Re: Methane to liquids

It can and has been done indirectly as noted by all of the majors on a 
batch lab / pilot plant basis.  However according to recent reports 
methane to liquids is expensive and only by using economies of scale can 
it be made at a competitive price.  Investment in a plant is estimated 
to cost 2 billion dollars or more.  diesel fuel can be made more 
economically than gasoline.  At current crude prices diesel would 
probably be economically produced.  I have no idea of the energy 
efficiency of the process e.g. how much btus in product vs. btus in 
feedstock.

Uncle Al wrote:

>Marshall Dudley wrote:

>>I am wanting to build a small methane to liquid converter. I can live
>>with either methanol or a liquid hydrocarbon output.

>
>Can't be directly done - and oh how petroleum companies have
>desperately tried!  The whole Arabian Pensinsula is aflame at night
>from vented burning methane.  Alaska is fat with uselsss natural gas. 
>Anything that would allow methane-to-liquid conversion would be hot
>stuff.  Pipelining a gas is not efficient compared to liquids. 
>Rock-like methane hydrate requires punctiliously dried input - even
>ppm water is an eventual problem.

>The best you can do is methane to syn gas to methanol to ZSM-5 high
>aromatic feedstock.  It isn't economic at the wellhead.  Bubbling
>methane into concentrated sulfuric acid plus palladium is silly except
>as a publication.

>One might imagine methane plus steam going into a superacid zeolite or
>hot dispersed scandium triflate, both impregnated with palladium,
>might give you a direct methanol/methyl ether feedstream, and then
>into ZSM-5.


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-- 
Paul J. Franklin(moderator - sci.chem.organic.synthesis) 
http://organicworldwide.net/sci.chem.organic.synthesis
Georgia State University <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Atlanta, GA