Re: Methane to liquids

Mike Darrett wrote:

> Uncle Al <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > 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.

> We could use a few more of these plants (CH4 -> diesel)

> http://www.shell.com.my/smds/

> ...although building them in California could be a problem.

Could?  Have any of your engineers engaged in heterosexual
relationships in the past 50 years?  Wymyn's Lip says, "Male orgasm is
rape."

Bubbling methane into hot oleum plus iodine gives you
methylenedisulfate (unimpressive kinetics, but we have lots of
chemical engineers).  That trivially hydrolyzes to formaldehyde.  It's
worthless as a wellhead process.  Chlorination easily gets you liquids
- but then what?  Partial combustion of methane and then ZSM-5 is
cheap and almost reasonable... but high aromatics fuel is an
Enviro-whiner atrocity.

Even given the engineer's heaven of ulimited free energy (local
methane being flared anyway), it's a pisser of a problem.  Generating
electricity seems like a good answer until you look for a market. 
Generating plants are heavy water users, and that doesn't cut it in
the Arabian desert.

The best spreadsheet answer I can imagine is to plasma condense the
methane into CVD diamond dust.  Energy efficiency doesn't matter and
the product sells for about $(US)0.10/gram - until somebody starts
making 1000 tonnes/year.  This does not add to fuel inventories, which
is where you want the methane to go.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/eotvos.htm
 (Do something naughty to physics)
-- 
Paul J. Franklin(moderator - sci.chem.organic.synthesis) 
http://organicworldwide.net/sci.chem.organic.synthesis
Georgia State University <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Atlanta, GA