Abstract
The recent shale gas boom has transformed the energy landscape of the United States. Compared to natural gas, shale resources contain a substantial amount of condensate and natural gas liquids (NGLs). Many shale basin regions located in remote areas are lacking the infrastructure to distribute the extracted NGLs to other regions—particularly the Gulf Coast, a major gas processing region. Here we present a shale gas transformation process that converts NGLs in shale resources into liquid hydrocarbons, which are easier to transport from these remote basins than NGL or its constituents. This process involves catalytic dehydrogenation followed by catalytic oligomerization. Thermodynamic process analysis shows that this process has the potential to be more energy efficient than existing NGL-to-liquid fuel (NTL) technologies. In addition, our estimated payback period for this process is within the average lifetime of shale gas wells. The proposed process holds the promise to be an energy efficient and economically attractive step to valorize condensate in remote shale basins.
Highlights
In order to meet the energy demands of the twenty-first century, engineers and scientists are working to develop new methods to discover, extract, and refine fossil resources including oil, coal, natural gas, shale oil, and shale gas
Methane concentration in shale gas ranges from 50% to 90%, which sets it as the major component [1,2]
Unlike natural gas, shale gas contains higher concentrations of hydrocarbons other than methane, such as ethane, propane, butane, isobutane, and pentane. These hydrocarbons are known as condensate or natural gas liquids (NGLs), and their concentrations vary from 0% to 50% [3]
Summary
In order to meet the energy demands of the twenty-first century, engineers and scientists are working to develop new methods to discover, extract, and refine fossil resources including oil, coal, natural gas, shale oil, and shale gas. Propane and butane are partially used for chemical feedstocks [8] He et al proposed several integrated processes between gas treatment, steam cracking, and catalytic dehydrogenation, and showed the economic potential of producing ethylene and propylene from shale gas [2,9]. The conventional method for the gas-to-liquid (GTL) process involves the partial oxidation of natural gas to obtain synthetic gas composed of CO and H2 , followed by chain growing processes such as Fischer–Tropsch [17,18] Another alternative to consider is the catalytic dehydrogenation of light alkanes followed by oligomerization of the olefins to form fuel range hydrocarbons. We only focus on converting ethane, propane, and butane in shale condensate into liquid fuel, and we do not consider the coupling of methane
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