Another technology under development that takes raw natural gas from the wellhead and converts it to liquids is being designed by Ceramatec, a research and development firm in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Last year, Ceramatec was awarded a USD 1.7 million grant by the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency to fund the development of a small-scale, membrane-catalyst reactor that can produce benzene from natural gas in a single step. Known as gas-to-chemical (GTC) technology, current systems yield only 12 parts benzene per 100 parts natural gas; Ceramatec’s aim is to more than double the conversion rate.
“We are trying to go against the nature of chemical reactions,” said Ceramatec’s principal investigator Pallavi Chitta. “That is possible only because we are combining this catalyst technology with membrane technology, wherein we can selectively remove one of the problems that is found in the reaction, which in this case is hydrogen.”
As natural gas is fed into the reactor, hydrogen is siphoned through the membrane, leaving only methane inside the reactor. As the methane passes through the catalyst, it is converted into liquid benzene.
Unlike large-scale petrochemical facilities that require oxygen to be generated through a cryogenic system to assist in the production of chemicals from natural gas, Ceramatec’s reactor design is compact enough to sit alongside the wellhead and uses no oxygen. The entire chemical process takes place inside a single reactor vessel and the hydrogen produced as a byproduct can be recycled into the system as a power source or collected as a marketable product.
Because benzene is used to make nylon and dyes, the largest purchaser of the chemical is the fabric industry. Ceramatec believes that tight supplies of oil and demand for the feedstock chemical will grow at a rate of 4% annually for the next several years.
A prototype of Ceramatec’s reactor will be completed within the next 18 months and feasibility tests will follow.
