Diesel From Natural Gas? Are There Dots Ready To Be Connected?

The Columbus Dispatch is reporting (a "thank you" to a reader for sending me this):

At a time when natural gas is plentiful and inexpensive, a Plain City company has found a way to convert the resource into something much more valuable: diesel fuel.
Velocys Inc., a spinoff from Columbus-based Battelle, opened its test plant this week after more than a decade of development. About 60 people work there.

“Essentially, we’re changing the way fuels are made,” said Roy Lipski, Velocys’ CEO, at the opening ceremony.

The plant’s existence is testament to a resurgence in popularity of a chemical process developed in the 1920s in Germany, capable of turning coal or natural gas into diesel fuel, jet fuel or other synthetic liquid fuels. The same method is being used at a refinery opened in 2011 in Qatar by Royal Dutch Shell and will be used at a plant being built in Louisiana by Sasol Limited.

Unlike those multibillion-dollar projects, which will sell fuel on the open market, Velocys is selling smaller-scale machines that customers can use to create a source of diesel for their own use. The cost is $200 million to $500 million, as opposed to billions.
The process is called Fischer-Tropsch, named after the two German scientists who developed it. The technology later was used to help fuel Nazi Germany, which had an oil shortage.

The first customer likely will be Calumet Specialty Products, a maker of oils and solvents that has said it will install a series of reactors at its plant in western Pennsylvania, where it has access to gas from the Marcellus shale. The project likely will break ground next year.

Where have we heard that name before, Calumet?

Click here for the answer.