TITLE: Conversion of Natural Gas to Methanol.

AUTHOR: T. E. O'Hare;   R. S. Sapienza;   D. Mahajan;   G. T. Skaperdas.

INST.  AUTHOR: Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY.

SPONSOR: Department of Energy, Washington, DC.

LANGUAGE: English

PUB.  TYPE: Technical Report

PUB.  COUNTRY: United States

SOURCE: Department of Energy [DE],  Aug 88,  18p.

NTIS ORDER NO.: DE89001088/INW

NOTES: Offshore northern seas conference and exhibition, Stavanger, Norway, 23 Aug 1988.

ABSTRACT:

The penetration of natural gas into distant markets can be substantially increased by a new methanol synthesis process under development at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The new methanol process is made possible by the discovery of a catalyst that drops synthesis temperatures from about 275/degree/F to about 125/degree/C. Furthermore, the new catalyst is a liquid phase system, which permits the synthesis reaction to proceed at fully isothermal conditions, in contrast to the hot spots that prevent currently available pelleted, solid catalysts from operating efficiently.  In contrast, the new low temperature liquid catalyst can convert synthesis gas completely to methanol in a single pass through the methanol synthesis reactor. This characteristic leads to a further major improvement in the methanol plant. Atmospheric nitrogen can be tolerated in the synthesis gas, and still the volume of gas fed to the reactor can be smaller than the volume of gas that must be fed to the reactor when accommodating the very low conversions furnished by the best of currently available catalysts. (ERA citation 14:004249)

REPORT  NUMBER: BNL-41701;   CONF-8808151-1

CONTRACT  NUMBER: AC02-76CH00016