Development of coal-based technologies for Department of Defense Facilities. Semiannual technical progress report, September 28, 1996--March 27, 1997

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), through an Interagency Agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), has initiated a three-phase program with the Consortium for Coal-Water Slurry Fuel Technology, with the aim of developing technologies which can potentially decrease DOD`s reliance on imported oil by increasing its use of coal. The program is being conducted as a cooperative agreement between the Consortium and DOE. Work in Phase II focused on emissions reductions, coal beneficiation/preparation studies, and economic analyses of coal use. Work in Phase III focused on coal preparation studies, pilot-scale NO{sub x} reduction studies, economic analyses of coal use, and evaluation of deeply-cleaned coal as boiler fuel. Coal preparation studies were focused on continuing activities on particle size control, physical separations, surface-based separation processes, and dry processing. Preliminary pilot-scale NO{sub x} reduction catalyst tests were conducted when firing natural gas in Penn State`s down-fired combustor. This is the first step in the scale-up of bench-scale results obtained in Phase II to the demonstration boiler scale when firing coal. The economic study focused on community sensitivity to coal usage, regional/national economic impacts of new coal utilization technologies, and constructing a national energy portfolio. The evaluation of deeply-cleaned coal as boiler fuel included installing a ribbon mixer into Penn State`s micronized coal-water mixture circuit for reentraining filter cake. In addition, three cleaned coals were received from CQ Inc. and three cleaned coals were received from Cyprus-Amax