Maybe this year?

Jan. 7, 2014
Turning over a new year seems naturally to prompt thoughts of immediate and distant futures.

Turning over a new year seems naturally to prompt thoughts of immediate and distant futures. Those of us who have lived through several of these thresholds have watched the future become the present, the present become the past, and have not always seen hoped-for change.

When hopes and predictions disappoint, the process can be sobering, sometimes more than sobering. Maybe this year, we think, a solution will appear to that pesky problem that has seemed so intractable; maybe it will come from an unlikely direction.

Having watched technologies of all kinds evolve ever more rapidly since the end of World War II, however, has been exhilarating. That's because, for the most part, those technologies have benefited humans and their planet. Where effects have been problematic, other technologies have been developed to remedy them.

This pattern is evident in few industries as clearly as among energy industries, especially oil and natural gas. And few technologies illustrate the speed of technological evolution better than batteries.

A recent, unpublished paper circulated by Applied Analytics of Burlington, Mass., focuses not only on what may be an important step, but also one that could benefit oil and gas processing.

Li-ion vs. Li-S

Since the early 1990s, much battery technology has centered on lithium-ion (Li-ion), says the paper. Its benefits have allowed for smaller, lighter versions and generally longer life compared with early batteries. But the promise of Li-ion has failed to keep pace with demand, the paper says.

Nowhere is this shortfall more evident than in the auto industry. It has struggled to produce battery-powered automobiles with longer ranges on a single charge and power equal to gasoline and diesel. The advent of vehicles that combine battery with traditional fueling—hybrids—has proven a positive but, for many consumers, only partial answer.

The paper blames Li-ion battery's chemistry and argues the benefits of a different chemistry: lithium-sulfur (Li-S). Available space here precludes delving deeply into the chemistry of both, but suffice to say, as Applied Analytics in fact says, the "energy density of the Li-S system is higher because the reaction assimilates more Li+ ions per host atom than the carbon intercalation used in Li-ion."

Sulfur-based battery technology has been around since the 1970s, it says, but commercialization has suffered from "poor endurance and safety" concerns. Recent developments, however, have "nearly realized the goal of an Li-S battery that survives as many charge cycles as Li-ion and meets flammability regulations."

For Oil & Gas Journal's processing readers, there are some encouraging words. Li-S technology "repurposes the elemental sulfur waste product generated by refining petroleum.... If Li-S technology successfully replaces Li-ion, the battery industry will have heavy demand for sulfur."

It's not too difficult to understand the point, especially if you've watched over the last 30 years—and read about in these pages—as refiners and gas processors struggled to handle high levels of H2S in produced crude oil and natural gas. Photographs of massive piles of nearly useless elemental sulfur at locations in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin speak volumes.

Some projects' economic viability has risen or fallen on the vagaries of sulfur markets. The paper notes that prices in recent years have fluctuated "between $800/tonne and zero."

A solution

It needs pointing out that Applied Analytics is no idle bystander in this process: It provides process analyzers "to optimize the Claus process and maintain high conversion efficiency to elemental sulfur." In other words, the company has a clear interest in seeing sulfur demand rise and oil and gas processors thrive.

The analysis, therefore, must prompt us to reach for a nearby grain of salt.

OGJ's processing readers can nevertheless be somewhat encouraged that, perhaps, if not 2014 then later years will bring a solution, if not the solution, to their plants' problems caused by highly sour crude oil and natural gas.