Chemical Engineering August 2013 - 10

CHEMENTATOR
Linde to help commercialize an oil-from-algae process
S
apphire Energy, Inc. (San Diego, Calif.;
www.sapphireenergy.com) and The Linde
Group (Munich; www.linde.com) have signed
an agreement, with a minimum span of five
years, to commercialize Sapphire's process
for producing crude oil from algae. The
agreement expands an existing partnership
in which the two companies have developed
a low-cost method for delivering CO2 to
algae ponds. Linde will now help refine and
scale up Sapphire's hydrothermal process
for crude production. The two companies
also plan to adapt the process for other feed
materials, including municipal solid waste
and farm waste, and to license the technology
jointly.
Sapphire's process differs from conventional
algae-to-crude methods in that the
feed is not concentrated to an algae content
of greater than 90% solids for oil extraction.
Instead, the feed is subjected to a simple
dewatering, using technology adapted from
the wastewater industry, to obtain an algae
concentration of about 20%. The solution
is then pumped to a hydrothermal reactor,
where the algae is converted to crude at
250-350°C and 700-3,000 psig in a continuous
process. When the mixture leaves the
reactor the oil is separated from the water
by conventional liquid-liquid solvent extraction,
says Ben Saydah, Sapphire's director
of conversion and upgrading. The solvent is
then boiled off and recycled and the water
phase is recycled as nutrients.
The main advantage of the process is that
it avoids the costly dewatering step prior to
oil extraction, says Saydah. " With our process,
once you produce oil the dewatering is
much easier. Also, we don't boil the water,
which saves energy, and we will be able to
recover a lot of the heat. "
A 2-barrels-per-day (bbl/d) pilot plant
has been operating for nine months in Las
Cruces, N.M., processing algae produced at
Sapphire's algae farm in Columbus, N.M.
A 100-bbl/d demonstration plant is in the
design stage. Sapphire has an agreement
with Tesoro Corp. (San Antonio, Tex.) under
which Tesoro will purchase crude from Sapphire.
In test runs, about 85% of the carbon
in the algae oil has been converted to diesel
fuel after hydrotreating, says Saydah.
This FCC process shown to enhance olefins production
J
X Nippon Oil & Energy Corp. (JX_NOE;
Tokyo,
Japan;
www.noe.jx-group.co.jp)
fluidhas
demonstrated enhanced propylene and
butenes yields by its high-severity,
catalytic cracking (HS-FCC) technology. In
a 3,000-bbl/d semi-commercial plant, which
has been operating at the company's Mizushima
Refinery since May 2011, propylene
yields have been found to be enhanced by
25 wt.% - 5% higher than previously anticipated,
and much higher than the 4 wt.%
yield achieved in the existing FCC unit. The
butenes yield was also enhanced by 6% to 20
wt.%, and the yield of high-octane gasoline
was 29 wt.%.
The HS-FCC process features a downflow
Syngas from CO2 + H2
Last month, a three-year,
€9.2-million research project
was started to develop a process
to make synthesis gas
(syngas) from CO2 and H2. The
project is funded by the German
Federal Ministry of Education
and Research (BMBF; Bonn,
Germany; www.bmbf.de) within
its Technologies for Sustainability
and Climate Protection
- Chemical Processes and
Use of CO2 scheme (for more
projects, see CE, July 2013, pp.
16-19). The partners - BASF
SE (Ludwigshafen), the Linde
Group (Munich), ThyssenKrupp
Uhde GmbH (Dortmund)
ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe
(Duisburg), hte AG (Heidelberg),
VDEh Betriebsforschungsinstitute
(Düsseldorf)
and the Technical University of
Dortmund - are developing a
two-stage process. First, methane
is decomposed thermally at
high temperatures into H2 and
carbon, without the addition
of O2 or water. This H2 is then
catalytically reacted with CO2 to
form syngas (CO and H2).
The H2-production step alone
reactor, which has the advantage of suppressing
backmixing, and also results in
shorter contact times (0.5-0.6 s) between the
feed and the catalyst, which allows higher
catalyst-to-oil ratios. The short contact times
also enable the process to operate at higher
(600°C) temperatures (For more process information,
see CE, August 2009, p. 12).
JX_NOE has been developing the HS-FCC
process for several years. In cooperation
with Japan Cooperation Center, Petroleum
(JCCP; Tokyo) and King Fahad University
of Petroleum and Minerals (Dharan, Saudi
Arabia), the company built a 30-bbl/d demonstration
plant at Saudi Aramaco's Ras Tanura
Refinery that operated in 2003-2004.
Ethylene in FCC off-gas is upgraded to motor fuels
A
typical fluid catalytic cracking unit
(FCC) generates about 200 tons/d of
dry gas - a mixture of off-gases that
is burned as refinery fuel. However,
about 40 tons of that gas is ethylene,
which would have much greater value
as gasoline or diesel fuel. A process that
converts better than 40% of the ethyl10
CHEMICAL
ENGINEERING WWW.CHE.COM JULY 2013
is expected to reduce CO2 emissions
by about 50% compared
to conventional steam methane
reforming, and the solid carbon
byproduct may potentially be
used to replace hard coal in the
coke and steel industries, says
BASF. The partners hope to develop
a pilot plant design and a
concept for integrating the technology
into existing chemical
and steel-producing sites.
Utilizing offgases
Siemens Metals Technologies
(Linz, Austria; www.siemens.
com/metals) and LanzaTech
(Roselle, Ill.; www.lanzatech.
com) have signed a ten-year cooperation
agreement to develop
and market integrated environmental
solutions for the global
(Continues on p. 12)
ene to motor fuels in a single pass is
being developed by UOP LLC, a Honeywell
company (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.
uop.com).
Circle XX on p. XX or go to adlinks.che.com/230XX-XX
AUGUST 2013
A conventional way to recover the ethylene
is by oligomerization to fuels, says
Christopher Nicholas, lead scientist in
exploratory catalyst research with UOP,
but the recovery is usually below 25%.
This is because dry gas contains impurities
(NH3, H2S, CO and CO2) that can
poison the catalyst, which is often a zeolite.
UOP's catalyst, consisting of nickel
on an amorphous silica-alumina (ASA)
base, is stable in the presence of the impurities,
he says.
(Continues on p. 13)
http://www.sapphireenergy.com http://www.linde.com http://www.bmbf.de http://www.noe.jx-group.co.jp http://www.siemens http://www.lanzatech http://www.uop.com http://adlinks.che.com/230XX-XX http://WWW.CHE.COM
Chemical Engineering August 2013

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