Conversion of Coal-Biomass into Diesel by Using Aspen Plus

Abstract

Taking the importance of Pakistan’s dire need for energy breakthrough, in this paper, we explore how the country’s vast estimated reserves of 175 billion tons of Thar coal is a useful source for the clean and efficient production of good quality liquid fuel. Coal to liquid (CTL) technology has gathered increasing attention among many countries with a sufficient volume of coal reserves, and this technology can also be implemented in Pakistan, which in result can also reduce harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the environment. In this study, the Fischer Tropsch Synthesis (FT) liquefaction method was used, and the reactor design, chemical reactions, syngas ratio fraction, and Anderson-Schulz-Flory and Langmuir model were all obtained from the Aspen Plus simulation. The results showed that, at the optimum syngas flow rate of 9 Kg/s, the FT model produced diesel fuel at 0.00134 Kg/s. Per this calculation, the massive amount of Thar coal reserves can be transformed into 123.22 million barrels of diesel. The design of the reactor is very critical, and, in this study, it was prioritized to design a reactor that produces liquid fuel only of composition C12+; during the production of liquid fuel, the quantity of methane is not high; and it can still be further reduced on optimized conditions. On the other hand, CO2 gas, which is a sole contributor of GHG emissions, was also reduced by up to 98%.