Synthetic or reformulated fuels: a challenge for catalysis

Despite comparative figures for worldwide crude oil and natural gas proven reserves, present time contribution of syngas chemistry to motorfuels remai ns marginal when the refining industry is faced to main constraints: market demand evolution, stringent specifications and environmental issues. Actua lly natural gas upgrading via syngas chemistry yields key products (e.g. me thanol) among which clean motorfuels (ethers, FT products) should develop d espite the huge investments required, mostly for syngas production. Main ch allenges and corresponding issues for catalysts and related technologies ar e identified for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis and motorfuels long-term reformu lation. Among other, mastering the chain-growth (FT synthesis) improving th e FCC products: gasoline, and LCO for Diesel pool. All these issues need si gnificant progresses in catalyst and technology to be solved Lastly, our ec onomical study focused on Diesel-fuel production, shows up that clean diese l (from SR-LCO mixtures) and FT Diesel reach similar production costs when cheap NG is available. In the future FT middle distillates should amount to a few percent (5-150 M t) of the 1700-2000 Mt of transport middle distillates expected from oil re fining. However they should more and more be a compulsory part of diesel po ol if the level of investment for an FT process continues to decrease signi ficantly.