By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Aug. 26 -- Texas A&M University's Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), the state's engineering research agency at College Station, Tex., has announced the development of a new, patented gas-to-liquids technology for converting stranded and associated natural gas into hydrocarbon liquids.
Sponsors of the research tout its applicability in smaller-scale plants than is typically seen with current GTL technology.
The new GTL process, developed by researchers at Texas A&M University, produces a light naphtha and could be economical for gas production as small as 1 MMcfd, according to sponsors (OGJ, Mar. 12, 2001, p. 58).
Texas A&M licensed the technology to Conquest Resources Corp., which then formed Synfuels International Inc. (SFI), Dallas.
SFI built a GTL pilot plant near the Texas A&M campus where the research was conducted. S&B Engineers & Constructors Ltd., Houston, is currently conducting an economic analysis and simulation, which is expected to be completed in mid-October.
The new process is much simpler than existing technologies, SFI claims, does not require syngas, and does not use oxygen except in power generation. It differs from the conventional Fischer-Tropsch GTL process, in use since 1923, in economies of scale and production. Using the new process SFI "has the ability to construct plants that vary in size from fully portable to permanent installations. They are physically fractional in size compared with existing technology," the company said.
"This new process will allow oil companies to utilize the natural gas from remote fields," said Kenneth Hall, the TEES chemical engineer who headed up development of the new process. Hall said that using the new technology will enable petroleum companies to access many more stranded resources than is available with current technology.
"With this technology, we can build a facility as small as processing down to 3 MMscfd and volumes up to as large as a Fischer-Tropsch facility," Hall said, "although 10-50 MMscfd is what most people would have in mind." He said the first commercial unit could be available in early 2004.
The process also opens the possibility of recovering—as hydrocarbon liquids—gas from remote locations such as Alaska's North Slope.
Currently, more than 15 tcf/year of stranded natural gas is burned, vented, or reinjected because companies have no way to recover and transport the remote gas to market, TEES said. In addition, environmental regulations in many areas prevent flaring of gas, compounding the challenge of producing oil.
"With this new technology, fuel supplies will be utilized at their utmost capacity with much less wasted energy," Hall said, adding that facilities could be built on the decks of floating production, storage, and offloading vessels.
SFI Pres. Ben R. Weber Jr. said that petroleum companies can construct the plants almost anywhere because of their size and portability, even on or near remote drilling sites. As a result, oil and natural gas can be produced in areas previously considered impractical or uneconomic.
"GTL is necessary technology, considering (that) over half of the world's gas reserves are stranded," the company said.
