Lead Inventor: Klaus Lackner, PhD



Problem or Unmet Need:

Energy production and consumption in America is becoming economically unsustainable. In the current economic climate, American leaders are calling for methods to take advantage of domestic energy sources. America has limited access to domestic oil sources, but it has significant sources of natural gas. Various chemical processes have been developed to generate fuels such as gasoline and diesel from natural gas. However, it has been underutilized because it is expensive and inefficient. This issue has limited market growth and presented a challenge that is ripe for opportunity.



Details of the Invention:

This technology seeks to address this issue by offering a way to efficiently convert natural gas into liquid fuels that can be used directly in automobiles without the need to alter the existing infrastructure. This technology aims to optimize the reformation of syngas from natural gas (namely, methane). By converting natural gas into a better source of syngas, the syngas be can be further reformed into gasoline and diesel via well-known and scalable industrial chemical reactions. To generate the syngas, the technology proposes using a novel two-step reaction mechanism and developing small reactors in parallel that can respond to market pressures and produce alternative desired products, such as methanol, ethanol, and ethers.



Applications:

-- Small to large-scale production of liquid hydrocarbons fuels such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel

-- Production of monomers for specialty and commodity waxes, oils, and polymers.

-- Production of methanol and other alcohol-based fuels



Advantages:

-- Significantly reduces capital and process costs in an environment that dramatically increases product throughput compared to the classical syngas/Fischer-Tropsch methodology

-- Novel mechanism and small-scale reactors allow system to respond to market forces

-- Use of domestic energy sources will limit exposure to market forces from unstable regions



Patent Status: Patent Pending



Licensing Status: Available for Licensing or Sponsored Research Support


Further Information
Jim Aloise
Email: TechTransfer@columbia.edu

File Number: M11-072