Investment liquid fuels production from

LIQUID FUELS PRODUCTION FROM WOOD - ESTIMATED INVESTMENT... 

The oxygen plant accounts for about 55% of the investment for the production of syngas from methane. To lower these costs, Syntroleum have operated a demonstration unit in which air instead of oxygen is fed to a low pressure au-tothermal reformer (11). The problem, however, is that the syngas contains about 50% nitrogen and hence the partial pressures of the reactants in the low pressure downstream FT reactors are very low and so the reactor capacities too are low. The tail gas, after condensation of the liquid FT products, will contain about 85% nitrogen and so cannot be recycled to the reformers or be used as fuel gas. Unless demonstrated to be otherwise, the process does not appear to be competitive. 

Plant investment was prepared by the Dravo Corp. Gas price was presented on the basis of "a typical utilities guidelines which differed in many details from the utility financing method of C. F. Braun. In the case of COGAS, liquid product credit has a substantial effect on the gas price. In the paper this credit was at current market prices of 15.40/bbl for No. 4 fuel oil and 16.80 for naphtha. The resulting plant tailgate gas price on a 20-year operating time DCF basis was 5.08/MMBtu. However, if the liquids and gas are priced on an equivalent Btu basis, the fuel oil would be 25/bbl, the naphtha 27/bbl and the gas 4.10/MMBtu. These latter liquid prices are in the range of those estimated for liquids from coal by other processes. 

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