New Process Development of Natural Gas Conversion Technology to Liquid Fuels via Ocm Reaction

The conversion of methane via an OCM (Oxidative Coupling of Methane) to transportable liquid fuel has been investigated in order to utilize remote natural gas effectively. A conceptual view of this new process was developed for gasoline production based on reviews of other conventional processes and sensitivity analyses. The process developed, "ORIGINAL". is characterized by simplification of the total process and application of an advanced fluidized bed reactor to the OCM reaction. Full economic comparisons between the "ORIGINAL" and conventional OCM technologies were canied out. The results showed that the "ORIGINAL" process is substantially more economical when compared with existing technologies under the same conditions. Introduction Many natural gas fields have been discovered recently in Southeast Asia, which has become one of the main areas for oil and gas exploration. In many cases, however, the developments of the discovered gas fields have been obstructed by the demand for large investments in the transportation facilities (e.g.. gas pipeline) and other related infrastructure. Some liquefaction methods of natural gas, which include liquefying natural gas at an extremely low temperature (LNG). and converting natural gas into liquid fuel through the synthetic gas, have already been put into industrial use. These methods, however, also require large investments in the facilities and are expensive to operate. Consequently, even the existing methods remain a significant obstacle in the development of natural gas fields, in particular marginal fields. Thus, to exploit natural gas resources more widely, a new method is required which converts natural gas into liquid fuel more efficiently and economically than the existing methods. With this in mind, the purpose of this study is to research and to develop a new process which converts methane, the main component of natural gas, into liquid fuel (e.g., gasoline), rather directly than through synthetic gas. Scope of work First of all, we devoted our time largely to reviewing the current development trends overseas, and conducted a feasibility study. Among the various direct reaction processes in which methane is converted into a highly reactive intermediate product, the oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) reaction process, in which ethylene is the intermediate product, was chosen from the standpoint of economic efficiency and feasibility in practical use. Furthermore we conducted a sensitivity analysis on the existing OCM processes which we thought promising, to evaluate the impact of various process parameters on the economy of the process itself. A "conceptual view" of the newly integrated "ORIGINAL" process was developed on the basis of these findings and the process was evaluated from the standpoint of economy.