Hydrocarbon Processing - August 2022 - 47

History of the HPI
Bintulu and Mossel Bay: The world's
first GTL complexes. The first widescale
use of synthetic fuels production
from syngas was in Germany in the 1930s
and early 1940s. These facilities utilized
the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process, a
chemical reaction that converts carbon
monoxide (CO) and hydrogen into liquid
hydrocarbons (e.g., transportation fuels).
According to literature, by the mid-1940s,
Germany had nine plants in operation
that used the FT process. Combined,
these
plants produced
600,000 tpy of synthetic fuels.241
FT synthesis was the basis for several
plants developed by Sasol in South
Africa beginning in the mid-1950s.
These included Sasol-1-3 plants, which
used coal as the primary feedstock, later
transitioning to natural gas in the early
2000s-Sasol developed and commercialized
its Slurry Phase Distillate FT
process at the Sasol-1 plant in Sasolburg,
South Africa in the early 1990s.242
Sasol-2
and Sasol-3 plants were built in the early
1980s as a direct effect of the oil crises of
the 1970s-these plants accounted for
$6 B in capital investments and utilized
proprietary GTL technology from Sasol
(the global oil crises of the 1970s were
detailed in the History of the HPI section
of the June issue).241
Sasol's FT technology was then utilized
for the Mossgas GTL plant, which,
upon completion in 1992, became the
world's first commercial-scale GTL plant
using natural gas as a raw material for
syngas production.241
The Mossgas GTL
approximately
plant, located in Mossel Bay, eventually
fell into the hands of The Petroleum, Oil
and Gas Corp. of South Africa (PetroSA)-the
national oil company of South
Africa-after its formation in 2002 upon
the merger of Soekor, Mossgas and parts
of the Strategic Fuel Fund Association.243
The facility converts natural, methanerich
gas into high-value synthetic fuels.
According to PetroSA, the technology
uses a series of conversions starting with
the reforming of methane to carbon dioxide
(CO2
), CO, hydrogen and water.
The CO-to-hydrogen ratio is adjusted
using the water-gas shift reaction and the
removal of excess CO2
in an aqueous solution
of alkanolamine. The synthesis gas
is then chemically reacted over an iron or
cobalt catalyst to produce liquid hydrocarbons
(gasoline, kerosene, diesel) and
other byproducts.244
The Mossel Bay GTL plant has been
expanded over the past two decades,
reaching a total installed capacity of
36,000 bpd-a crude oil equivalent of
45,000 bpd. Sasol has also improved its
FT-GTL process, which was used for Sasol's
second large-scale GTL plant, Oryx
GTL. The Oryx GTL facility-a JV between
Sasol and Qatar Petroleum-in
Ras Laffan City, Qatar started development
in 2003 and began operations in
2007. The 34,000-bpd plant was built at
a total cost of nearly $1 B. Sasol would
later provide its FT technology to Chevron
for the nearly $10-B, 33,000-bpd Escravos
GTL plant in Escravos, Nigeria,
and the $3.4-B, 1.5-MMtpy Oltin Yo'l
GTL plant in Uzbekistan.
Shell was another company that devoted
significant resources to the development
of a GTL technology and subsequent
capital-intensive investments in
LIVE WEBCAST
Wednesday, August 3, 2022 | 10 a.m. CDT / 3 p.m. UTC
Ravi Subramanyan
Director of Industry Solutions
Manufacturing
HiveMQ
Mike Rhodes
Managing Editor
Hydrocarbon Processing
Hydrocarbon Processing | AUGUST 2022 47
Enable Digitization in Hydrocarbon Processing
Industry with MQTT
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Hydrocarbon Processing - August 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hydrocarbon Processing - August 2022