Compact Modular Reactor Unit for Conversion of Shale/Natural Gas into Liquid Products | AIChE

Compact Modular Reactor Unit for Conversion of Shale/Natural Gas into Liquid Products

Authors 

Xu, B. - Presenter, Dason Technology Inc
It has large incentive to produce more clean liquid fuels from increased natural gas supply. However, current syngas and the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reactor technologies have low efficiency and high cost. Steam reforming (SMR) is widely used for syngas production. Its carbon efficiency is less than 50%. Autothermal reforming (ATR) has carbon efficiency about 70-74% but it uses pure methane only. It is very expensive to build a gas plant to separate the C2+ from methane. The temperature at the top of the ATR reactor is as high as 2200 oC, which makes the reactor fabrication and maintenance become very expensive.

Dason Technology developed a short contact time catalytic partial oxidation (SCOR) technology. With the SCOR technology, the following catalytic reactions are carried out in one reactor vessel at very short residence time (~ms):

CH4 + 0.5O2 = CO + 2H2

Dason’s SCOR reactor operates under moderate temperature and pressures, and has low cost to fabricate and operate. >90% C-atomic conversion efficiency was demonstrated for conversion of natural gas to syngas.

Molecule Works Inc. invented a compact monolith reactor technology for conversion of syngas to liquid hydrocarbons. The monolith reactor is packaged with monolithic catalyst blocks comprising a number of small, straight flow channels with active catalysts as the channel wall. The monolith structure substantially enhances gas/liquid/catalyst contacting efficiency and mass transfer rates, and provides 3-dimensional, continuous solid matrix for thermal conduction. Greater than 90% one-pass syngas conversion is achieved in a 20-cm long monolith reactor tube at <10% selectivity to methane. The monolith reactor allows the syngas conversion be conducted effectively at relatively low pressures (~10bar) and tolerates presence of CO2 and N2.

Combination of those two new reactor technologies significantly simplifies separation, reaction, and heat transfer process steps, and makes it possible to develop a compact GTL plant.