Jun 6 2011
Carbon Sciences Inc. (OTCBB: CABND), the developer of a breakthrough technology to make gasoline and other fuels from natural gas and carbon dioxide, today announced plans to produce samples of diesel fuel in an end-to-end process demonstration.
Carbon Sciences' breakthrough catalyst technology transforms natural gas and carbon dioxide into a synthesis gas (syngas), which can then be transformed into gasoline and other fuels using conventional Fischer-Tropsch ("FT") gas-to-liquids ("GTL") technology. Of the various methods used to produce syngas from natural gas, dry reforming using carbon dioxide is the most desired approach, due to lower projected capital and operating costs. However, there is no commercial catalyst robust enough to sustain dry reforming reactions on an industrial scale. The Carbon Sciences technical team has solved this problem.
Carbon Sciences' novel catalyst is very robust and has been proven to work continuously at high conversion efficiency during more than 2,000 hours of laboratory testing and 600 hours of commercial testing even without regeneration. Based on these results, the company's management believes its catalyst is the most robust catalyst available today for dry forming of methane.
Byron Elton, Carbon Sciences' CEO, commented, "After achieving very positive commercial test results for our catalyst, we are moving ahead aggressively to accelerate the production of larger quantities of the catalyst, as well as completing the technical and economic analyses in preparation for discussions with strategic partners. Working with the GTL experts at our engineering firm, Emerging Fuels Technology, we also plan to demonstrate an end-to-end process that will produce samples of diesel fuel that can be used by existing diesel vehicles."
"Our diesel fuel will have the same characteristics as conventional petroleum based diesel fuel," continued Mr. Elton. "However, our fuel will burn cleaner than conventional petroleum based diesel fuel simply because it is molecularly manufactured from natural gas and carbon dioxide, without the contaminants found in petroleum based diesel. Making samples of clean burning diesel is just one of the ways we intend to demonstrate our breakthrough technology."
The Fischer-Tropsch gas-to-liquids process, developed in Germany in the 1920s, has been a promising way to produce liquid transportation fuels without using petroleum. However, the lack of a low cost method to make syngas has been the biggest challenge to unlocking the mass scale potential of FT technology. Carbon Sciences' robust dry reforming technology, which uses carbon dioxide as part of the feed and does not require the use of a capital-intensive air separation unit, has the potential to successfully enable FT technology and change the course of the transportation fuels industry.
Mr. Elton concluded, "We believe that it is within the grasp of the U.S. to achieve energy security. The solution is to combine the country's abundant supply of natural gas with our breakthrough technology to produce low cost syngas to make vast quantities of transportation fuels using mature FT technology. This disruptive combination can change our energy landscape forever -- seamlessly, securely and sustainably."