High Value Liquid Fuels from Natural Gas via Process Intensified Novel Pressurized Redox Process
- Bio2Electric, LLC
With the abundance of natural gas and its primary components of methane, ethane and propane, there is the opportunity to convert these light alkanes to higher-value products. The growth in natural gas supply in the U.S. has increased substantially since the mid-2000s due to advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. As petroleum prices are volatile, natural gas resources are progressively attractive as alternative fuel sources. However, many of these shale gas wells are in regions of the U.S. that are remote and costly to transport to petrochemical and refining centers. While gas pipelines continue to be an option for transportation from the field, they are capital intensive and compete for existing land use. This Phase I project further developed a process to convert the largest component of shale gas, methane, to a transportable liquid fuel. The focus will be to intensify the process compared to well know technologies, like Fisher-Tropsch synthesis, and use a high pressure oxidative coupling reactor. While oxidative coupling of methane has been explored since the early 1980s, commercially viable yields have not been obtained. EcoCatalytic has discovered a new class of materials that convert methane to olefins at commercially viable high single pass yields. The 3 chemical looping reactor concept to be employed is analogous to well-known fluid catalytic cracking reactors. The project expands on the fundamental knowledge of this new conversion system and use this knowledge to conduct process design and economics. This project demonstrates a process that can economically provide a transportable liquid fuel in remote areas.
- Research Organization:
- Bio2electric, LLC, Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0018538
- OSTI ID:
- 1491624
- Type / Phase:
- SBIR (Phase I)
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-Bio2Electric-18538
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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