2002—Emergence of the Gas-to-Liquids Industry:a Review of Global GTL Developments

This paper reviews the status of the gas-to-liquids (GTL) industry-including current commercial plants, announced projects and the technologies that are likely to be implemented in these future projects. Today, only 35,000 B/D of GTL products (0.1% of market) are manufactured from commercial gas-based plants. Advances in technology have lowered the cost of plants to the point where GTL plants can be profitable at crude oil prices of ＄16/B. The advanced stage of development of several proposed GTL projects and attractive integrated economics, for both the gas field and plant, show that GTL can be a significant alternative for monetizing natural gas in the 21st century. GTL technologies includes more than Fischer-Tropsch technology and extends to other liquid fuels, especially in the oxygenate family (methanol, dimethyl ether, etc.).

Influence of the Feed Gas Composition on the Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis in Commercial Operations

Key technical challenges relating to the Fischer-Tropsch （F-T） synthesis applied in the commercialization of coal/gas-to-liquids （CTL/GTL） technologies have been reviewed. Based on the experiences accumulated from pilot plant, semi-work test and lab researches, the influences of the H2/CO ratio and the CO2 in the feed gas on the F-T process as well as on CTL/GTL complex in terms of product yields, energy efficiency and carbon utilization efficiency have been studied. Being contrary to the current design schemes for F-T process using the coal derived syngas and the iron-based cata lyst, it is suggested to feed the F-T synthesis unit with a syngas having a H2/CO ratio of 0.5 and then adjusting to 1.4 via the recycling process. As a result, the carbon efficiency of the whole plant could be reached to as high as 50%. For the issue of CO2 addition to the feed gas, it is proved that only a diluting role is played under the current commercial slurry phase F-T process.

Industrial Feasiblity of Direct Methane Conversion to Hydrocarbons over Fe-Based Fischer Tropsch Catalyst

Recently, as a direct consequence of the dwindling world oil reserves and the growing awareness of the environmental problems associated with the use of coal as energy source, there is growing interest in cheaper, abundant and cleaner burning methane. The Gas-to-Liquid technology offers perhaps the most attractive routes for the exploitation of the world huge and growing natural gas resources. Using this process the erstwhile stranded gas is converted to premium grade liquid fuels and chemicals that are easily transported. However, a widespread application of the GTL process is being hampered by economical and technical challenges. The high cost of synthesis gas, for instance, weighs heavily on the economics and competitiveness of the process limiting its wider application. This work presented a modified Gas-to-Liquid process that eliminates the costly synthesis gas production step. The proposed process utilized an alternative pathway for methane activation via the production of chloromethane derivatives which are then converted to hydrocarbons. It established that hydrocarbons mainly olefins can be economically produced from di- and tri-chloro- methanes over a typical iron-based Fischer Tropsch catalysts in a moving bed reactor at industrially relevant conditions. Some of the attractions of the proposed process include a) the elimination of the costly air separation plant requirement b) high process selectivity and c) significant reduction of carbon dioxide emissions thereby saving on feedstock loss and the costly CO2 removal and isolation processes.

Life-cycle analysis of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of gas-to-liquid fuel pathway from steel mill off-gas in China by the LanzaTech process

The LanzaTech process can convert carbon monoxide-containing gases produced by industries, such as steel manufacturing, into valuable fuel products. The life-cycle analysis （LCA） of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from the LanzaTech process has been developed for a Chinese setting using the original Tsinghua China Automotive LCA model along with a customized module developed principally for the process. The LCA results demonstrate that LanzaTech gas-to-liquid （GTL） processing in China＇s steel manufacturing is favorable in terms of life-cycle fossil energy and can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 50% compared with the conventional petroleum gasoline. The LanzaTech process, therefore, shows advantages in both energy-savings and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when compared with most bio-ethanol production pathways in China.