Project Rationale
The Philippines has relied on imported crude oil from the Middle East to fill the gap in its domestic requirements. During the last five years (1999 to 2003), the country has been importing an average of 94% of its crude oil requirements from the Middle East. The high dependence on imported oil makes the country vulnerable to oil supply disruption.

The Philippines Energy Plan for 2005-2014 has placed a high priority on the development and implementation of projects aimed at cutting dependence on imported oil and on the development of renewable and alternative energy sources. Of particular interest are coal-to-clean-fuels technologies, considering that the Philippines have significant coal reserves with an estimated resource potential of 2.36 billion metric tons.

Project Development
A four-step plan has been developed with the aim to start the construction of the facilities in 2009.

Step 1 involves the initial evaluation of the overall plan and consists of six tasks. These tasks are:
Task 1 – Project scoping
Task 2 – Preliminary site/coal selection
Task 3 – Process plant configuration
Task 4 – Preliminary techno-economic assessment
Task 5 – Project development plan
Task 6 – Detailed plan for Steps 2 and 3

The final report for Step 1, which summarizes findings under this initial evaluation step, is available upon request.

Trite as it may seem, but the “dirtiest fuel tag” on coal lingers to this day. Yet note that, paradoxically, utilizing it to sustain a country’s energy needs thrives inescapably as it remains the most abundant fossil fuel on a global scale.

Talking of long-term prospects, the line of arguments evidently will not just be confined on which fuel could provide sustainability of supply; but will also bring into spotlight the role of coal in the so-called “clean energy future”, primarily in policy statements tussling various players into the “renewables versus fossil fuel debate.”

Petroleum, on the same token, is notoriously labeled as harmful to the environment, from its dirty exhaust to the toxic mess it leaves when spilled.

So what choices are available in our hands?

Pulling off a low-emission economy
Renewable sources of energy, no doubt, have a pivotal role to play in achieving a lower-emission economy; but by themselves, they cannot do well to meet growing energy demand. Unfortunately, the technology is not currently available for renewables to replace all, or even large part of the country and the world’s fossil fuel generation.

At current pace of global energy trends, coal sensibly has a key spot in the present energy mix of some economies, the Philippines included.

By estimate of the World Energy Council (WEC), global coal reserves hover at roughly 984 billion tons (minus yet the undiscovered exploitable resources), which have equivalent energy value of 4.6 trillion barrels of oil; a far cry from the calculated remaining oil reserve of 1.7 trillion barrels; and for which $16 trillion worth of investments should still be pumped in between now and 2025 to ensure that oil supply winds up until the next 40 years.

Locally, planners at the Department of Energy (DOE) pencilled in total coal resource potential for the country at 2.37 billion metric tons. Production, it was said, has been consistently maintained at 1.1 million to 1.4 million metric tons range; and peaking at 2.0 million MT in 2003. The 2003 coal production was able to displace about 6.55 million barrels of fuel oil equivalent, which translated into $176.82 million foreign savings for the country based on a reference price of $28 per barrel of oil.

Sounds like there is no sure-fire way to make coal as a cleaner alternative to other conventional and proposed alternative fuels? Not really. With the advent of clean coal technologies designed to capture pollutants trapped in coal before the impurities can escape into the atmosphere and harm the environment, the ‘dirty fuel’ hogwash could well be thrown behind the times, experts say.

Ultra-clean fuels from coal
In dire search for alternative that can both reduce pollution and help rip up the country’s dependence on oil imports; the DOE recently introduced the idea of adopting a modern technology that would produce liquid fuel products using coal as a raw material.

The challenge, of course, would be for the country’s energy managers to find ways to produce safe, efficient and effective fuel for the country’s transport system and even for wider energy needs, like in the power industry. By and large, this shall be carried out with the precept that these shall be utilized in an environmentally friendly way; and setting on one hand, the prime concern of enhancing the country’s level of energy self-sufficiency.

Through an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology, which is conscientiously becoming a buzzword in next-generation energy undertakings, US firm Headwaters Technology Innovation, Inc., offers this application for the more advanced stage of production of the so-called synthetic liquid fuels (such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, liquefied petroleum gas and petrochemical products) that shall be extracted out from coal resource.

The coal-based oil products are technically referred to as synthetic gases because producing them involves a chemical process called ‘gasification’; done by heating coal with steam and the result would be a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen – or gas. The atoms making up coal are broken down into simpler molecules – and the result would be liquid fuels, as ultra-clean as they can get.

The upside of this process, according to Dr. Theo L. K. Lee, vice president and chief technology officer of Hydrocarbon Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Headwaters for its China operations, is that by turning coal into gas, the impurities in coal– like sulfur, nitrogen and other trace elements, can be almost entirely filtered out in the conversion process; thus, avoiding the phenomenon where pollutants are spewed out into the air, contrary to what normally occurs in conventional method of coal combustion.

The hot combustion gases or the so-called ‘waste heat’, tied to the over-all conversion process, he further explained, can also be used to spin a gas turbine to generate electricity.

The scientific approach of converting coal into syngases (synthetic gases) has been a long-proven experiment that was originally undertaken via the so-called Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (to give credit to its pioneers) for a coal-to-oil demonstration plant in the 1940s; until such time that evolution of technology came into fore. Project proponents said the Fischer-Tropsch method would also be initially adopted in the proposed hybrid coal liquefaction plant, to serve as the first phase of the integrated coal-to-gasoline facility in the country. (With the permission of Myrna M. Velasco).