MDN has written, many times, about companies planning or building gas-to-liquids (GTL) plants. Such plants convert natural gas into other hydrocarbon-based products–like gasoline and diesel fuel. As you can imagine there’s some sophisticated chemistry used in order to make it happen. The process was originally pioneered in Germany in the 1920s and (yes) was used by the Nazis to convert coal to diesel. That method is the most well-known and is called Fischer-Tropsch (FT). There are, however, other methods that have been pioneered since that time. A recent entrant in GTL technology is a process called STG+, created by the company Primus Green Energy, based in New Jersey. Primus CEO Sam Golan, writing for the Marcellus.com website, makes a product pitch for his tech that many in the Marcellus/Utica region could benefit from STG+. One of the primary selling points is that STG+ can be used, profitably, in areas where there are low volumes of stranded natural gas. We’re not interested in giving Primus a free product pitch, but we did find Golan’s description of the various technologies used in GTL, including their own STG+, to be interesting and helpful for our own understanding of how GTL works. We thought you might find it interesting too…
