New Process Development of Natural Gas into Liquid Fuels

Japan National Oil Corporation (JNOC) has been tackling the technical research and development of natural gas conversion technology since FY1998 in collaboration with five Japanese private companies in order to aim at establishing the option technology to explore stranded gas reserves. The Syngas section of JNOC's GTL process applies the steam/CO2 reforming and the FT section employs the slurry reactor with Ru- or Co- catalysts. JNOC's GTL process is capable of utilizing CO2 contained in the natural gas and does not require any O2 supply. Namely, the characteristics of JNOC's GTL process in contrast to those of the existing ones using ATR or POX are (1) no use of the O2 plant, (2) no use of the CO2 separation unit, and (3) no use of the H2 conditioning unit. Such facility savings will bring about a remarkable reduction of the plant cost for its election and operation. The optimal condition for JNOC's GTL will meet the plant scale of 15,000 bbl/d and the case of CO2 content being 20-40% in the natural gas. The economic evaluation does indicate that JNOC's GTL process is more economical than the conventional ones when applied under those conditions mentioned above.