Wyoming Clean Coal Task Force awards $8.8M to 9 projects for 2011, including coal-to-liquids
6 July 2011
In its latest round of funding, reviewed last month by the state’s Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Interim Committee, the Wyoming Clean Coal Task Force (CCTF) endorsed nine projects covering research in the fields of carbon capture and sequestration, gasification technology, post-combustion methods, gas clean-up and coal-to-liquids conversion.
The Clean Coal Task Force (CCTF) was created in 2007 by the Wyoming State Legislature to help secure Wyoming’s financial future by preserving the value of coal, an important export from the state.
The newly approved projects will receive $8,769,713, the largest single annual funding in the history of the fund.
The largest allocation, $2,513,237, was awarded to Sustainable Energy Solutions to test a skid-scale Cryogenic Carbon Capture unit with several fuel types and under various operating conditions. The state funding was matched by Sustainable Energy Solutions, Jiaotong University in China and the Laramie-based Western Research Institute (WRI) for a project total of $5,026,474.
The University of Wyoming (UW) received the second largest award, $1,407,900, to use advanced high-resolution imaging at various scales to model the interactions and fate of carbon dioxide (CO’) in naturally fractured saline aquifers. Mohammad Piri, an assistant professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, will lead the project. The Brazilian National Laboratory for Scientific Computing provided matching funds for a total of $2,815,834.
The other CCTF-endorsed projects for 2011:
A $1,205,596 award to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, matched by the US Department of Energy (DOE) for a total of $2,411,192, to address gasification gas clean-up, carbon capture and coal-to-natural gas technologies.
A $744,780 award to the University of Kentucky, with a $745,000 match from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Kentucky for a total of $1,489,780, to study novel carbon capture technology for power generation using Wyoming coal.
A $731,984 award to Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., matched by the company for a total of $1,463,368, to focus on assessing the feasibility of sour pressure swing adsorption in a gasification process using Powder River Basin coal.
A $720,000 award to AmbreEnergy and the WRI, with a $740,000 match from both companies for a total of $1,460,000, to investigate the use of helical channel reactor technology to improve the conversion efficiency of syngas to liquid fuels and chemicals.
A $500,000 award to Thermosolv, LLC, and the WRI, matched by the WRI and AmbreEnergy for a total of $1 million, to develop and test a commercially viable approach to converting solid carbonaceous feedstock into high-value liquid fuel.
A $499,924 award to ARCHTECH, with a $500,000 match from the company for a total of $999,924, to address pilot-scale in situ coal biogasification with above-ground processing to produce methane.
A $446,292 award to the University of Utah, matched the DOE and the university for a total of $892,584, to advance commercial development of chemical looping with oxygen coupling with solid fuel to produce a pure CO’ stream.
In its first five years, the CCTF has assisted in distributing $31.2 million in appropriated funds while leveraging matching funds of $35.1 million and is supporting 42 projects through the Clean Coal Technology Fund, which serves to stimulate research to enhance and improve clean coal technologies, with an emphasis on the use of sub-bituminous coal at high elevations.
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