Syntroleum - Ashley, what I didn't like about Syntroleum was their air blown gasification. In reading their promotional material, it seemed to me they were greatly exaggerating the cost and dangers of using oxygen in gasification. At a time when advances in cryogenic technology were reducing the costs of seperating oxygen from air, some of the same advances that have greatly reduced the costs of liquefy natural gas, they were claiming that oxygen was a big expense. The problem with using air instead of oxygen in the gasification is that dry air is 77% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. When you use air instead pure oxygen in the gasification, the synthetic gas, composed primarily of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, is diluted in a large volume of nitrogen.
Syntroleum managed to get their Fischer-Tropsch synthesis to work effectively with this nitrogen diluted systhetic gas, but this only works if you don't have to clean up the synthetic gas after gasification. So its only good if you use sweet natural gas as feed stock.
If you use sour gas, petroleum coke, coal, municipal solid waste, biomass, etc. where you have to clean the gas after
gasification to remove sulfer, metals, dust and other contaminants before you can use it, the great volume of
nitrogen in the gas stream raises the costs. Also if you have nitrogen present with oxygen in the high temperature enviroment of the gasifier you will have more NOx in the output gas stream than if you had used straight oxygen. If you are operating a barge off the shore of Nigeria then you don't have to worry about NOx emmisions but for other applications NOx is another pollutant you have to treat.
The original air blown Syntroleum process may make sense in the saving of space and capital expense for small off shore barge mounted units using stranded natural gas but not for other feed stocks or large land based facilities. Syntroleum was unique in using air instead of oxygen. No other GTL or CTL technology provider considers it advantagious to use it.
Their niche GTL technology has boxed them in. Even in Nigeria
their niche is growing smaller. Nigeria now has LNG liquefaction facilities for exporting LNG and has started contruction of an onshore GTL plant. So the niche in Nigeria now is offshore gas finds too small to make it worthwhile to
built a pipeline to the shore facilities but big enough to justify the construction of a GTL barge.
Syntroleum's destiny is no longer in their own hands. Their fate rests with the decision of their AJE partners to drill
another well. If that falls through, what have they got? An an MOU to build a CTL plant in Germany.
In Syntroleum's favor they do have access to a lot of XOM's
FT technology as the result of the settlement of a patent dispute. As I understand it the German CTL plant will use
oxygen not air in the gasifier, so what does Syntroleum bring to the table in that project? Only their catalyst work, access to XOM FT technology and pilot plant experiance, certainly no capital, IMHO. Like you, I will wait for them to actually be near completion of a commercial CTL or GTL project before buying. |
