Methane Conversion to Fuels and Chemicals: Opportunities and Approaches

Abstract

This is the final report of a one-year, Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Methane, the primary component of natural gas, has reserves that are on the order of those of petroleum. Processes that utilize these vast supplies of methane will need to be developed to replace dwindling supplies of petroleum in the future. Processes utilizing natural gas promise to be more environmentally friendly, as natural gas as a feedstock is freer of contaminants and more readily purified than petroleum. Short contact time reactor configurations are likely candidates for this application. The authors objectives are to develop reactor designs and computer models appropriate for short contact time applications. They have succeeded in assembling both an experimental facility for investigating the performance of short contact time reactors, and a computer simulation that includes full mass and heat transport as well as coupled surface and gas phase detailed chemical kinetics