Summary

In October 2004, at its 31st ExCo-meeting, IEA/AMF decided to start a project concerning production and use of synthetic vehicle fuels produced by Fischer-Tropsch (FT) technology. The project was carried out as Task 31, with financial support from Denmark, Finland and USA. Atrax Energi AB was appointed as Operating Agent for Task 31. The work in the task was carried out in co-operation with TFK, Sweden and DTU, Denmark. The final report was delivered to Denmark, Finland and USA in June 2007. In the report the possibilities to produce synthetic gasoline and synthetic diesel oil from biomass, and also from natural gas, by FT-technology are analyzed and discussed. After an introduction of the technology as such, environmental aspects and the life cycle perspective of synthetic gasoline and diesel oil are discussed. To visualise the effect on the logistic system that a future large-scale biomass based production system will have, four different scenarios are assessed in terms of, e.g., the number of production plants needed and truck arrivals to the plant. - Denmark and Poland, with a feedstock of cultivated energy forest (Salix), - Finland from forest residues - USA from natural gas. Furthermore vehicle emission tests with synthetic gasoline carried out at DTU are described and discussed in the report. Based on the result of the analysis and the vehicle emission tests presented in the report, a first SWOT analysis of Fischer-Tropsch technology is presented, and finally some main conclusions are drawn. During the execution of the Annex the following installations were visited: Sasol in South Africa, Nykomb Synergetics in Sweden, Chemrec in Sweden, the Technical University of Denmark, VTT in Finland, the Värnamo gasification research project in Sweden, and the Black liquor gasification project in Piteå, Sweden.

Participants

• Denmark
• Finland
• USA