel, this would still represent more than a one hundred year supply which is still significant.

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