Overview
Oxford Catalysts and Velocys technologies have benefits in many applications, although we are mainly focussed on the production of synthetic fuels from gas, biomass, coal and waste. Microchannel process technology, together with superactive catalysts, results in far higher productivity than conventional process technology. This unlocks the economic, distributed production of fuels at smaller scales. We estimate that the market for such fuels could be in excess of 25 million barrels per day.
The Fischer-Tropsch reaction was developed in the 1920s to convert gasified coal to liquid fuels. Today, this technology has a number of applications for the sustainable production of high quality synthetic oil from waste gas, onshore and offshore, cheap and abundant coal, waste biomass and even municipal solid waste. Oxford Catalysts and Velocys are using old chemistry in a new way to create a better fuel future.
The World Bank estimates that 134 billion cubic meters of gas was flared worldwide in 2010 and vast shale gas reserves have been discovered in North America and elsewhere. However, the majority of gas reserves worldwide are not big enough to make conventional monetization technologies economic. With our technology, much of this gas can now be captured and used economically.
Microchannels are also particularly suited to hydroprocessing applications, used for upgrading Fischer-Tropsch synthetic oil for end use as high quality synthetic diesel and jet fuel, and for the addition of incremental capacity to the hydroprocessing units for conventional petroleum products.