Posted on 03/11/2013 11:02:28 AM PDT by thackney
America is awash in natural gas, thanks to the controversial practice of fracking.
Now a San Francisco startup company, Siluria Technologies, has a new way to turn that gas into chemicals, jet fuel and gasoline.
The ability to make liquid fuels from natural gas has existed since the 1920s. But up to now it hasn’t been cheap, requiring high heat and pressure to work. Siluria’s technology needs less heat and less energy — and therefore costs less. The company is gearing up to build its first demonstration plant. And it has hired a new chief executive officer with deep experience in the chemical industry to guide Siluria out of the lab and into the marketplace.
“There’s going to be this long period of time when we have this excess gas,” said Edward Dineen, the new CEO. “If you believe that, and I do, then having technologies that give you better options for that gas would make sense.”
Dineen most recently served as CEO of LS9, a renewable fuel and chemical company in South San Francisco. He also held executive positions at LyondellBasell Industries and Arco Chemical Co. Siluria has raised $66 million in venture capital to date, from such investors as Bright Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Lux Capital.
Siluria is looking to capitalize on America’s natural gas boom. The process of hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, has unlocked large gas deposits trapped in shale rock beneath Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other states. Natural gas prices have plunged as a result.
Companies are now trying to build export terminals that could ship the gas abroad in liquid form. But until those terminals materialize, prices will likely stay low.
Enter Siluria.
The company was founded in 2008, spun out of another called Cambrios Technologies Corp. Its 40 employees now operate out of an office in Mission Bay, near UC San Francisco’s hive of medical research.
Siluria’s conversion technology uses chemical catalysts picked by a screening system that can test hundreds of potential catalysts each week. Through a process known as oxidative coupling of methane, the catalysts help combine methane molecules into ethylene. The ethylene molecules can then be strung together in chains to produce gasoline, jet fuel or polymers.
The most common process for making liquid fuels from natural gas or coal, a process known as Fischer-Tropsch, needs temperatures on the order of 600 degrees Fahrenheit. Dineen won’t specify the temperature needed for Siluria’s process, but says it is far lower. It is also less complex, requiring less-specialized equipment.
As a result, Siluria may turn natural gas into a direct competitor with oil. The startup’s process may be able to make chemicals and fuels at a cost competitive with — or lower than — the cost of similar products made from crude. The company plans to open a demonstration plant next year, although it has not yet announced a location.
“The key challenge for us now is scaling up,” Dineen said. “This is certainly a technology that has global applications.”
This makes as much sense as turning Hostess Fruit Pies into Hostess Twinkies.
Rig your engine to burn natgas and move on.
You appear to get a lot of your exercise jumping to conclusions. Please point to anywhere I’ve said I believe carbon emissions are a major problem.
I agree with you. In fact an engine can be setup to run on either ‘natgas’ or gasoline, or diesel.
It would be a better use of capital to invent a type of pump you could deploy at a ‘gas’ station, that would dispense natural gas almost the same way you can get gasoline or diesel.
Set the pump up next to the others, and then provide a paid up license for the IP to all the car manufacturers that would allow for the connection of the new pump to a new nipple. You click the new hose fitting into the nipple, which seals around it, and then squeeze the handle like you would for gas.
Once the natgas tank is full, the pump shuts off automatically and processes the receipt - no ability to top off.
The company makes money selling the pumps to the gas station owners. It wouldn’t be long before the oil companies either bought nat gas interests, or a bunch of independent gas stations started popping up once you put the gallon price of nat gas (about $2.20) next to the price of gasoline ($4.00).
You cut the balls off of any politician that makes a move to tax it, and then every environmentalists wet dream comes to pass - cars running on cleaner fuel - only this time the average joe wins too when their commuting bill gets cut in half.
You’d also see the price of a gallon of gas drop through the floor.
The states would start screaming about their tax revenue losses, of course, never once wondering where all the extra retail sales tax revenue was coming from.
Gas taxes and cell phone taxes are the biggest scams going. Anybody that says government can do good things for people only have to have their noses rubbed in what could only be called bald-faced consumer fraud style taxation on their cell phones.
In fact, I’m shocked that gas stations never went to putting the retail price of gas up on their boards, followed by the tax price per gallon right underneath it. No law saying they can’t, they just don’t.
I have, but if you want granny to be able to fill her little car at a ‘gas’ station, the natgas pumps have to be as easy and safe to use as gasoline pumps.
The ones they use today require gloves, present a freezing hazard, and other issues.
No discussion there. Absolutely. It would have to be dummy proof.
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