PRODUCTION OF SYNTHESIS GAS BY CATALYTIC PARTIAL OXIDATION OF METHANE WITH AIR

For countries in remote areas with large reserves of natural gas, e. g. the State of Qatar, the economic utilization of this gas is in our opinion only possible in a low-cost process that converts the natural gas to liquid hydrocarbons, The basic concept of this low-cost process was presented and discussed in the first of a series of four papers; in a first step natural gas is converted to synthesis gas, which is fed to the Fischer-Tropsch-synthesis unit. On the basis of natural gas, synthesis gas is usually produced by steam reforming. Under our special conditions of a low-cost concept, a new way of converting natural gas to synthesis gas is of interest; this is the catalytic partial oxidation of natural gas by air. The production of synthesis gas in this way was investigated in an adiabatic semi-technical reactor; additional kinetic studies were done in a bench-scale apparatus.