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INNOVATIONE & TECHNOLOGY
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Natural Gas Best Value
Natural gas resources that are not currently exploited are enormous. Enormous amounts of natural gas are ranked as marginal gas (about 15% of the world known gas reserves) due to their distance from final markets or to their irrelevant dimensions, factors that do not allow to exploit them with current transport technologies.
Part of these resources, if associated to oil, is either flared or freed into the atmosphere (gas flaring/venting), having considerable environmental impact: according to satellite detections, over 150 billion cubic meters each year are dispersed into the atmosphere in this way.
The possible technological solutions being studied or at a development stage are: transportation through high pressure pipeline, transportation in liquid form (LNG) or as compressed gas (CNG), liquid conversion at the well-head into other energy vectors such as electric power, hydrogen and other liquids (GtL).
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Marginal Gas -
High Pressure Transport
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Gas-to-Liquids
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Dehydrogenation of light paraffins
LNG technology finds opportunity in fields of big dimensions (>135 billion cubic meters of natural gas) whereas CNG is best suited for smaller fields.
The High Pressure Transport (TAP) project has developed innovative technological solutions for big quantities of natural gas (about 20-30 billions of cubic meters a year), allowing to link markets and productive areas distant from one another. This technology was tested (the only case of the world) as a pilot project in real life conditions, with sections of pipes made of high-robustness steels (API 5L X80 and API 5L X100, according to API-American Petroleum Institute - 5L specification). In order to understand how such parts of the pipes would behave in conditions of severe damaging, some explosion-testing was performed. The next technological objective is verifying on API 5L X100-new formulation materials the possibility to fully stop ductile fractures, as well as to withstand slow and extensive deformations as the ones that are provoked by critical geomorphologic scenarios.
The Gas-to-Liquids (GtL ) project has allowed to develop a proprietary technology for GtL conversion. The GtL process transforms natural gas into distillates through three phases: synthesis gases (CO e H2) production, conversion of syngas into waxes via Fischer-Tropsch reaction and conversion of the waxes into distillates. The GtL technology has been developed through the construction of a 20 bl/d capacity pilot plant at the Sannazzaro refinery.
The plant has been in operation since 2001 and the experimental text run carried out in 2008-2009 has led to finalize the technology development.
The availability of a proprietary technology for the conversion of natural gas to liquid fuels can give to Eni a leverage for the best exploitation of gas resources and the production of a high quality diesel cut (no heteroatoms, no aromatics, high cetane number and high transparency).
The technology of light paraffin dehydrogenation points to the enhancement of the "liquid" fraction of natural gas.
It employs fast riser reactors and has been developed to the basic design level for potential applications in large-scale business initiatives in countries producing oil and gas.
The ultimate goal is the transformation of gaseous products at room temperature (primarily propane and butane) in liquid products (gasoline or middle distillates) via dehydrogenation and subsequent oligomerization of produced olefins.
Downloadable documents
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GTL Project
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TAP technology
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