Gasoline from Natural Gas?

Tim McElwain

Cheap Gasoline from Natural Gas — Finally? 

<a href="http://click.email.globalspec.com/?qs=e397a1e16a77bcf541d7355b73ecc9531957a30c4918f9b26a5b2a1b63fe987effc21d23ea1906d2"><img src="http://www.globalspec.com/pix/Newsletter/rd_a_v14i8.jpg" width="94" height="103" alt="Cheap Gasoline from Natural Gas — Finally?" /></a><a href="http://click.email.globalspec.com/?qs=e397a1e16a77bcf514f1ad430511b9d0b88ce22257b29cd6940785394d861e320a009177a42f8a3c">[u][color=#0066cc]Oxidative coupling[/color][/u]</a> converts natural gas to ethylene. Unfortunately, stopping the reaction before the ethylene becomes carbon dioxide has eluded researchers until now. According to the MIT Technology Review, a <a href="http://click.email.globalspec.com/?qs=e397a1e16a77bcf559bca7c2482e08baac3a57e66a076f858aab90b57842167d675b653b9ec5d7cf">[u][color=#0066cc]new nanowire catalyst[/color][/u]</a> prevents the runaway reaction, and can produce large quantities of gasoline at half the cost of an oil-based product.



More from <a href="http://click.email.globalspec.com/?qs=e397a1e16a77bcf5e8786fc81157dd2ad0715f4634502d2091ea8ccfcbd35c2d5e7b04313e4612a6">[u][color=#0066cc]Oil & Gas Technology[/color][/u]</a>...

Jean-David Beyer

Cheap Gasoline from Natural Gas — Finally?

Yes, but what will they do with the cheap gasoline? I doubt they will put it in small  bottles to exhibit in science museums. My bet is that they will mostly burn it in internal combustion engines, causing even greater environmental damage and climate change than we are already doing. And we already cannot stand the flooding in out of the way places like Norfolk VA, Virginia Beach, and the droughts in other distant lands, such as the wilds of California. This is not a far-away problem for the next century. It is here now.



It seems to me that if we have too much methane (mostly from natural gas) it is better to burn it in something like a furnace or boiler than to let it escape directly into the environment. Methane is apparently 10x to 20x worse as a greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide. But do not waste the energy produced by adding the process of converting it from gas to gasoline. That just makes matters worse.

Paul48

And there they go!

Watch the natural gas prices go way up if they go forward with that.

jumper

established technology

In the seventies New Zealand had to import petroleum but it had natural gas. Several methods to replace petroleum with natural gas were studied. Most efficient was to convert gasoline engines to run on compressed NG. Next was to use LNG. Then the NG can be partially burnt to produce methanol and engines can be modified to use that fuel. Finally there's the least energy efficient way. That is to convert the methanol to gasoline. After due consideration the government chose the last scheme. With NG at sixty cents per therm and gasoline at well over two dollars per therm it probably makes economic sense to convert NG to gasoline.