Bibliography - Guangjian Liu

1. Guo, Xiangbo, Guangjian Liu, and Eric Larson, 2011: High Octane Gasoline Production by Upgrading Low-Temperature Fischer-Tropsch Syncrude. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, American Chemical Society, 50, doi:10.1021/ie200041m 9743-9747
   [ Abstract ]

   Technology selection for refining the lighter fractions of syncrude produced by low-temperature Fischer-Tropsch (LTFT) synthesis into high octane motor-gasoline with no decrease in distillate production has been investigated. It was found that an upgrading scheme based on Pt/L-zeolite reforming, non-hydrogen aromatization and olefin oligomerization can produce high quality motor gasoline which can meet current gasoline specifications (Euro-4). A second scheme, which we call "full aromatization", is also evaluated on the basis of liquid yield and octane number. The full aromatization process appears to be the least complex refining scheme that provides a sufficiently high octane number, but the gasoline produced from this process may require additives to meet current motor gasoline specifications.

2. Liu, Guangjian, Eric Larson, Robert H. Williams, Thomas Kreutz, and Xiangbo Guo, 2011: Making Fischer-Tropsch Fuels and Electricity from Coal and Biomass: Performance and Cost Analysis. Energy Fuels, Published on Web 12/06/2010, (25), doi:10.1021/ef101184e 415-437
   [ Abstract ]

   Major challenges posed by crude-oil-derived transportation fuels are high current and prospective oil prices, insecurity of liquid fuel supplies, and climate change risks from the accumulation of fossil fuel CO₂ and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. One option for addressing these challenges simultaneously involves producing ultraclean synthetic fuels from coal and lignocellulosic biomass with CO₂ capture and storage. Detailed process simulations, lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions analyses, and cost analyses carried out in a comprehensive analytical framework are presented for 16 alternative system configurations that involve gasification-based coproduction of Fischer-Tropsch liquid (FTL) fuels and electricity from coal and/or biomass, with and without capture and storage of byproduct CO₂. Systematic comparisons are made to cellulosic ethanol as an alternative low GHG-emitting liquid fuel and to alternative options for decarbonizing stand-alone fossil-fuel power plants. The analysis indicates that FTL fuels are typically less costly to produce when electricity is generated as a major coproduct than when producing mainly liquid fuel. Coproduction systems that utilize a cofeed of biomass and coal and incorporate CO₂ capture and storage in the design offer attractive opportunities for decarbonizing liquid fuels and power generation simultaneously. Such coproduction systems considered as power generators can provide decarbonized electricity at lower costs than is feasible with stand-alone fossil-fuel power plant options under a wide range of conditions. At a plausible GHG emissions price under a future U.S. carbon mitigation policy ($50/t CO_2eq), such a coproduction system built at a scale suitable for competing as a power generator would be able to provide low-GHG-emitting synthetic fuels at the same estimated unit cost as for coal synfuels characterized by ten times the GHG gas emission rate that are produced in a plant with CO₂ capture and storage that does not provide electricity as a major coproduct having three times the synfuel output capacity and requiring twice the total capital investment. Moreover, the low GHG-emitting synfuels produced by such systems would be less costly to produce than cellulosic ethanol and require only half as much lignocellulosic biomass.

3. Williams, Robert H., Guangjian Liu, Thomas Kreutz, and Eric Larson, 2011: Coal and Biomass to Fuels and Power. Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 2, doi:10.1146/annurev-chembioeng-061010-114126 529-553
   [ Abstract ]

   Systems with CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) that coproduce transportation fuels and electricity from coal plus biomass can address simultaneously challenges of climate change from fossil energy and dependence on imported oil. Under a strong carbon policy, such systems can provide competitively clean low-carbon energy from secure domestic feedstocks by exploiting the negative emissions benefit of underground storage of biomass-derived CO₂, the low cost of coal, the scale economies of coal energy conversion, the inherently low cost of CO₂ capture, the thermodynamic advantages of coproduction, and expected high oil prices. Such systems requiremuch less biomass to make low-carbon fuels than do biofuels processes. The economics are especially attractive when these coproduction systems are deployed as alternatives to CCS for stand-alone fossil fuel power plants. If CCS proves to be viable as a major carbon mitigation option, the main obstacles to deployment of coproduction systems as power generators would be institutional.

