summaryandoverview.docVIP

Summary and Overview Organized by Alex Green, University of Florida; Evan Hughes, EPRI and Rafael Kandiyoti, IC-UK University of Florida Conference Center, Gainesville, FL. February 5th and 6th, 2003 Purpose of the specialty conference on Co-utilization of Domestic Fuels (CDF) CDF affords near term opportunities to mitigate significant energy, environmental and economic (EEE) problems of many nations. The purpose of the CDF conference was to examine in depth the EEE benefits of blending available domestic fuels {coal, natural gas, biomass (wood, agricultural residues, MSW, bio-solids, etc.)} and other domestic opportunity fuels in eco-friendly thermo-chemical reactors for electrical generation, waste disposal and for production of gaseous fuels, liquid fuels and chemicals. This first of its kind specialty conference avoided topics not relevant to CDF or covered by mainline professional societies or conferences. Scientists, engineers and economists, who have examined fuel co-utilization, presented their results with the goals of developing and publishing an EEE road map for thermal CDF that will help consolidate recent CDF advances and guide future world wide CDF efforts. We hoped to build CDF-EEE bridges between the fuel sectors, academia and industry, engineering and agriculture, environmentalists and energy suppliers and between all nations. The CDF conference was organized in response to national and worldwide concerns about environmental problems, particularly greenhouse gas emissions; energy problems, particularly over-dependence on imported petroleum and related economic problems such as trade deficits due to energy imports. Since heavy use of petroleum together with the shortage of domestic petroleum pose major immediate EEE problem to the United States and many other countries the conference focused on research and development of technologies for using combinations of the alternate fuels: coal, natural gas, and biomass. Most of the CDF confe