A simulation study on economic feasibility of converting Turkish coal to liquid fuels

In this thesis, it is aimed to simulate the conversion of gasoline and diesel from Turkish coal using the ASPEN PLUS computer software and a comparison between converting Turkish coal to liquid fuel using the typical method and using the solar power had been done. The plant data is imported from a study done in Australia on a solar hybridized coal to liquid plant that has a production capacity of 1500 bbl/day. This thesis focuses on one of the richest in carbon coal in Turkey (Çatalağzı)through two different cases. The first case has processed the coal in a typical coal to liquid plant and the second case has the solar combined system as an improvement to the plant. This thesis used Çatalağzı coal proximate and ultimate analysis as an input data for both cases. The proposed coal to liquid plant has produced 1440 bbl/day of Fischer-Tropsch liquids with annual cost of $82 million while solar coal to liquid plant has produced 1502 bbl/day of FT liquids was annual cost of $80 million. The solar coal to liquid plant provided a reduction by 22% of coal feed rate. By comparing output data for both of the cases a 48% increase in total gain can be achieved by applying solar hybridized coal to liquid plant