4. Larson, Eric, G. Fiorese, Guangjian Liu, and Robert H. Williams, et al., 2010: Co-production of decarbonized synfuels and electricity from coal + biomass. Energy and Environmental Science, 3, doi:10.1039/b911529c 28-42
   [ Abstract ]

   Energy, carbon, and economic performances are estimated for facilities co-producing Fischer–Tropsch Liquid (FTL) fuels and electricity from a co-feed of biomass and coal in Illinois, with capture and storage of by-product CO₂. The estimates include detailed modeling of supply systems for corn stover or mixed prairie grasses (MPG) and of feedstock conversion facilities. Biomass feedstock costs in Illinois (delivered at a rate of one million tonnes per year, dry basis) are $ 3.8/GJ_HHV for corn stover and $ 7.2/GJ_HHV for MPG. Under a strong carbon mitigation policy, the economics of co-producing lowcarbon fuels and electricity from a co-feed of biomass and coal in Illinois are promising. An extrapolation to the United States of the results for Illinois suggests that nationally significant amounts of low-carbon fuels and electricity could be produced this way.

5. Liu, Guangjian, Robert H. Williams, Eric Larson, and Thomas Kreutz, 2010: Design Economics of Low-Carbon Power Generation from Natural Gas and Biomass with Synthetic Fuels Co-Production. International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Technologies (GHGT 10), Elsevier/Energy Procedia,
   [ Abstract ]

   There is growing optimism about the prospects for large natural gas reserves in shale formations. This paper explores the feasibility vis-à-vis coal power generation of a new approach for decarbonized natural gas power generation. Key features of process designs examined here are coproduction of synthetic transportation fuels with electricity and co-feeding of some biomass with natural gas in such co-production systems. Key questions addressed in the analysis of these systems are: 1) can the competitiveness of natural gas in economic dispatch be improved vis-à-vis a natural gas combined cycle, and 2) can the GHG emissions price needed to induce CCS for natural gas power generation be reduced from that required to induce CCS for NGCC. We find that gas/biomass co-production systems with CCS will be able to defend high capacity factors in economic dispatch at projected oil prices with only modest GHG emission prices. We also find that the breakeven GHG emission price needed to induce CCS for natural gas power generation is reduced considerably vis-à-vis NGCC-CCS.

6. Williams, Robert H., Guangjian Liu, Thomas Kreutz, and Eric Larson, 2010: Alternatives for Decarbonizing Existing USA Coal Power Plant Sites. International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Technologies (GHGT 10), Elsevier/Energy Procedia,
   [ Abstract ]

   A CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) retrofit strategy is compared to several repowering strategies for decarbonising existing coal power plant sites. The more promising repowering approaches analyzed seem to be a shift to natural gas via natural gas combined cycles and deployment of systems that coproduce synthetic liquid fuels plus electricity from coal and biomass with CCS. Under a wide range of plausible conditions, the latter option seems to the most promising approach for decarbonising these plant sites—exploiting simultaneously the carbon mitigation benefit of coprocessing biomass in CCS energy systems and the more general benefits offered by coproduction systems with CCS of: (i) a low CO₂ capture cost, (ii) a high efficiency of power generation, and (iii) large credit for the sale of the synfuel coproducts at current or higher oil prices.

7. Zheng, Zhong, Eric Larson, Z. Li, Guangjian Liu, and Robert H. Williams, 2010: Near-term mega-scale CO₂ capture and storage demonstration opportunities in China. Energy and Environmental Science, The Royal Society of Chemistry, 3(9), doi:10.1039/B924243K 1153-1169
   [ Abstract ]

   China is unique in the large number (nearly 400) of existing and planned projects for making ammonia, methanol, and other fuels and chemicals from coal. A natural by-product of these processes is a nearly pure CO₂ stream. Collectively, these facilities will emit (once all are operating) some 270 million tonnes of CO₂ per year. Taking advantage of the relatively low cost of capturing these CO₂ streams (as compared with capturing CO₂ from power plant flue gases), some of the 20 large-scale CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects called for by the leaders from the G8 to be deployed during the next decade might be expeditiously located in China. Our analysis identifies 18 coal-chemicals/fuels facilities, each emitting one million tonnes/year or more of CO₂, that are within 10 km of prospective deep saline aquifer CO₂ storage sites and an additional 8 facilities within 100 km. The potential CO₂ storage basins are identified based on work by others. We adapted two published cost models for CO₂ compression and transport to develop preliminary estimates of prospective costs for potential CCS projects in China. Our "N^th plant" cost estimates for the 18 projects where the CO₂ source is within 10 km of a sink, are between $9 and $13/tonne of CO₂. (The highest cost estimate among all evaluated projects was less than $21/tonne of CO₂.) The 10-year net-present value cost for projects ranged from $89 million to $1.15 billion, with more than 75% of the projects having net present value costs of $200 million or less. These relatively modest CCS costs suggest that there would be mutual value in international cooperation to support CCS demonstrations in China.

