US lawmakers tell Defense Department to stop buying tar sand and coal-to-liquid fuels, as EISA Act is implemented

In Washington, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)., and Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) have called on the Department of Defense to comply with section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act by discontinuing purchase of fuel made from Canadian tar sands or US coal-to-liquid technology. The two sources of fuel are prohibited under the Act because of environmental impacts.

UOP, a division of Honeywell, announced last June that it expected to develop military aviation jet fuel, using a synthetic biocrude made from algae. The UOP project is backed by $6.7 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The program is currently outlined in a recently issued broad agency announcement and is known as The BioFuels program. The goal of the BioFuels program is to develop an affordable alternative production process that will achieve a 60 percent or greater conversion efficiency, by energy content, of crop oil to military aviation fuel (JP-8) and elucidate a path to 90 percent conversions.

DARPA seeks processes that use limited sources of external energy, that are adaptable to a range or blend of feedstock crop oils, and that produce process by-products that have ancillary manufacturing or industrial value.

Current biodiesel fuels are 25 percent lower in energy density than JP-8 and exhibit unacceptable cold- flow features at the lower extreme of the required JP-8 operating temperature range (minus 50 degrees F).

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