SBIR Phase II: Internal Combustion Engines as Small Scale Chemical Plants for Compact, Low Cost Gas-to-Liquids Systems to Reduce Methane Flaring

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to eliminate the wasteful and polluting practice of natural gas flaring using low-cost, distributed, mini chemical plants utilizing modified automotive engines as small compressors and chemical reactors. More than 140 billion cubic meters of natural gas produced in remote regions is flared (burned). This quantity of gas is valued $1.9 billion in the US and $18.4 billion globally and generates more than 400 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emissions, as well as significant air pollution (i.e., particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, and nitrogen oxides). Currently, there are no economically-viable solutions to address the flaring problem. Compressing or liquefying the natural gas leads to prohibitively high operating costs, while conventional gas-to-liquid chemical conversion systems are not cost effective for the small scale required for remote flaring sites. Converting the flared gas in the US to liquid chemicals would result in more than $6 billion/year of added value for the economy. The impact of the project may extend beyond this specific application as it may be a stepping stone to the low cost, distributed synthesis of fuels or chemicals or to avoiding waste from other stranded resources like waste biomass and curtailed renewable power. This SBIR Phase II project proposes to convert mass-produced automotive engines into chemical reactors and compressors that replace large, custom-made chemical process equipment, thus enabling cost reductions in the flaring of natural gas. The engine-based reactor system seeks to process associated gas into methanol near the wellhead. Methane is a high value chemical that can be transported to market, eliminating the associated greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions. The objectives of this project are to expand the single-cycle demonstration in Phase I by testing the engine-based synthesis technology in a multiple-cycle engine, providing the information required by commercial partners for a field pilot. The goal of this work is to rigorously test an engine-based reactor that provides robust operation with high throughput and high conversion per pass, which are required to achieve promising economics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.