Chemical Looping Dry Reforming for Converting Shale Gas to Liquid Fuels and Chemicals

There are many processes that can convert natural gas (either conventional or produced from shale) to hydrogen, syngas, fuels or chemicals, and all of the commercially successful ones first steam reform the natural gas to syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and steam. Unfortunately all of these processes have a large carbon footprint, primarily because of the endothermic nature of steam reforming and the large amount of steam that this process requires. One way to reduce the carbon footprint is to reform the natural gas with carbon dioxide instead of steam (this is called dry reforming). Unfortunately dry reforming has never been commercially successful, primarily because it deposits large amounts of coke that destroy the catalyst. TDA Research’s goal is to solve this problem using a new circulating fluidized bed reactor system. TDA Research Inc. proposes to develop a process to dry (CO2) reform shale gas methane into synthesis gas (syngas). TDA’s process is an extension of our HyRes process, that was originally developed to generate syngas from heavy, highly fouling feedstocks such as atmospheric and vacuum residuum, a process that we have demonstrated for the steam reforming of heavy oils for well over 1000 hours without catalyst deactivation. Some of the advantages of HyRes as a reforming process are that it does not use a large number of extremely expensive high alloy tubes like in a fixed bed steam methane reformer (lowering capital costs, which are the single most important cost factor) and most importantly, because the catalyst is continuously regenerated, there is no irreversible catalyst deactivation due to carbon or sulfur deposition. This is especially important for dry reforming methane with CO2, where carbon deposition is a major problem when using fixed bed catalysts. Since the HyRes process was originally developed for and tested on the steam reforming of heavy hydrocarbons, in Phase I TDA will demonstrate the CO2 reforming of simulated natural gas (not just methane) at the laboratory scale. The Phase I experiments will be done using methane, higher hydrocarbons and contaminants in our existing laboratory scale fluidized bed reactor. In Phase II, TDA will build a fully integrated bench scale system, optimize it’s performance and demonstrate the technology for a minimum of 1000 hours. TDA Research proposes to develop a technology for converting abundant, U.S. natural gas found in shale into fuels and chemicals using waste carbon dioxide. The process is more energy efficient than steam methane reforming. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: This dry reforming process will enable the production of hydrogen, fuels and chemicals from conventional and shale gas and carbon dioxide, overcoming the barriers that have so far prevented the adoption of dry reforming, reducing the amount of byproduct carbon dioxide produced and decreasing the cost of the final products.