Natural gas burns cleaner than other fossil fuels. It emits less sulfur, carbon and nitrogen than coal or oil. When it is burned, it leaves almost no residual ash particles. It exists in abundant reserves around the world. However, in many cases natural gas comes from remote locations, or is co-produced with crude oil creating an operational dilemma with few options other than flaring the surplus natural gas. Current natural gas is handled by transmission via pipelines; or processed locally into a denser liquid form such as in liquified natural gas (LNG), natural gas liquids (NGL), or compressed natural gas (CNG).
Pipeline transmission of natural gas via pipeline requires: 1) gas that meets pipeline specifications (including gas quality, btu and pressure specs.); 2) pipeline access at the gas production site; 3) a geographic terrain allowing pipeline construction at a reasonable cost, and 4) gas volumes sufficient to justify the total cost of gathering, conditioning and transporting into the transmission pipeline.
Many natural gas sources in the U.S. and other energy producing regions around the globe do not possess the necessary operational elements or can justify the cost of integrating the stranded natural gas into a gas pipeline network. This results in large volumes of "stranded" natural gas. Many times the natural gas is simply associated with oil production. In these cases the oil is produced and the associated natural gas is flared (burned) at the oil facility. In 2008 the World Bank estimated the amount of flared gas to be approximately 5.2 trillion cubic feet in that year.
In some oil production regions the permit to release flare gas falls within specified maximum gas volume limits. In these cases, operators realize zero or negative value for the gas, and the oil production is constrained by flare permit limits.
Up to now, there have been no easy to install gas conversion options for these sites. The traditional GTL process plants require substantial and consistent gas volumes in order to justify the high cost of construction. A small, transportable process capable of operating on smaller volumes of natural gas is what is needed.
The R3 GTL : Methanol system is capable of operating at smaller gas volumes (200,000 to 1,000,000 standard cubic feet) per day. The R3 GTL: Methanol system employs a process controlled operating system allowing for continuous operation in the field. The methanol or other liquid co-product produced by the R3 system can be transported from production site by truck, boat or rail to nearby industrial markets.