Carbon Sciences touts new gas-to-liquids process
Carbon Sciences Inc. announced a breakthrough technology to their gas-to-liquids (GTL) process that yields liquid transportation fuels from natural gas and carbon dioxide (CO2).
Byron Elton, CEO of Carbon Sciences, said: "The days of cheap, easy oil have passed, and the era of natural gas is upon us. We recently attended the annual GTL conference in London to meet with industry colleagues and congratulate Shell on its history making GTL success.
“The consensus at the conference was that oil prices will remain strong and natural gas prices are expected to remain low, leading to a lucrative future for gas to liquids technology,” Elton continued. “Forecasts show that total recoverable global natural gas resources will last over 250 years.
“Shell, Sasol and others in our industry have proven the economics of GTL technology that will free us from crude oil by tapping into the vast reserves of natural gas to power the needs of the world."
A typical GTL plant consists of three core components: 1) syngas generation that converts natural gas into syngas, 2) Fischer-Tropsch (FT) processing that converts syngas into hydrocarbons and 3) liquid fuels upgrading that converts hydrocarbons to liquid fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
It is generally accepted in the industry that the syngas portion of a GTL plant is the most expensive.
Carbon Sciences' proprietary catalyst technology is aimed at reducing the cost of syngas production by eliminating the expensive requirements for oxygen and steam.
Instead, the company's syngas technology uses freely available CO2 to react with natural gas. To provide a complete GTL technology solution, Carbon Sciences says it will integrate its proprietary syngas technology with FT technology and liquid-fuels upgrading technology licensed from other companies to deliver an end-to-end GTL plant design.
This complete solution will be available for licensing to the natural gas industry for use in small-to-medium size GTL plants. Carbon Sciences will begin the commercial process by offering pre-feasibility and feasibility study services.
"We are very excited about our expanded business plan and we look forward to delivering value directly to the owners of natural gas resources," said Mr. Elton. "While we believe our unique syngas technology will ultimately benefit world-scale GTL plants, such as Shell's Pearl GTL, our initial target market is small to medium size gas fields.
“This focus will allow us to address a market ignored by the big players with billion dollar budgets."
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