Sundrop Fuels plans to break ground late this year on its inaugural commercial plant, also the US’ first facility using ExxonMobil MTG technology, which will use a multi-phase process to convert sustainable forest waste into clean bio-based green gasoline up to 50 million gallons annually.
The plant, located near Alexandria in Louisiana, will use a gasification process to convert the forest waste combined with hydrogen from clean-burning natural gas into a synthesis gas, further converting into methanol.
As part of the MTG synthesis process, methanol is feed into a fixed-bed reactor system, turning it into hydrocarbons and water, with the end product as zero-sulfur, ultra-low benzene gasoline that can be used directly or blended with petroleum-based gasoline.
Originally developed in the 1970s, the MTG technology was successfully commercialized for a large-scale natural gas to gasoline plant during the 1980s in New Zealand.
Sundrop Fuels chief executive officer Wayne Simmons said the ExxonMobil MTG technology gives Sundrop a proven fuels synthesis method to maximize the economic and environmental benefits gained through its production of clean, bio-based renewable gasoline.
"This combination of technologies represents an important milestone in America’s path to energy independence and the integration of environmentally beneficial, domestic gasoline into our nation’s transportation fuel supply," Simmons added.
Sundrop Fuels said its first facility will also provide an operational platform for it to begin field integration of its proprietary RP Reactor radiant particle heat transfer gasification technology.
Chesapeake Energy Corporation, a producer of natural gas in northern Louisiana’s Haynesville Shale Field, provides significant backing to for Sundrop Fuels, and invested $155m in the latter in mid-2011.
