Oil from gas
Description
GTL, the abbreviation of gas-to-liquids, is a quite common notion today. However, at the start of the research and development programme that led to Shell's GTL technology this concept was far from obvious. In the presentation the following items will be addressed: (i) the historical background, (ii) the rationale of Shell's R&D in the area of synthetic fuels, (iii) how its course was affected by events in the world of oil during the seventies and eighties of the last century, (iv) how the originally envisaged coal-to-liquids process morphed into a gas-to-liquids one, based on the partial oxidation of methane to synthesis gas (CO/H2) followed by Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis and hydroconversion of the FT product [the Shell Middle-Distillate Synthesis (SMDS)], and finally (v) how the SMDS concept was broadened into GTL. To date, the Shell GTL process has been implemented in Malaysia and Qatar.
Speaker(s)
Curriculum vitae Rob van Veen
Rob van Veen (1948) is an inorganic chemist, and obtained his PhD in 1981 on an electrocatalytic subject. In 1974, he joined the Royal Shell Laboratory, Amsterdam, where he also spent his entire working life - apart from a (small) year in England (Thornton, near Chester), 1982, and a year in France (Grand-Couronne, near Rouen), 1986-7. Main themes of his work: (i) direct methanol fuel cell, (ii) structure & reactivity of coal, (iii) chemistry of catalyst preparation, (iv) [fundamental] research on, and development & commercialisation of, various hydro-processing catalysts. From 1986 to 2006, he was also a part-time professor at TU/eindhoven. Since his retirement in 2008, he has been living out his chemistry-history hobby, among other things
Location
Lecture hall of the Polymer Science Park
Ceintuurbaan 15, 8022 AW Zwolle
Organiser
Dutch Process Technologists
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