What is Gas to Liquids?
http://www.shell.com/home/content/shellgasandpower-en/products_and_...


The conversion of natural gas into liquid fuels is an attractive option to commercialise abundant gas reserves. Gas to Liquids (GTL), with virtually unlimited markets, offers a new way to unlock remote gas reserves, complementary to other traditional technologies such as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and pipelines.

GTL conversion is an umbrella term for a group of technologies that can create liquid synthetic fuels from a variety of feedstocks.

The basic technology was developed in Germany in the 1920s, and is known as the Fischer-Tropsch process after its inventors. In essence it uses catalytic reactions to synthesise complex hydrocarbons from simpler organic chemicals. This process can create identical liquids from a variety of feedstocks, although the technical challenges are greater for biomass and coal.

Shell has pioneered the development of Gas to Liquids technology and has operated a medium scale GTL plant at Bintulu, Malaysia since 1993, that has current capacity of 14,700 bbl/day. With a decade of operating experience at the Bintulu plant, Shell technologists have the confidence to scale up to a worldscale 140,000 bbl/day GTL plant planned to be operational in Qatar towards the end of the decade.

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Great find. Very informative. If it's cost is similar to CNG then it seems it would be easier to convert. I'll have to do some more research. I just wonder how much it cost. We could use a GTL plant in Louisiana :)
According to these guys they can get the price down to $20/bbl of gasoline but that's at $1mmcf. Gas is currently $7.5mmcf so I don't know if this would work.

http://www.synfuels.com/download/Chementator.pdf
Here is a link to a company who has been doing this for several years. Started in 1984 and not sure they are profitable yet. Hope they (or someone) gets there.

http://www.syntroleum.com/main.aspx

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