Catalytic Organic Solid Wastes Upgrading Using Natural Gas for Valuable Commodities Production

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More and more municipal solid wastes have been rapidly generated and accumulated with fast urbanization and industrialization, resulting in increased disposal costs and notable negative environmental impacts. Natural gas (NG), the cleanest energy source among fossil fuels, is an abundant natural resource present in Canada. Due to its chemical inertness and relatively low volumetric energy density, natural gas is currently dominantly used for residential heating and cooking with little use for transportation or chemical production applications. Under such background, the proposed research program aims to develop a novel technology to simultaneously convert both of the aforementioned NG and municipal solid wastes (along with other low cost carbon sources such as low rank coal and agricultural, garden and forest wastes) to valuable liquid commodities (such as high value-added liquid chemicals or fuels). A novel reactor design called Transport Reactor Natural Gas Converter (TRNGC) will be developed in this requested funding period. This innovative reactor is composed of one reaction zone and two consecutive gas cyclones for continuously feeding low cost carbon sources with continuous char/ash removal. A specially designed supported bi-functional catalyst composed of active metal and porous aluminosilicate support will be circulating between gasification/pyrolysis zone and recycle leg to facilitate heat transfer and catalyze gasification/pyrolysis reaction under continuous natural gas flow. After proper condensation for upgraded crude oil collection, the synthetic gas produced from TRNGC will undergo a series of cleanup steps and a water-gas shift reaction to achieve desirable CO to H2 ratio, followed by a liquefaction process under the facilitation of another novel dual-bed catalyst system where syngas will be first converted to a mixture of light hydrocarbons and then form liquid hydrocarbon products based on the synergetic effect existing between methane and higher hydrocarbon at temperature of 350 ~ 450 oC. The whole process is operated under low pressure (<5 MPa), resulting in significant capital and operational cost reductions. The successful implementation of this novel process can divert low cost carbon sources streams nationwide, and contribute to the natural gas utilization, while providing valuable liquid fuels and/or chemicals with significantly reduced greenhouse gas emission. Thus this proposed program has the potential to provide significant economic and environmental benefits, aiding in keeping Canada's leading position in efficient renewable energy utilization and clean energy conversion.