Rare snails in garlic butter...Yummmm!............
Posted on 09/24/2013 2:35:38 PM PDT by thackney
Royal Dutch Shell has picked a site in Louisiana for a plant costing at least $12.5 billion that would turn natural gas into diesel, jet fuel and other liquids, the Louisiana governor’s office announced Tuesday.
Shell said the project, which is no sure thing, could help to harness more domestic natural gas to make transportation fuels. The company will continue to consider the option before making an investment decision at the site in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, according to the news release.
The plant would offer the benefit of displacing oil used to make fuels and other products and lowering emissions, since Shell says liquids produced from natural gas burn cleaner than those produced from oil.
It also would create at least 740 direct jobs with an average salary of $100,000, as well as at least 3,900 indirect jobs, according to the announcement. Louisiana State University estimates the project would have an economic impact of $77.6 billion over the construction period and the first 15 years of operation of the plant, according to the press release.
“Today’s announcement is a historic new opportunity for Shell to potentially expand its manufacturing operations onshore in a world-class, gas-to-liquids facility in Ascension Parish on the Mississippi River,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said in a statement. “Here in the heart of Louisiana’s world-scale petrochemical industries, the Gulf Coast GTL project would give thousands more of our people an opportunity for a rewarding career right here at home.”
Louisiana offered Shell an incentive of $112 million, according to the release.
“The State of Louisiana offered Shell a competitive incentive package that would include a performance-based grant of $112 million to reimburse costs associated with necessary public road improvements, land acquisition and other infrastructure costs,” the state said in the press release.
The plant would be the latest effort to use more domestic natural gas. Power plants, chemical plants and planned export facilities are all looking to harness the resource.
Shell has also committed to expanding the availability of natural gas for transportation, by creating small-scale plants to liquefy the fuel for use in trains, trucks and marine vehicles. The company also is planning to supply liquefied natural gas to 100 refueling stations across the country.
A gas-to-liquids facility would add to the company’s efforts to increase the use of natural gas and further displace oil used to make fuels and other liquids.
It also could result in well more than the minimum planned $12.5 billion investment and 740 permanent jobs that Shell has told Louisiana the project will create.
“Should we move forward with the project, we expect project costs to be well in excess of the minimum spend that was agreed upon with the State of Louisiana,” Jorge Santos Silva, Shell’s executive vice president directing integrated gas activities for Shell Upstream Americas said in a statement. “We look forward to working with our prospective neighbors and other interested parties. Through it all, we are committed to keeping people safe, protecting the environment and being a good neighbor.”
Shell long has worked to use natural gas as a substitute for oil when it comes to producing transportation fuels, lubricants and other liquids. The company holds 3,500 patents related to the technology and opened its first commercial gas-to-liquids facility in Malaysia in 1993.
Shell also began full production at the world’s largest gas-to-liquids plant last year in Qatar. The facility, called Pearl GTL, cost more than $18 billion and turn 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day into other products.
“The more we use domestically abundant natural gas reserves for transportation and other uses, the less we would need to rely on imported oil,” Shell says on its website.
This will be great for the US. No new infrastructure or equipment required by the consumer to us "natural gas" as a transportation fuel.
Let’s just hope that Obama and his pals don’t manage to block it. They will if they can.
There is a rare snail at the site they want to build on. And the site hasn’t been selected yet.
Gas-To-Liquid ping
We must be sensitive to the economic welfare of Obama’s brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood. The US using its own natural resources is of no benefit to them.
Once the cajuns find that snail, it will be both extinct and on today's gumbo menu.
Hussein thinks Savannah is on the Gulf Coast.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/07/Obama-Flubs-Gulf-Coast-Geography-on-Leno
Maybe he won’t know where to look.
Rare snails in garlic butter...Yummmm!............
Could you point me to a good place that summarizes how the GTL process works? I’m curious about the chemistry and mechanical aspects.
The proprietary Shell Middle Distillate Synthesis (SMDS) process is at the heart of the two-train Pearl GTL plant. Developed over more than three decades, the process has been proven on a commercial scale at the 14,700-barrel-per-day Bintulu GTL plant in Malaysia, which began operation in 1993.
Shell has over 3,500 patents across all stages of the GTL process. The Bintulu experience helped improve the chemical catalysts integral to the SMDS process. These improvements help reduce unit capital expenditure, allow faster processing and should enable Shell to produce greater volumes of fuel and other products at Pearl.
The plant includes systems to capture energy given off during the processes, converting it to steam that drives the plant’s compressors and generates electricity.
The water recycling plant – the largest of its kind – treats water for re-use in steam production and cooling. It can process 45,000m3 per day of water, without discharging any liquids from the plant.
More at:
http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/major-projects-2/pearl/overview.html
Great use for natural gas. Been reading about this GTL and have been hoping a BIG OIL Company would jump with both feet on it.
