Catalyst can convert natural gas into gasoline - firm
Carbon Sciences, the developer of a technology to make gasoline and other fuels from natural gas and carbon dioxide, has confirmed that recent commercial tests prove the value of the company’s natural gas to gasoline technology.
“Our breakthrough catalyst continues to set new records. During our current run of tests in a commercial facility, we are experiencing conversion efficiency rates that are better than what we observed in the laboratory,” said Byron Elton, Carbon Sciences’ CEO.
Carbon Sciences' catalyst technology transforms natural gas and carbon dioxide into a synthesis gas (syngas), which can then be transformed into gasoline and other fuels using conventional Fischer-Tropsch gas-to-liquids technology. Of the various methods used to produce syngas from natural gas, dry reforming using carbon dioxide is the most desired approach, due to lower projected capital and operating costs. Until now, there has been no commercial catalyst robust enough to sustain dry reforming reactions on an industrial scale. Carbon Sciences says its technical team has solved the problem.
Carbon Sciences' catalyst is robust and has been proven to work continuously at high conversion efficiency during more than 2,000 hours of laboratory testing and more than 1,000 hours of commercial testing, even without regeneration. Based on these results, the company’s management believes its catalyst is the most robust catalyst available today for dry forming of methane.
The Fischer-Tropsch (FT) gas-to-liquids process, developed in Germany in the 1920s, has been a promising way to produce liquid transportation fuels without using petroleum. However, the lack of a low cost method to make syngas has been the biggest challenge to unlocking the mass scale potential of FT technology. Carbon Sciences’ dry reforming technology, which uses carbon dioxide as part of the feed and does not require the use of a capital-intensive air separation unit, has the potential to successfully enable FT technology and change the course of the transportation fuels industry.
Comments