First American, a YHI Company, Successfully Demonstrates World’s First Clean Coal-to-Oil Process Posted on September 21, 2012 | Leave a comment Paradise Valley, Ariz — While the rest of the world was having a normal weekday Aug. 28, a small group of business, military and community leaders gathered at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, N.M. to witness one of the most significant developments in the energy and fuel-production industries of, perhaps, the century. First American International LLC unveiled a working model of the Bennett coal-to- oil conversion process, opening up a world of possibilities to environmentally safe fuel production and coal usage. Coal-to-oil is not new. Two German scientists in the 1920s first accomplished what would become widely known as the Fischer-Tropsch process. But Fischer-Tropsch, which burns coal at extreme temperatures, under very high pressures, is extremely inefficient, costly and produces an environmental catastrophe in its wake. FAI Managing Partner Dennis Yellowhorse Jones sought to eliminate at the demonstration all notions that the Bennett Process resembles Fischer-Tropsch in any other way except that they both produce oil from coal. “The most important fact you must remember … is that this is not Fischer-Tropsch,” Yellowhorse Jones told the audience, which included Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly, among other leaders. The Bennett Process is patented as of 2011 as its own distinct coal-to-oil method. Its inventor, Harold Bennett, also attended the demonstration and explained the unique way his method works. Bennett has worked on the project since he was tapped by the President Jimmy Carter’s administration in the 1970s to find a clean way to utilize coal as a wider fuel source. The Bennett Process slowly heats coal – not burning it – with steam to separate from it a thick tar that can be refined into diesel, jet and other fuels, and char, which can be burned as “smokeless” fuel in the energy industry or processed further into metallurgical coke. Gases captured during the process can be processed for used for a variety purposes, including industrial chemicals. Because of its near-100-percent efficiency, the Bennett Process produces no negative environmental impact, vastly distancing it from Fischer-Tropsch. Financial returns are also much faster, months versus years, or never, with Fischer-Tropsch. The demonstration was a success and guests saw firsthand the tar from a sample of coal pouring from a spout on the machine and the leftover char.