North American Shale Oil Bonanza Attracts GTL Technologies

...a major exploration and production company is seriously considering the possibility of incorporating microchannel FT reactors into a planned 5,000 -15,000 barrel per day (bpd) GTL facility onshore in North America designed to convert shale gas into finished synthetic fuels...The shortlisted technologies will be subjected to further evaluation as part of a major high-budget engineering study that will last for several months. The results of the study will be used to select the project’s technology providers. _Engineer

Oxford Catalyst's microchannel F-T technology for converting gas-to-liquids (GTL) is one of the frontrunners to be intensively studied for shale gas to liquids operations onshore in North America.

The technology is already being adopted for offshore applications in Brazil.

PDF presentation on Velocys / Oxford Catalyst's microchannel F-T technology

Microchannel FT reactors developed by Velocys and using a new highly active FT catalysts developed by Oxford Catalysts exhibit conversion efficiencies in the range of 70% per pass, according to Jeff McDaniel, Oxford Catalysts director of commercialisation.

“The high efficiency and modular nature of our microchannel FT reactors makes them particularly useful for this type of application because capacity can be easily increased by simply ’numbering up’ or linking together additional FT reactor modules,” said McDaniel. _Engineer