With the US public suddenly awakening to the fact that they have been squandering a finite natural resource with the current SUV craze, there is a huge amount of interest being generated in increase refining capacity, renewable sources of energy and the developoment of a crude oil substitute. With energy prices going to remain the same or increase, I think that Gasification Technology in combination with Fischer Tropsch synthesis will bail us out from the Mad Max scenario of 50 years hence.
Gasification can take many input feeds such as municipal waste, sewage, coal, plastics, bitumen, heavy oil, waste oils, biomass, etc. These are gasified to SynGas (H2/CO) which initially contains many impurities (metals, sulfur, oxides, chlorine etc) some impurities for a refractory (glass) that is removed from the gasifier and this refractory can be readily disposed as it encapsulates a lot of the “nasties”. The gaseous component of the product can be treated to yield pure syngas which can then be passed over Fischer Tropsch (FT) catalyst. The FT process is a gas-to-liquids process that recombines the elements present in the gas into hydrocarbons. The produced hydrocarbons can then be tailor made for the application (fuels, lubes, monomers) by cracking and/or hydroisomerization. FT is also a valuable technology as the large oil companies see it as a technology to develop their stranded gas deposits into a more readily transportable material so that these assets can be monetized.
From waste we will derive the energy required for the future. Shell, Exxon, British Petroleum, Syntroleum, and Sasol-Chevron are just a few of the companies working on GTL technology. Rentech Inc are another company working in collaboration with Texaco and Sasol (now Sasol-Chevron). Here is their statement regarding FT….GTLSite.pdf
13C NMR is the perfect way to monitor the detailed molecular chemistry of the products made by GTL processes. On-line 1H NMR or at line 13C would allow chemistry to be controlled on a timescale of minutes.
The information out there is vast from organizations such as Alaska Natural Gas Transportation and their ideas for the BP project at Nikiski. Modular designs of various process components will lead to small plants and improved product quality.
An excellent summary of the technology is found at Chemlink, Exxon, Sasol, DOE, Eltron Research, Foster Wheeler, SRI Consulting, Statoil, G-T-L, and Thailand.
GTL technology development will have fall out effects in the natural gas market – an excellent economics artive of LNG and GTL is found at EnergyPulse. A Congressional Report also investigates the GTL and natural gas markets. A great source of centralized energy news is EnergyBulletin.net which harvests many articles from around the world dealing with “peak oil” reporting. The Energy Blog is another excellent source of Energy Related Material.
The next big push will be to develop the oils shale, heavy oil and tar sand deposits that are found in Alberta, Utah, and the Orinoco Basin to name a few. These are the only deposits that can yield enough hydrocarbon for the GTL Technologies and meet energy needs for the foreseeable future. Strategically the development of these heavy resources to marketable fuels would remove the US dependence on imported oil.
