Tulsa, Okla., Buses Use New Cleaner-Burning Diesel Fuel
Aug. 24–The next time a Tulsa city bus passes by, look for the puffs of black smoke jetting out of the tailpipe.
There may not be any.
Over the next year, one of the city’s 56 large buses will be running on a special type of diesel fuel that burns much cleaner than conventional diesel. The fuel is special because it’s made from natural gas, not oil.
Made by Tulsa-based Syntroleum Corp., the fuel is being billed as a great way to improve air quality and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
“This is the future,” said U.S. Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla. “We need to embrace it with all we’ve got.”
The biodegradable, nontoxic liquid fuel is as clear as tap water and is being tested in Tulsa and Alabama under a program funded by the Department of Transportation. Syntroleum kicked off the program Tuesday morning with an announcement at River Parks near 21st Street and Riverside Drive.
Syntroleum, which has a patented process for converting natural gas into liquid fuel, hopes to demonstrate the fuel’s ability to lower emissions and improve efficiency.
“It’s very compatible with existing infrastructure,” said Syntroleum Chairman Kenneth Agee. “We didn’t have to modify the bus in any way to run this fuel.”
About 18,000 gallons of Syntroleum’s synthetic diesel — enough to fuel a single bus for about a year — will be provided to the Metropolitan Tulsa Transit Authority at no cost.
“It’s going to save us about $20,000 in fuel,” said Tulsa Transit General Manager Bill Cartwright.
The fuel was produced at Syntroleum’s gas-to-liquids pilot plant at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa.
“We’ve already tested the fuel in one of our transit buses and the performance was excellent,” Cartwright said.
On the back of the bus that will run on the cleaner-burning diesel, there is an arrow pointing to the tailpipe.
“We want you to notice that when you burn this fuel, there’s no black smoke coming out of the tailpipe,” Agee said. “We’re very proud of that.”
Because of record high oil prices, the special diesel fuel could be sold at the pump at competitive prices, Agee said. The higher oil prices rise, the more attractive the Syntroleum process becomes.
The problem is there are no commercial-grade plants to produce the fuel. In addition, the process requires low-priced natural gas to compete with oil. That means any commercial plant must be built abroad where gas is much cheaper.
Syntroleum and others are making progress on plans to build GTL plants in other countries.
Most of the world’s gas reserves are in remote areas where there are no pipelines to ship the gas to market. In many parts of the world, the gas is discarded — burned off in a process known as flaring.
Using the Syntroleum process, producers could convert that gas into a marketable product such as diesel fuel.
The Syntroleum process also can be applied to coal, an abundant domestic source of energy. The cost of producing liquid fuel from coal is now competitive with the cost of refining it from oil because of higher oil prices and new incentives for coal gasification plants, Syntroleum said.
The Department of Energy helped fund the construction of Syntroleum’s plant at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa.
The plant was built to test the production and use of synthetic fuel made from natural gas. The fuel has already been tested in city buses in Washington, D.C., and in vehicles at Alaska’s Denali National Park.
Those test results were successful, said William Lawson, director of the DOE’s Strategic Center for Natural Gas and Oil.
“Syntroleum is bringing exciting technology to convert stranded gas into clean, transportable distillate fuels,” Lawson said. “It further diversifies potential sources of transportation fuel by converting uneconomical, remote gas resources into valuable fuel.”
Synthetic fuels made from the Syntroleum process contain virtually no sulfur.
Syntroleum was founded in 1984 on a concept that would be successful under high oil prices.
“The company was born right here in Tulsa in a little shed in my backyard, where I began developing the technology more than 20 years ago,” Agee said. “The time to showcase our ultra-clean fuel is now.”
If oil prices continue to rise, as many analysts expect, the appeal of Syntroleum’s process is expected to grow.
“Syntroleum is a great success story,” Sullivan said. “I think Syntroleum’s best days are yet to come.”
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