Scientists develop more efficient natural gas-to-fuels process

Discovery could utilize ample U.S. natural gas, displace oil products

BY REUTERS

U.S. scientists says they have devised a potentially easier, cheaper and cleaner way to turn natural gas into usable fuels and chemicals — a discovery which could lead to natural gas products displacing oil products in the future.

The process would be less complex than conventional methods to turn natural gas into liquid products and it uses much lower heat and inexpensive materials to get the job done, they say.

Almost anything — fuel or chemical — that can be made from petroleum also can be made from natural gas, but it is not done today because the cost of converting natural gas into those materials is much higher, the researchers say.

"Current technologies to convert natural gas into fuels or commodity chemicals are too expensive to compete with products generated from petroleum," says Roy Periana, director of the Scripps Energy and Materials Center at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida who led the study published in the journal Science.

The United States stands as the world's No. 1 natural gas producer, topping even Russia.

"The U.S. has a glut of natural gas, and there are not that many ways to efficiently use it," says Brigham Young University's Daniel Ess, another of the researchers.

Methane, ethane and propane are the primary components in natural gas. They are members of a class of molecules known as alkanes. But turning alkanes into other useful forms like gasoline and diesel fuel, alcohols or olefins can be costly and inefficient with current technologies.

Breaking bonds

Alkanes are made up of carbon and hydrogen atoms joined together by some of the strongest bonds known in chemistry. Converting these alkanes in natural gas requires the breaking of these bonds — no easy task.

Conventional conversion methods use very high temperatures — more than 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit (900 degrees Celsius). The method — very much like the original conversion process developed in the 1940s — remains costly, not very efficient and can lead to high emissions of pollutants, the researchers say.

These scientists say their conversion process uses much lower temperatures — about 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius) — and fewer steps. It also uses inexpensive ordinary metals like thallium and lead rather than costly precious metals like platinum, palladium, rhodium or gold, they say.

Their process could greatly reduce capital costs of future processing plants, Periana adds.

Periana says the process is not immediately ready for commercialization and that additional research is required, but that if all goes well a practical demonstration could occur within three years and a pilot plant could be in place perhaps a year after that.

The researchers have been in touch with potential corporate partners and venture capital firms about creating a separate company or a collaboration with an existing petrochemical company to commercialize the process, Periana says.

Given vast U.S. and other reserves of natural gas, the new process eventually could help change the world economy from one based on oil to one based on natural gas, Periana says.

"This would lead to a paradigm change in the petrochemical industry, increase energy security and facilitate sustainability, as natural gas is cleaner than petroleum or coal," Periana adds.

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