Drill baby drill
Discover the processes at Pearl GTL
http://www.shell.com/global/future-energy/natural-gas/gtl/acc-gtl-processes.html
1. Producing natural gas
Qatar’s North Field is the world’s largest natural gas field. It contains over 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, about 15% of the global total. Two unmanned offshore platforms each operate 11 wells. The gas flows through two pipelines to processing facilities at the onshore Ras Laffan industrial zone.
QUICK FACTS
1. The steel used in the pipelines weighs as much as 18 Eiffel Towers.
2. Special chemicals are injected with the gas to protect the carbon steel pipelines against corrosion and to stop ice crystals forming inside.
2. Separating the gas
Water and condensates are separated from the gas. Other components, such as sulphur, are also removed and cleaned. The gas is then cooled and the natural gas liquids are removed via distillation. The remaining pure natural gas (methane) flows to the gasification unit.
QUICK FACTS
1. The extracted sulphur is used for other purposes, such as producing fertilisers, in asphalt and concrete.
2. The natural gas liquids are piped to Ras Laffan port and sold as chemical feedstocks and LPG fuel for heating appliances and vehicles.
3. Making synthesis gas
In the gasifier at around 2,200-2,650°F (1,400-1,600°C) the methane and oxygen are converted into a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide known as synthesis gas, or syngas.
QUICK FACTS
1. The reaction produces heat, which is recovered to produce steam for power.
4. Making liquid waxy hydrocarbons
The synthesis gas enters one of 24 reactors. Each reactor holds a large number of tubes containing a Shell proprietary catalyst. The catalyst serves to speed up the chemical reaction in which the synthesis gas is converted into long-chained waxy hydrocarbons and water.
QUICK FACTS
The catalyst consists of tiny granules, just millimetres long with microscopic holes, containing minute metal particles. The total surface area of the microscopic holes in the catalyst granules is more than eighteen times the surface area of Qatar.
The synthesis process generates a lot of heat, which is also used to produce steam that in turn powers the GTL plant via steam turbines.
All water in the GTL process is purified and reused in the utilities system of the plant to generate steam.
Placed end-to-end the tubes would stretch from Qatar to Japan.
5. Making GTL (gas to liquids) products
The plant creates a range of products from natural gas that would otherwise be produced from oil.
Using another Shell proprietary catalyst, the long hydrocarbon molecules from the GTL reactor are contacted with hydrogen and cut (cracked) into a range of smaller molecules of different length and shape. Distillation separates out the products with different boiling points.
GTL PRODUCTS
GTL Naphtha is used as a chemical feedstock for plastics manufacture.
GTL Kerosene can be blended with conventional Jet Fuel (up to 50%) for use in aviation – known as GTL Jet Fuel – or used as a home heating fuel.
GTL Normal paraffins are used for making more cost-effective detergents.
GTL Gasoil is a diesel-type fuel that can be blended into the global diesel supply pool.
GTL Base oils are used to make high-quality lubricants.
Part A
Extracting pure oxygen
Pure oxygen for the gasification process is extracted from the air through eight vast air separation units. Air is cooled to liquefy the oxygen and nitrogen. Distillation separates out oxygen in a “cold box” – like an icebox, this helps to maintain the low temperature that is required to separate the oxygen.
QUICK FACTS
Each distillation cold box is as tall as a 10-storey building.
The air separation units produce over 28,000 tonnes of oxygen each day. If this were not produced on-site, more than 1,000 trucks per day would be needed to bring it in.
Part B
Generating power using residual heat
Residual heat from various steps of the process makes steam that helps drive large compressors.
QUICK FACTS
Around 8,000 tonnes of steam are generated and distributed each hour.
Reusing water (Formerly Effluent Treatment Plant)
The plant does not draw on any water from Qatar’s resources. It reuses process water as cooling water and to generate steam for power.
QUICK FACTS
Water passes though filters with openings 200,000 times thinner than a human hair.
Obama and his trough feeders in the EPA will do their best to make sure this plant never materializes. They could care less that this is a huge job creator
once again a valuable post - full of information that explains as well to those with less science minds!!
The Sierra Club will spread more of them around!
FWIW, the wife worked summers as a lab-tech for a Louisiana shell facility when she was an undergrad in chemistry. And my business partner is a Shell retiree, but from Houston rather than Louisiana.
But good news for my birth state.
Fischer Tropsch process
Invented in Germany in 1920”s - was how Nazi’s fueled their
war machine
Natural gas reacted with steam to turn into mix of CO ((carbon monoxide) & hydrogen
Reacted at high temperatur/pressure with a catalyst
By altering mixture of gases and type of catalyst
can create anything from methtl alcohol to gasoline, diesel
fuel or wax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process
New Orleans restaurants are all over this. I hope that clarifies the butter, er, problem.
Can’t they gently relocate the snail?
I'm sure that the Cajuns could - right into the gumbo pot.
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