CNG / Natural Gas Thread [MERGED]

[nitrox]

from yahoo news:

RAS LAFFAN INDUSTRIAL CITY, Qatar - The rat's nest of pipes and columns snaking across the desert harbors a secret process that will use cobalt to turn natural gas into a powerful, clean-burning diesel fuel. By next year, rulers of this tiny desert sheikdom hope, these gas-to-liquids (GTL) reactors under construction will bring in billions of dollars while clearing big city smog belched by trucks and buses.

Petroleum experts who have sniffed vials of gin-clear GTL diesel speak of it with reverence.

"It's a beautiful product," says Jim Jensen, a Massachusetts-based energy economist. "The kerosene smells like perfume."

In all, some $20 billion has been committed to build an unprecedented array of clean diesel plants in this Gulf shore industrial park.

Those chipping in include oil titans Royal Dutch/Shell Group, ChevronTexaco Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp., which is making a $7 billion bet on GTL, the largest investment in the corporate history of America's largest company.

Smaller plants in Malaysia, South Africa and the United States have proved the technology works, but none is nearly as large as those planned here. In a few years, says Andy Brown, who heads Shell's office in Qatar, the country will be "the GTL capital of the world."

"This really is where GTL will come of age, where the industry will be born," he said.

By 2011, the Qatar plants should be producing 300,000 barrels of liquid fuels and other products daily. The largest GTL plant now producing is Shell's plant in Bintulu, Malaysia, churning out 14,700 barrels per day.

The investments amount to a big gamble on a clean alternative to pollutant-rich crude oil, based on an obscure "synthetic fuel" process developed to make fuel from coal in 1920s Germany.

Like Qatar's headlong rush to produce liquefied natural gas, the ruling sheiks here are pushing GTL as an idea whose time has come.

The clean-burning fuel, with almost none of the smelly sulfur soot belched by engines firing on conventional diesel, appears tailor-made for countries looking to reduce emissions in line with the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

Faisal al-Suwaidi, chief executive of Qatar Liquefied Gas Co., said he's gotten interest from Japan, Canada, Korea, Europe and the United States, the world's largest polluter. Although Washington has refused to sign the Kyoto protocols, state and local caps on emissions are pushing refiners to clean up diesel.

Complying with Kyoto's strictures "is agenda item No. 1 when we visit countries like Japan," al-Suwaidi said over coffee in his office in the Qatari capital, Doha. "This is the product for them. This is green diesel."

As far as carbon emissions go, green diesel appears to offer only a modest dent, partly because natural gas contains less carbon than oil-based diesel to begin with. The big difference is in sulfur.

Sulfur emissions from diesel engines cause as many as 10,000 deaths a year among Americans with heart and lung ailments, said William Becker, who represents state and local air pollution control agencies in the United States.

"It's a matter of life and death," Becker said. "And the solution depends on removing the sulfur."

Emissions can be cut further by adding better filters that remove up to 90 percent of remaining particulates, said Richard Kassel, a fuels expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York. Sulfur-laden diesel gums up these finer filters, he said.

"Clean fuels open the door to the most advanced emission controls," Kassel said.

Tests of GTL fuel are under way in several countries. Shell is already selling the fuel in Thailand, The Netherlands, Greece and Germany, charging slightly more than its oil-based diesel. In Europe, Shell calls the fuel V-Power Diesel.

Environmentalists like Kassel caution that GTL fuel is most attractive when high oil prices make it competitive. The fuel will probably see most of its smog-cutting in developing countries where emissions standards will require better filters.

"It's going to be a very important blending stock but the idea that it's going to compete with crude oil is overstating the case," Jensen said. "It sort of cuts down on the use of crude but it's not going to massively change things."

GTL diesel from Sasol Chevron, the South African-American joint venture that is a 49 percent shareholder in the first Qatari GTL plant, will surge onto the market next year and could wind up as a niche fuel that powers fleets of city buses and trucks, company spokesman Malcolm Wells said.

More likely, says economist Jensen, the clean fuel will be blended with crude-oil diesel to lower sulfur emissions into compliance with tightening standards in several countries.

The economics of GTL make sense, experts say, when it's produced on a large scale and with a cheap source of natural gas. And Qatar, a Connecticut-sized thumb on the Arabian peninsula, is perhaps the world's best source of cheap gas. It sits on a bubble containing 10 percent of the world's known gas reserves, conveniently gathered in the planet's largest reservoir.

By 2011, Qatar hopes three ventures will convert natural gas into more than 300,000 barrels per day of liquids, most of that diesel fuel, but also including naphtha, liquid petroleum gas and lubricating oil. That much synthetic diesel won't cut into the current market for oil-based diesel — 13 million barrels a day — but it might help clear some skylines.

The fuel will be sell for more than conventional diesel, and is hugely profitable with current oil prices above $50 a barrel. But Shell will still profit if oil drops to $20, Brown said.

Exxon Mobil aims to produce 155,000 barrels per day by 2011, said Wayne Harms, Exxon's chief in Qatar.

"We have a lot of money invested here. We're going to invest a lot more," he said. Exxon counts investments in some 200 countries, and Qatar "will be one of our top countries by the end of the decade," he said.