8. Larson, Eric, G. Fiorese, Guangjian Liu, Robert H. Williams, Thomas Kreutz, and S. Consonni, 2009: Co-production of decarbonized synfuels and electricity from coal + biomass with CO₂ capture and storage: an Illinois case study. Energy and Environmental Science,
   [ Abstract ]

   Energy, carbon, and economic performance are estimated for facilities co-producing Fischer- Tropsch Liquid (FTL) fuels and electricity from a co-feed of biomass and coal in Illinois, with capture and storage of by-product CO₂. The estimates include detailed models of supply systems for corn stover or mixed prairie grasses (MPG) and of feedstock conversion facilities. Biomass feedstock costs in Illinois (delivered at a rate of one million tonnes per year, dry basis) are $3.8 GJ_HHV for corn stover and $7.2/GJ_HHV for MPG. Using a strong carbon mitigation policy, the economics of co-producing low-carbon fuels and electricity from a co-feed of biomass and coal in Illinois are promising. An exploration to the United States of the results for Illinois suggests that nationally significant amounts of low-carbon fuels and electricity could be produced this way.

9. Williams, Robert H., Eric Larson, Guangjian Liu, and Thomas Kreutz, 2009: Fischer-Tropsch Fuels from Coal and Biomass: Strategic Advantages of Once-Through (‘Polygeneration’) Configurations. Energy Procedia, 1(1), doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2009.02.252 4379-4386
   [ Abstract ]

   Systems that produce synthetic liquid fuels and electricity from coal and biomass with carbon capture and storage offer an attractive cost-competitive approach for decarbonising liquid fuels and electricity simultaneously.

10. Kreutz, Thomas, Eric Larson, Guangjian Liu, and Robert H. Williams, 2008: Fischer-Tropsch Fuels from Coal and Biomass. Proceedings of the 25th Annual International Pittsburgh Coal Conference,
    [ Abstract ]

