Biofuels Power Corporation has signed a letter of intent with ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions and Liberty GTL to construct a small-scale gas-to-liquid (GTL) demonstration facility in Houston, Texas.
All parties have pinpointed a non-binding target date to finish commissioning of the GTL Pilot Plant on or before December 31, 2014. The GTL Pilot Plant will be meant to commercially demonstrate converting stranded natural gas resources to synthetic crude oil.
Biofuels will run the GTL Pilot Plant for the two-year demonstration period. ThyssenKrupp will provide technical services and contribute a previously operating auto-thermal reformer pilot plant of proven design that will be used to generate synthesis gas feedstock for the production of synthetic crude oil. Liberty will provide intellectual property and operating know-how regarding crude oil synthesis along with the relevant catalyst supply. The Liberty technical team is also credited for designing the FT (Fischer Tropsch) Reactor, which will convert the synthetic gas to synthetic crude oil. The GTL Pilot Plant will be assembled at the Houston Clean Energy Park.
Eric Gadd, the company’s chief commercial officer said, “This GTL pilot project is an important milestone toward our goal of installing small scale GTL plants at stranded gas well sites. The pilot plant will prove the commercial viability of deploying small-scale GTL plants in North America. With an abundant natural gas resource base, future gas-to-liquids developments like this could fill a need in the energy industry for decades to come.”