Natural Gas to Ethylene in One Step Siluria Technologies OCM (Oxidative Coupling of Methane)

摘要

The oxidative coupling reaction of methane for direct, one-steprnconversion of C1’s to C2’s has been known for many years but neverrncommercialized. Siluria Technologies has succeeded by bringing together 3 majorrnscientific advances of the past decade that were unavailable to earlierrnresearchers in this chemistry. The advances are (1) Biomaterial Templating - thernuse of genetically engineered biomaterials to influence the structure of inorganicrncatalysts grown on these templates, (2) Nanowire Catalyst Design - a syntheticrnmethod that permits the influencing of catalyst properties by changing the activernsites, and which can be made under commercially scalable synthetic conditions,rnand (3) High-throughput Screening – that allows for measuring gas-to-gasrnreactions orders of magnitude faster than in traditional reactors.rnIn addition, all of Siluria's R&D and experimental work on the reaction hasrnbeen limited to commercially viable process conditions and reactorrnconfigurations. Work in the 1980’s and early 1990’s on this highly exothermicrnreaction, typically using catalysts produced by conventional bulk methods, wasrnlimited to temperatures, pressures, or other process conditions that were outsidernof the practical engineering window for a commercial system.rnThe recent and rapid pace of natural gas discovery and development inrnNorth America and other regions provides a very strong business case for therndeployment of this technology.