In a long note there will be content and typographical errors, but there are plenty of links to the original sources.
A reader alerted me to this story. Several links.
We start with this one: Nacero to build a $6 billion "gas to gasoline" plant in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.
For those of us in North Dakota, I had to look it up: northeast Pennsyvania, the largest city is Wilkes-Barre. I had forgotten all about this but years ago when our older daughter's family was moving from South Carolina to Boston, to avoid the Washington-Baltimore corridor, we swung to the west, traveling north on I-81, and staying overnight in the Wilkes-Barre area on the last leg to Boston. Wow, what a beautiful area of the country. There just is not enough time in one's life to enjoy everything this wonderful country has to offer.
But I digress.
Back to Houston-based Nacero, Inc. Data points:
- site of a former coal mine;
- $6 billion project;
- 3,500 construction jobs;
- 450 permanent high-tech jobs paying $85,000 / year
- methane to zero sulfure, 100% domestic, low- and net zero-carbon gasoline in existing ICEs without modification;
And, then look at this: Nacero will also build, what appears to be an identical Pennsylvania unit near Odessa, TX.
- announced April 22, 2021
- $6.5 - $7.5 billion Penwell GTG (see Pennsylvania story above)
- Penwell, Ector County, TX: Penwell is seventeen miles southeast of Odessa
- would be the first in the US to produce gasoline from natural gas, as well as the first in the world to incorporate CCS;
Nacero has let a contract to Haldor Topsoe AS to license the necessary technology to utilize more than just natural gas for its Penwell/Odessa project. Data points:
- contractor: Haldor Topsoe AS
- GTG (gas-to-gasoline)
- Topsoe Improved Gasoline Synthesis (Tigas) GTG technology
- will use a feedstock of low-cost natural gasoline, biomethane captured from farms and landfills, and mitigated flared natural gas from the Permian basin to produce 100,000 b/d of finished gasoline;
- that finished gasoline component will be ready for blending to US commercial grades
- much more at the link
More on Topsoe's TIGAS technology: link here.
Nacero has done this before: proven results in an identical unit of scale operating since 2019 at state-owned Turkmengaz's GTG complex at Ovadan-Depe near Ashgabad, Turkmenistan.
Other links:
- Motortrend, September 8, 2021, with graphics.
- Advanced Biofuels USA, June 1, 2021.
- Methane-to-Methanol, University of Michigan ties in with ARPA-E. Project term, January, 2014 - March, 2017. Also, Penn State, same project.
- And, of course, wiki.
If it works, could we see such a plant in the Eagle Ford or the Bakken?
