Local scientist

hopes to blaze

new trail

with cleaner coal
By Frank Ruggiero
frank@mountaintimes.com

It’s dark, but it’s light; it’s cool, yet hot; and from one come two.

These seemingly contradictory phrases describe a substance that could revolutionize coal energy – “carbonite.”

A name literally out of science fiction, as “Star Wars” fans might observe, the real deal is far from its fantastical counterpart, in that chemist Dick Wolfe has created a substance that burns hotter than coal, yields considerably less pollutants and the byproducts from which could serve as a viable – and cheaper – alternative to conventional gasoline.

Wolfe, who heads Wolfe Engineering and Consultants in Banner Elk, where he also owns and operates a winery, is seeking a patent for the product and the process, which involves the combination of coal with a secret catalyst heated at high temperatures.

The result is a black, lightweight substance that resembles volcanic rock – carbonite, a name Wolfe plans to trademark.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Wolfe, who holds a doctorate in nuclear engineering, and his engineers successfully converted more than 350 pounds of coal into carbonite, in the process yielding methane gas and coal liquids.

The carbonite, he said, is a super-clean coal product that can be used in electric power generation, production of steel, home heating and a less expensive alternative for mercury removal.

Its byproducts are just as valuable. Every ton of coal processed into carbonite yields a barrel of coal liquids, which oil refinery companies can use to produce high octane gasoline, Wolfe said. The methane gas produced can be recycled as fuel for the carbonite-making process, and excess gas can be used in co-generation of electricity, he said.

“Carbonite is coal converted to a completely new form,” Wolfe said.

“We extract and melt coal in the process. As it enters the plastic stage, it devolatizes the liquids to become a solid state and agglomerates into a solid. It’s cleaner than coal, and it has more heat value than the coal itself, and then you get a barrel of coal liquids as a byproduct.”

Wolfe believes this could prove valuable for electricity providers nationwide.

“Say Duke Power uses over 1 million tons (of coal) a year,” Wolfe said.

“If they used carbonite, we’d recover a million barrels of coal liquids that can be used for transportation needs. And in this country, we’re using over a billion tons of coal a year. We could recover a billion barrels of oil a year from coal and still have electricity.”

Wolfe described the economics of the process as “phenomenal,” and he is currently in talks with investors to build the first commercial carbonite plant, which he estimated would cost between $30 million and $40 million.

Coal call
In June, Wolfe tested the public waters with a presentation on the carbonite process at the Virginia Center for Coal Energy Research at Virginia Tech (VT), where he elaborated on the concept and his methods for the pre-combustion cleaning of coal.

“I think this particular project has a lot of potential,” said Dr. Mike Karmas, director of the VT energy center.

“I know (Wolfe) is trying to further investigate and validate, because in this business, you have to validate the technologies, and the cost has to be right. It has to make sense both technologically and economically.”

Karmas explained that all new technologies are subject to global price. For instance, if the price of oil dropped to $20 a barrel, alternative fuels might not be a cost-effective option.

“So, one has to look at the short-term, as well as the long-term, economics of that,” Karmas said.

Wolfe is no stranger to either, having worked as a researcher in the Department of Energy (DOE) under the Carter administration.

More specifically, he conducted research for the United Synthetic Fuels Corporation, the creation of which was part of President Carter’s energy plan. There, Wolfe and his colleagues worked on creating fuels from coal, oil shale, tar sands and biomass.

In 1979, Wolfe left the DOE to join the United Coal Company as vice president of research and development. He and his team started building the first coal-to-gasoline plant in the early 1980s, using coal gasification technology, which converts coal into a gas, and then reforms the gas into gasoline.

In 1989, Wolfe purchased the R&D division as an independent laboratory and established the Coal Technology Corporation (CTC) to continue research, also under contract from the DOE. There, he developed two patents on technology that would convert coal into transportation fuels, like diesel and gasoline.

“I made the first barrel of coal gasoline in the nation,” Wolfe said.

CTC tested the fuel on its own coal trucks, and Wolfe said they ran beautifully on the new fuel, which was composed of 10 percent coal-derived methanol and gasoline. CTC built a refinery in Bristol, Va., refining crude oil and making coal liquids to blend the two together.

The result was a fuel priced at around $1.40 a gallon, competitive with conventional gasoline at the time, and in 1990, CTC established 15 gas stations throughout Virginia.

When the first Iraq War ended, the price of crude oil dropped to less than $16 a barrel, making CTC’s alternative the pricier of the two.

“I couldn’t be competitive,” Wolfe said. “I had to shut down because of the price.”

Nearly two decades later, Wolfe has found competition that a $1.40 gallon can beat. “Now I’m bringing it back,” he said. “We’ve improved it over the last 18 years, I continued to work on it, and now the price (of gas) has risen to where it’s affordable again.”

Cost and effect
Dominion Power consultant Herbert Wheary, who retired from the corporation’s public communications department two years ago, is hopeful carbonite’s testing will prove beneficial.

“Carbonite is something the energy industry is very interested in,” he said. “…If it proves to be what we hope, it would be a more cost-effective means of removing mercury from coal gas than possibly other types of compounds, such as activated carbon.”

Wheary said carbonite, if testing proves successful, could be integrated into other coal-using activities. For instance, a carbonite production plant could be built alongside a power station, meaning the product could be created on site and used for mercury removal from fuel gas.

In his opinion as a chemist, Wheary said, “I would think there’d be certain efficiencies and reuse of energy, maximizing the efficiency and maximizing product energy if you have two processes going together, cogeneration and carbonite – if it proves to be successful.”

If such is the case, Wheary said companies like Dominion would be interested in the product, since it offers benefits on several different levels – cost-effective mercury removal, lower bills for consumers, and a significantly smaller carbon footprint.

“The product not only helps address energy dependence,” Wheary said, “but it’s more cost-effective than other means of capturing mercury, and then we’ve got a way of improving the environment and keeping the cost down, and it’s derived from a domestic-energy source.”

Though carbonite may be cleaner burning than regular coal, Benji Burrell, technologist with environmental advocacy group Appalachian Voices, said the organization is not concerned with how the coal is burned, but rather the methods of mining.

“If it’s mined using mountaintop removal coal-mining methods, then it’s not clean,” he said.

The process involves literally exploding mountaintops and ridges to access coal seams in mountains. The debris is then deposited into neighboring valleys, which affects neighboring communities, Burrell explained, by burying water streams and affecting water supplies.

Less environmentally straining methods of coal-mining exist, and since the carbonite process removes 100 percent of mercury, 50 percent of sulfur and 25 percent of carbon dioxide from the coal, Wolfe said he is confident of a significantly reduced carbon footprint.

Such effects remain in the future, while carbonite remains in the laboratory. Wolfe said colleagues at West Virginia University are presently conducting tests on the material, while he meets with legislators and potential investors.

In late July, Wolfe met with N.C. Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, as well as the staff of Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) in Washington, D.C.

“There’s a lot of interest in this technology,” Wolfe said.

“Coal makes up 50 percent of our energy in this country. We need coal, but we need coal to be used cleanly.”