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Article: A new route from natural gas to liquid fuels.
- Article from:
- Chemical Engineering
- Article date:
- June 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Access Intelligence, LLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Researchers at Texas A&M University (College Station, Tex.; tamu.edu) are starting up a pilot plant that will convert 100,000 [ft.sup.3]/d of natural gas into about 10 bbl/d of liquid hydrocarbons, without producing an intermediate synthetic gas. Since the process avoids the gas-reforming step, it promises to be less expensive than the Fischer-Tropsch route to liquid fuels, says Kenneth Hall, a professor of chemical engineering. He estimates that the process could produce liquids for $12-15/bbl from remote natural gas costing $0.50/1,000 [ft.sup.3].
The gas feed is pretreated to remove most of the [C.sub.4]+ hydrocarbon liquids, carbon dioxide and hydrogen ...