Recycling unwanted gas
The unwanted gas produced during offshore oil drilling could be reused as an energy source using a technology developed by a consortium of firms including an Oxford Catalysts Group subsidiary.
Velocys, the group’s US subsidiary, is providing microchannel reactors for use in an offshore gas to liquids (GTL) facility.
The technology relies on unwanted gas that is produced along with oil. Such gas is usually disposed of by flaring – a wasteful and environmentally unfriendly process that is increasingly subject to regulation or by re-injection back into the reservoir at considerable expense.
Velocys and offshore facility developers MODEC, the global engineering firm Toyo Engineering and the Brazilian State oil company Petrobras are building a microchannel GTL demonstration facility that could possibly bring the prospect of offshore GTL a step closer to reality.
The 5-10 barrel/day (bbl/d) demonstration facility will include a microchannel steam methane reformer (SMR) along with a microchannel Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reactor. The demonstration plant, which is expected to be up and running by early 2011, will be constructed by Toyo Engineering with support from MODEC and installed at the Petrobras facility in Fortaleza, Brazil.
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