Los Angeles-Rentech Inc. said May 29 that it has signed agreements with Peabody Energy whereby Peabody will fund up to $10 million of the engineering and development costs for Rentech’s planned coal-to-liquids project at its Rentech Energy Midwest Corporation facility (“REMC”) in Illinois. Peabody has also agreed to a long-term agreement to supply the facility with nearly 1 million tons of coal annually and obtain the right to purchase a 20 percent equity interest in the project. The project is anticipated to be the first commercial coal-to-liquids facility in the United States. It entails converting the existing REMC natural gas-fed ammonia fertilizer plant into a coal-to-liquids and ammonia facility that will use clean coal gasification technology and Rentech’s patented and proprietary Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process – the Rentech Process – to produce ultra-clean transportation and aviation fuels and fertilizer. Upon the expected completion of the plant conversion by 2010, REMC is anticipated to produce at least 1,250 barrels per day, or 17.8 million gallons, of clean Fischer-Tropsch fuels annually. The facility is also projected to produce approximately 545,000 st of ammonia and other nitrogen fertilizer products per year.
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