    The prospect of sustained high oil prices, the heavy dependence of the US on imports for meeting its oil needs, and Middle East turmoil have together catalyzed intense interest in secure domestic alternatives to oil for satisfying US transportation energy needs. Also, it is now highly likely that the US will soon put into place a serious carbon mitigation policy—in which the transportation sector, accounting for 1/3 of US GHG emissions from fossil fuel burning, is likely to get focused attention. The two most significant domestic supplies that might be mobilized to address these challenges are biomass and coal.
    Spurred by farm policy, biomass has long been a focus of development efforts that have focused on using food crops for making biofuels (primarily corn-based ethanol but also biodiesel derived from soybeans and canola). However, concerns about food price impacts [1] and indirect land use impacts of growing biomass for energy on croplands [2,3] have led to growing recognition that emphasis should be shifted instead to exploiting for energy mainly lignocellulosic feedstocks that don’t require use of food biomass for providing energy—such as various crop and forest residues and energy crops that can be grown on degraded lands. These options include cellulosic ethanol produced biochemically and synthetic fuels derived thermochemically via biomass gasification—so-called biomass to liquids (BTL) technologies. Renewable lignocellulosic biomass provided using modest fossil fuel inputs can be considered a nearly “carbon neutral” feedstock, since CO₂ released to the atmosphere is recycled via photosynthesis.
    Among BTL options the production of Fischer-Tropsch liquids (FTL) from biomass has been given considerable attention [4,5,6,7,8]. FTL offers as advantages over cellulosic ethanol the prospects that: (i) no significant transportation fuel infrastructure changes would be required for widespread use, (ii) the technology could plausibly come into widespread use more quickly than cellulosic ethanol, which needs considerably more development before it can be widely deployed, (iii) it can probably accommodate more easily the wide range of biomass feedstocks that are likely to characterize the lignocellulosic biomass supply - because gasification-based processes tend to more tolerant of feedstock heterogeneity than biochemical processes.
    Recent oil price increases have led to considerable interest in making synthetic fuels from coal—so called coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuels—in light of coal’s relatively low prices and the abundance of coal both in the US and in other world regions that are not politically volatile. Much of this attention has been focused on FTL [9,10,11,12]. Coal can do much to improve energy security if it is used to make FTL. Moreover, the synfuels provided would be cleaner than the crude oil products displaced (having essentially zero sulfur and other contaminants and ultralow aromatic content). Also, for FTL production via modern entrained flow gasifiers, the air pollutant emissions from the plant are extremely low. But synthetic fuels made from coal without capture and storage of by-product CO₂ result in net GHG emissions about double those from petroleum fuels. And even with CO₂ capture and storage (CCS), the net GHG emission rate would be no less than for the crude oil products displaced. This would not be an auspicious feature of CTL with CCS technology if society decides to pursue an energy future that avoids dangerous anthropogenic interference with climate—as is required by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; there is now near scientific consensus that this will require by mid-century deep reductions in GHG emissions worldwide relative to the current global GHG emission rate [13].
    One approach to this challenge is to identify negative GHG emissions opportunities that might offset the CTL emissions and emissions from other difficult-to-decarbonize energy sources. Among these are opportunities to provide FTL from biomass at strong negative GHG emission rates. A striking feature of FTL technology is that a natural part of the process is the production of a stream of pure CO₂, accounting for about ½ of the carbon in the feedstock. If this CO₂ were captured and stored via CCS for FTL derived from biomass, the biofuels produced would be characterized by strong negative GHG emissions, because of the geological storage of photosynthetic CO₂ [14]. However, sustainably-recovered biomass is expensive, and the size of the BTL facilities will be limited by the quantities of biomass that can be gathered in a single location—which implies high specific capital costs ($ per barrel/day).
    These challenges posed by the BTL-with-CCS option could be mitigated by co-processing biomass with coal in the same facility. The economies of scale inherent in coal conversion could thereby be exploited, the average feedstock cost would be lower than for a pure BTL plant, and if CCS were carried out at the facility, the negative CO₂ emissions associated with the biomass could offset the unavoidable positive emissions with coal, leading to FTLs with low, zero, or negative net emissions [15]. Since this CBTL-with-CCS idea was first introduced, there has been much government and industrial interest in the concept: (i) in 2007 an Air Force/National Energy Technology Laboratory study was released exploring the prospects that its 2016 goal for 16 alternative jet fuel supplies1 might be met via CBTL with CCS to the extent of reducing the GHG emission rate for the FTL so produced to 0.8 times the rate for the crude oil products displaced [17]; (ii) the CBTL with CCS concept got focused attention in a recent Western Governors’ Association Report on future transportation fuels [18]; (iii) the National Energy Technology Laboratory is carrying out a major study comparing a wide range of CTL, BTL, and CBTL options with and without CCS [19], and (iv) some synfuel project developers are pursing plans to incorporate biomass as a feedstock along with coal in future FTL projects—including an FTL plant with CCS being planned by Baard Energy on the Ohio River at Wellsville, Ohio, that would eventually produce 50,000 barrels per day of FTL with up to up to 30% biomass by weight [20].
    Despite the growing interest in using CCS and biomass along with coal in addressing simultaneously the energy insecurity and climate change challenges posed by fuels for transportation, there is not yet available a comprehensive analytical framework for deciding the most promising ways forward—including a systematic way of assessing: (i) BTL vs CBTL vs CTL options, (ii) the amounts of biomass that might be accommodated in CBTL systems, (iii) the appropriate scales for BTL and CBTL systems, (iv) the extent to which CO₂ capture might plausibly be pursued for all FTL systems derived from coal and/or biomass, and (v) prospective carbon policy impacts on FTL projects.
    This paper can be considered a first step toward addressing these issues. We present here a comprehensive analytical framework suitable for addressing these challenges and early results of applying this framework by making comparisons in a self-consistent manner of designs for 16 alternative CTL, BTL, and CBTL plants, with and without CCS, with regard to mass/energy/carbon balances and economics.

11. Liu, Guangjian, Eric Larson, Robert H. Williams, and J. R. Katzer, in press: Gasoline from Coal and Biomass with CSS Performance and Cost Analysis. Proceedings of the 8th Annual Carbon Capture and Sequestration Conference, Pittsburgh, PA. 0/00.

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