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.”
What could go wrong?
(on the other hand, I think that a well managed nuclear facility is ok....)
hypocritical? maybe nuts?
ok, don't answer that.
I am in a wait and see mode on this one.
Waiting to see if they “need government assistance” to get this process off the ground.
If the process is viable, they will not need any government assistance.
And... I live less than a mile from an underground gasoline pipeline.
And... one of my frequent work locations is 700 feet away from that same pipeline.
Maybe I should write a book: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gas.
San Francisco, there fore eath quake prone destruction, therefore bad
Why would anyone want to change the properties of a product that is already efficient and useful in it’s natural state?
Just like a Crude Oil Refinery, it works well when kept inside the pipes.
Because it is far more valuable as liquid transportation fuel. The value per BTU is 8~10 times higher as gasoline.
Probably the installed base of gasoline-powered internal combustion engines has something to do with it. A lot easier (goes the thinking) to change gas into gasoline than to retrofit every vehicle out there to work on natural gas.
They will be based out of Texas in the next year or so. The regulations Kalifornia will impose on them will put them out of business.
Turn the American genius on to this problem and in a few years the Greenies and hate-America types will be going crazy with frustration.
If the germans were doing it... for a profit, I’d have no problem. But with all the “green incentives” being tossed around like candy by our criminal govt, every upstart energy project/company should be looked at with suspicion, since they are most likely simply collecting free government money.
Anybody got an idea how this impacts the carbon issue? I would assume gasoline would release the same carbon whether it was made from NG or oil.
The best part is that it won’t be too much longer that the middle east and Venezuela for that matter will be awash in crude, with no where to go with it. Get me my violin. :)
But also remember.... 99+% of vehicles in the US do not run on NG. And from my persepctive, I am not too hip on having a NG cylinder strapped to my vehicle.
If the technology is truly there to cost effectively convert NG to gasoline..... this will be a true game changer.
I would think “cost effectively” is the key term here. Conversion of natural gas to gasoline in a pilot plant is one thing, conversion on a commerical scale to make it worthwhile is a different matter.
still sounds like Fischer-Tropsch to me...that’s been around >60 years.
The crux of their whole proposal is the break-even point in cost comparison to gas refined from oil, and the whole future of the company depends on assumptions on future oil prices; they have to hope that increased tight oil production won't simply drop the cost of crude so much that it doesn't make sense to make gasoline from natural gas.
I definitely wouldn't invest in these guys unless it was play money. All their technology could be brilliant and work perfectly, but their business model could be destroyed by a massive crude price collapse to $50 a barrel or something. And they have no control over that.
Cost effective in the US. Under our price and regulation conditions. Shell, Sasol and I think some others already have commercial scale Gas-To-Liquid plants in other countries. Both have been looking to bring it to the US, if it can be done economically.
Example:
About Shell > Our strategy > Our major projects > Pearl GTL
http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/our-strategy/major-projects-2/pearl.html
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