Syngas Conversion into Hydrocarbons

Most common routes available for conversion of syngas into hydrocarbon fuels are Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process, and syngas to methanol to gasoline (MTG). FT conversion of syngas into hydrocarbons is one of the most recognized technologies with first plant operation in Germany in 1938. Currently three plans use the FT process to produce gasoline, diesel and chemicals from coal and natural gas. FT process uses Fe — or Co-based catalysts for the conversion. The resulting product is a wide range of primarily linear hydrocarbons from C1 compounds to high molecular mass waxes, which need reprocessing to obtain hydrocarbons in the range of diesel or gasoline. Diesel is the most appropriate fuel because the FT product contains mostly linear hydrocarbon which results in diesel with high cetane number (Dry 2004). However, due to the need to additional processing of long chain hydrocarbons (waxes), the capital cost is high (Spath and Dayton 2003). FT process is optimum at syngas H2/CO of 2, which is difficult to achieve in biomass generated syngas without steam reforming. Conversion of syngas to methanol is a well-known process. However, since methanol cannot be used directly because of its toxicity, methanol can be converted into gasoline through methanol to gasoline (MTG) process developed by Mobile Oil Corporation in 1970s. The process uses zeolite-based catalysts (ZSM-5) resulting in higher than 85% selectivity to gasoline-range hydrocarbons (Spath and Dayton 2003).