Gasoline from coal and biomass with CCS: Performance and cost analysis

There is renewed interest globally in liquid transportation fuels from biomass and coal. There are two commercially demonstrated routes for converting solids to transportation fuels through gasification. One is the widely known Fischer-Tropsch process (FT). The other is a route through methanol to gasoline (MTG). This paper focusses on the latter. The MTG process produces primarily a finished-grade gasoline, with most of the remainder being propane and butane (LPG). Although MTG systems are much less well known than FT systems, the MTG process was operated on reformed natural gas at commercial scale in New Zealand for about a decade, and several new coal-based MTG projects are in planning, with one demonstration unit already operating in China. In this paper, different coal- or coal/biomass-to-MTG plant design configurations are presented and discussed, including some with capture and storage of byproduct CO₂. Detailed mass, energy and carbon balances are simulated, and fuel-cycle-wide GHG emissions and prospective capital and operating costs are estimated. Some designs with substantial coproduction of electric power are also investigated. Economics are presented as a function of assumed world oil price, carbon emission price, and other variables.