Whoever thought about a racing car powered by a diesel engine, winning an endurance race in something like the 24 hours of Le Mans? This is where catalysis actually plays a role in producing the most novel, newest transportation fuels that are out there. Within Shell, we have used the chemistry and catalysis to develop a new process that's called gas to liquids - GTL is the abbreviation - where we start from natural gas and convert that, in several steps, to a synthetic fuel that has cleaner burning properties because it hardly contains any sulphur and virtually no aromatics.
Basically, the process consists of three steps: you start with natural gas that you convert at high temperature and high pressure to synthesis gas, then you take that synthesis gas in step two - and that is really the heart of the matter - and convert these simple molecules into long chain wax molecules. And in the third step, you take those wax and cut them to the desired size required for the fuel properties that you want to use them with.
In essence the process enables us to take a given amount of gas and convert that, within a smaller volume of reactor, to more liquids. Basically that means you make more efficient use of your resources and use less equipment, so less expensive to do so.
We have been in this for thirty years and in those thirty years we have achieved a lot of things: the understanding of how the catalysis works on a molecular level, from there you start making them on a small scale to see if your ideas are right. Once they have been demonstrated right you go to the larger scale. We started in the mid 1970's with very small type of equipment here in Amsterdam and ten years later, by the mid 1980's we were confident that we could build ourselves a pilot plant. And ten years thereafter we built our first what I would call a commercial unit at about 14,000 barrels per day in ... in Malaysia and from that we produce the product that currently goes into the V-powered vehicle that was so successful in Le Mans.
The first diesel engine car winning such a race.
Our GTL-development has recently allowed us to even convert the synthesis gas to a liquid with a higher efficiency, and that has resulted in the decision to build a plant in Qatar.
It requires a lot of perseverance to develop such a technology. It takes time to learn things. The GTL-process really proved that Shell takes science seriously, because without the basic understanding and the long-term commitment, you wouldn't be able to build a process as efficient as this is.
If you are really interested in technology, and that is basically seeing the science applied in real life then Shell is a great opportunity because we cover both the fundamental research that finds out how things work and are able to implement the findings into a commercial operation.
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