KRICT develops high efficiency catalyst to create synthetic gasoline from natural gas

A team of researchers at the Green Chemistry Process Research Division of the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), headed by senior researcher Kyungsoo Ha announced on May 22 that they have developed a high-efficiency nano-catalyst that can produce synthesized diesel, gasoline and naphtha from natural gas.
This catalyst is called a nano-channel reactor, because the structure itself works as the reactor. It has 50% higher production efficiency than existing reactors and takes up much less space. A nano-channel reactor is only one-tenth the size of an existing modular reactor. Manufacturers will now be able to produce synthetic petroleum on the move, either by land or at sea.
The researchers expect that their work will be applied to the limited spaces available on the floating production, storage and offloading units (FPSO) that contain production, storage and unloading facilities in one ship to generate synthetic petroleum right at the marine gas fields. Hyundai Heavy Industries and Samsung Heavy Industries are evaluating the feasibility of the new technology for application to FPSOs.
The research team made a significant improvement on the structure of the support and surface properties to enhance conversion efficiency. This research was sponsored by Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) and the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning. A group of researchers from POSTECH headed by Professor Jinwoo Lee also participated in this research.
(May 23, 2013)