Now this will be interesting if it pans out - Siluria
From the
MIT Technology Review:
Chasing the Dream of Half-Price Gasoline from Natural Gas
At a pilot plant in Menlo Park, California, a technician pours white pellets into a steel tube and then taps it with a wrench to make sure they settle together. He closes the tube, and oxygen and methane�the main ingredient of natural gas�flow in. Seconds later, water and ethylene, the world�s largest commodity chemical, flow out. Another simple step converts the ethylene into gasoline.
The white pellets are a catalyst developed by the Silicon Valley startup Siluria, which has raised $63.5 million in venture capital. If the catalysts work as well in a large, commercial scale plant as they do in tests, Siluria says, the company could produce gasoline from natural gas at about half the cost of making it from crude oil�at least at today�s cheap natural-gas prices.
There have been a lot of flash-in-the-pan stories like this but again, if it pans out, the effects will be far reaching.
More. Faster.
Posted by DaveH at January 20, 2014 5:54 PM