[Mojo]

malampaya is a big natural gas deposit, pag na convert nila ito green diesel yung output, di na tayo bibili sa ibang bansa

[horexen]

This is good along with biodiesel will greatly reduce our dependence on imported fossil fuel.

[Jiggs]

malampaya is a big natural gas deposit, pag na convert nila ito green diesel yung output, di na tayo bibili sa ibang bansa

Not really BIG enough if u'll compare to the Big league...it's like a Mouse next to a LION ..GTL are for country's which have enormous Natural Gas field to market their gas in the market aside from turning it to LNG ( liquified natural gas)

[miles_kph]

malampaya is a big natural gas deposit, pag na convert nila ito green diesel yung output, di na tayo bibili sa ibang bansa

sadly, this may never happen.

we simply don't have the infrastructure or the market to make it an attractive investment prospect.

[ssalonga]

ALTERNATIVE FUEL NEWS!


Hi! Here is interesting news for alternative-fuel activists!

In Nardo, Italy—The almost-annual Continental Tire/Auto Bild Sportscars High Performance tuner event was recently held. As reported by Road and Track magazine, the event was a pretty straightforward affair: Europe's best auto tuners run their best cars flat-out for three laps around the Nardo Proving Ground’s 7.8-mile oval—maximum speed reached is all that matters. All competitors run on Continental tires—many on ContiSportContact 3s, several faster runners on 224-mph rated ContiSportContact Vmaxes and the fastest on a special Vmax rated to 249 mph. All aftermarket parts used must comply with strict German certification laws, meaning such things as approved muffler systems and catalytic converters.

At the end of the day, the 2nd fastest car was an A4 Quattro powerd by natural gas, the same product coming out of our Malampaya natural gas fields in Palawan! Here is what Road and Track reported:

"The main objective for Ingolstadt-based Hohenester (known for its race cars and extreme Audi conversions) when it set out to build the HS650G was to produce the fastest street-legal natural gas-powered car in the world. What started out as an Audi A4 Quattro has turned into a 650-bhp top-speed machine. The 3.0-liter twin-turbo V-6 was completely rebuilt, with new pistons, crankshaft, connecting rods…everything. Hohenester also completely enclosed the car’s underbody, added disc wheels (made to look like multi-spoke BBS versions) and stiffened and lowered the suspension.

With a top speed of 218.5 mph, the HS650G was the second-fastest car at the event, although it had previously run 226.2 mph at the 7.6-mile Papenburg track in Germany. 'We must have filled up with lower-grade gas,' said Jürgen Hohenester, son of company founder Alfons. As far as driving an Audi A4 at over 218 mph, Hohenester said it was actually quite easy, 'Because Nardo is kind of like one big long straightaway.'"

BTW, this is the same stuff we will be getting soon from the natural gas pipeline from Batangas to a daughter station in Binan or Bicutan in 2010.

wow!

[ghosthunter]

You can power a car to go really fast with nearly any fuel you can store inside the vehicle. It is just a matter of technical feasibility.

Our problem with natural gas is economic feasibility. CNG requires expensive new infrastructure for distribution and retail. And that doesn't yet include the vehicles that would be purchased or retrofitted to use CNG.

CNG storage tanks are big and heavy because the pressures of CNG is much higher than LPG. The only practical vehicles that can use CNG are buses and trucks.

And even our own pilot CNG bus project is a dud.

[Quint]

I think that more than anything, today's engines are not designed for CNG. I've been to countries where the primary automotive fuel is CNG. It may be cheap but the wear and tear on the engine is just too much. It shortens the life of the engine significantly so its not really worth it.

[ssalonga]

I think that more than anything, today's engines are not designed for CNG. I've been to countries where the primary automotive fuel is CNG. It may be cheap but the wear and tear on the engine is just too much. It shortens the life of the engine significantly so its not really worth it.

GH, quint. Both points quite well taken. On the other hand a great change in technology is on the way. The same technology that has advanced warfare and space exploration is now being brought to bear on alternative fuels.

What the Nardo event shows is that the matter is mostly a technology issue. It took 100 years to reach petroleum advancement to where we are, but it is still dirty and uses a non-renewable principal source. Hi-octane petroleum still presents a safety issue, but has not discouraged its use!

In time, an engine that will use NG efficiently and safely will evolve, we only need to be confident and patient. We also must keep our minds open to the next big advancement, as we recall that necessity is the mother of all invention!

cheers,
steve

[niky]

There is no technological barrier to CNG or LPG. Modern engines can run them just fine. The barrier is infrastructure and storage.

The barrier, in terms of storage, is slight for LPG... and in terms of supply infrastructure... even slighter, but it is still having a hard time penetrating the mass market.

The barrier for CNG in this regard is much higher... CNG requires very strong storage containers to cope with the high pressures needed to pack enough CNG to match gasoline or LPG in terms of range. And that makes it much more expensive than the other two.

[Jiggs]

And even our own pilot CNG bus project is a dud.

Bro, our countrys pilot CNG proj. is not really a dud...well it may be to some standards but technically its really doing well. The only reason it was on hold was a FORCE Majeure circumstances. A bridge that connects the Mother station there in Batangas was swept away by the last strong typhoon and there was no other alternative route for the CNG hauling trucks to continue their operation. Hopefully the said bridge will be available daw by the mid of this year.