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Technology Stocks : FCL - FuelCell Energy
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To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (385)4/27/2000 12:15:00 AM
From: Howard Williams  Read Replies (1) of 407
 
Dear William,

My sources of information cover a lot of bases. But Rentech has recently said their process has a carbon conversion efficiency greater than 85%. Take it or leave it. RTK does not have a history of exaggerating facts.

Their approach to finding economical implementation approaches is also significant. The syngas portion of a GTL plant costs about 150% of the cost of the Fischer-Tropsch portion. So if an idled methanol plant (that has a syngas front end) can be acquired advantageously, it makes for a cost-effective GTL plant. That's what RTK is doing at Sand Creek. Oroboros is looking at using RTK F-T on a steel mill's industrial off gases. No syngas front end is required, though the offgas is certainly not as good as conventional syngas. But it's free, so some efficiency penalty is OK. Then there's refinery wastes, a growing problem as crude qualities drop. Some refineries are already equipped with gasifiers (many from Texaco). Adding a RTK F-T unit allows the syngas from the refinery wastes to be converted to the highest value petroleum products on the market.

So the name of RTK's game is to find cheap syngas and/or feedstocks and go from there. Not incidentally, it now appears their process is as good as anybody's for GTL, even using natural gas feedstocks.

As far as Sasol is concerned, Shell now says they have a GTL process that can break even whenever crude is at or above $14/bbl. I suspect Sasol is paying close attention to that information.
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