Coal-Powered Jets

Researchers have powered a turboshaft jet engine, the type used to drive helicopter rotors, with a coal-based fuel that could eventually replace military and commercial jet fuels, says Harold Schobert, director of the Energy Institute at Pennsylvania State University. The successful development of the coal-based fuel, which was described this week at the American Chemical Society meeting in Atlanta, could also have uses in diesel engines and fuel cells, Schobert says.

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One cost-related problem, however, is that supply of refined coal oil used in the current process is limited, and prices of it would likely go up sharply with increased demand. “Frankly, we’d probably soak up the entire byproduct market, and the folks that sell those byproduct chemicals are not dopes,” says Schobert; “they know what they could do to the price under those circumstances.” Schobert is now working on other methods of producing the fuel using oil refinery products.

Technology Review