Eni has developed a proprietary technology SCT – CPO (Short Contact Time – Catalytic Partial Oxidation) to transform gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons (e.g. natural gas, GPL, fuel gas) in syngas (CO e H₂), by using reactors three times smaller than the ones currently in use.
The development of this technology using gaseous reagents and air/air enriched with O₂ has been completed and is currently in marketing, while it is being finalized the one with pure O₂. The technology using liquid reagents has yet to reach the pilot phase.
The main goal is to have access to economic and easy to use processes, allowing the H₂ production for oil refining and oil upgrading with flexibility, with respect to the charge composition and the productive capacity of the plant.
The adopted technological solutions (mixers, reactors, catalysts, heat exchange systems) have been tested for more than 30,000 hours in different bench-scale plants in the Oil & Gas Research Center in San Donato Milanese (MI).
This technology is presently being tested on a 200 Nm³/h demo plant running on light hydrocarbons and oxygen at the Research Center in Milazzo.
A small-scale demonstration unit was built in 2008 as part of a multi-fuel station.
Besides the experiments conceptual studies and modeling of reaction / reactor were carried out and 14 patent applications were filed.

MultiEnergy Agip fuel stations are at the forefront worldwide: they use new forms of energy in an innovative way to better respect the environment and the quality of life.
The Mantua installation was made within the European Zero Regio Project, which aims to develop in Lombardy and Germany integrated systems for sustainable mobility through the use of hydrogen multifuel service stations to power vehicles with zero emissions.
In the station, hydrogen is produced by a natural gas-fueled reformer (20 m³/ h), based on the SCT-CPO technology. This technology uses a high temperature catalytic process with a premixed flow of steam and natural gas, converted into hydrogen through different stages. The plant started in 2008.
To further reduce CO₂ emissions, the stations in Mantua and Frankfurt are also considered Green Petrol Station, being equipped with solar photovoltaic (8 and 20 kWp respectively), capable of generating electricity from renewable sources equal to about 30,000 kWh/yr , corresponding to a reduction of about 16 tons/yr of CO₂ emissions.
For the fossil fuel part, the multiEnergy station is an innovative modular concept, which integrates the supply of hydrogen with liquid and gaseous conventional fuels, including biofuels, contributing to the development of new generation vehicles with low / zero emissions.
For energy saving, in the short term the multiEnergy station will become a green platform to experiment green building, green architecture, low-impact recycled materials, electrical, thermal and cooling solutions, more efficient lighting, etc. in order to reduce energy consumption in terms of kWh/m²/yr.