First saleable gas-to-liquids litre in August - Sasol
miningweekly.co.za
The first saleable litre of new gas-to-liquids (GTL) fuel would be produced in Qatar in August, Sasol group executive international Lean Strauss told the touring media on Tuesday shortly after the official opening of the company's new $950-million Oryx GTL plant on Tuesday.
Strauss told questioning journalists that the plant would still require another 12-months-plus to reach full production of 34 000 barrels per day (bpd), which would amount to some 34 000 bpd a year.
The brand-new plant is located within the Las Raffan Industrial City complex, situated 80 km north of Doha, the Qatar capital.
Sasol's plant obtains its gas from the large RasGas liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant alongside it, which, in turn, obtains its feedstock 30 km offshore in the North Field, the world's largest nonassociated natural-gas resource.
Strauss said that the gas-derived GTL diesel, unlike LNG, would not require pressurized ships, but was compatible with existing fuel distribution.
It would also have better environmental and performance profiles than conventional diesels derived from crude oil.
The GTL diesel would have a high cetane number of at least 70, less than five parts per million (ppm) of sulphur, less than 1% aromatics and good cold-flow characteristics of less than five degrees and ten degrees Celcius.
The 'sweet' gas it obtained from RasGas was already processed to less than 20 ppm of sulphur.
The plant produced not only GTL diesel, but also high-grade GTL naphtha and liquid petroleum gas (LPG).
However, it produced three times more diesel than naphtha and only a small quantity of LPG.
Technip Corflexip of Europe built the plant that was project-managed by Foster Wheeler of the UK.
Sasol, as 49% shareholder, provided the low-temperature Fischer-Tropsch technology, which forms the heart of the plant; Air Products of the US the two large air-separation units, each 3 500-t/d train of which shares largest-in-the-world status with South Africa; Haldor-Topsoe of Denmark the synthesis gas (syngas) production; ChevronTexaco of the US the product work-up and Technip KTI the hydrogen production.
The plant used Sasol's slurry-phase distillate process that had three steps, the first being the reforming of the methane from natural gas into syngas made up mostly of carbon monoxide and hydrogen; the second being the conversion of the syngas into waxy hydrocarbons through an advanced cobalt catalyst process; and the third the upgrading of the middle-distillate into diesel and naphtha, the visiting journalists were told.
The diesel could be used in both current and envisaged future diesel engines and the low sulphur, naphthenic and aromatic naphtha for ethylene production. |
