Global energy and gasi- fication technology company Synthesis Energy Systems (SES) has announced that it has entered into a technical study agree- ment with Australian coal giant Ambre Energy to supply a proprietary gasification design, which will support Ambre Energy’s development of a planned coal-to-liquids (CTL) project.

Ambre Energy intends to integrate this technical study with its engineering work on the project, known as the ambreCTL project, which it is developing in Queensland, Australia.

When completed, the ambreCTL project will pro- duce about 18 000 bbl/d of petrol and about 40-million gallons of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) yearly.

SES’s U-Gas gasification technology is intended to con- vert about four-million tons of low-rank, high-ash coal into synthetic gas for the subsequent production of petrol and LPG yearly.

In a coal test run under- taken in December last year, at SES’s commercial coal gasification project in the Shandong province of China, SES achieved more than 98% carbon conversion with Ambre Energy’s low-rank Australian coal, which will be used in the ambreCTL project.

SES president and CEO Robert Rigdon says the company is pleased to have entered into the agreement with Ambre Energy, which has identified SES’s U-Gas platform as an ideal technology solution for its ambreCTL facility.

“To support Ambre’s project development, we will begin with the technical study based on our gasification technology that will be incorporated into Ambre’s overall project development. “We look forward to completing this study, which is an important milestone towards completing our licence agreement with ambreCTL,” he says.

Ambre Energy CEO Edek Choros adds that the company has worked with SES for about a year and has found its gasification technology to be a perfect fit for converting its coal assets into high-value products.

“SES’s recent progress in China and India in building strategic business partner- ships gives us confidence in the value they bring. This technical study is an important step towards securing the technology licence and moving forward with our project in Australia, which will allow us to bring the required clean, low-cost, coal-based fuels to the region,” says Choros.