The technology will allow Bangladesh to successfully produce diesel oil utilizing own natural resources. So, the country will not need to import crude oil. Hence the technology offers dual benefit for Bangladesh. Firstly it saves a huge amount of hardly earned foreign currency. Secondly, it will make a pathway to utilize the natural gas and coal reserves of Bangladesh which is at present not utilized properly.

 This is a decade old technology known as Fischer Tropsch Process. Only recently the idea is put into commercial use to encounter the shortage of crude oil around the world. In addition, recent research has focused on small scale Fischer Tropsch plant. The small scale Fischer Tropsch plants can be used to exploit remote and small gas reserves which was previously considered uneconomical to develop.

At present Shell has a commercial plant in Malaysia that uses this technology. The plant produces extremely high quality diesel equivalent to ultra low sulphur diesel and

naptha using natural gas as feedstock. Shell is building another large scale plant in Qatar. In South Africa SASOL has a plant that uses coal as feedstock and produces diesel and some other chemicals. In addition there are several small scale commercial demonstration plants around the world.

 As mentioned earlier it is a decade old technology used by the Germans during the World War because no country will sell oil to Germany. The process of conversion is very straight forward. Firstly, coal or natural gas is burned in a controlled way to generate syngas (mixture of Carbon mono oxide and Hydrogen). Later, the syngas is converted to diesel in one step. It is done around 250 degree C in presence of a suitable catalyst such as Nickel or Fe.

 A diagram of the technology is given below:

The fuel produced this way is known as Fischer Tropsch fuel or synthetic fuel. This fuel is much cleaner in terms of environmental emissions as well. The quality of the fuel is so good that it is normally considered much better than Ultra Low sulphur diesel.

 One of the advantages of this new technology is that it will be able to convert Natural Gas to Diesel in a very small scale plant located at the gas field and then transport the liquid fuel which is more convenient and economical than transporting natural gas. Therefore the technology can be used to commercialize proven but commercially unprofitable gas fields such as Begumganj, Semutang, etc. At present the huge cost of producing natural gas which includes the huge capital investment of building a gas pipeline from the wellhead to the distribution point make these gas fields uneconomical. This scenario is true for Bangladesh in many cases. Because most of the gas fields in Bangladesh are small as well as stranded. Thus, this new technology holds the potential to revolutionize the gas sector of Bangladesh.

 The same technology can help the coal sector of Bangladesh. The production of coal from the Barapukuria Coal mine is estimated at about 10 lakh tonnes in 2009 against the demand of 6.82 lakh tonnes. So the excess coal is unused and the authorities do not know what to do with this extra coal. Moreover, there is coal lying underground waiting to be lifted but there is no market for that. As a result a decade old battle of exporting hydrocarbon has launched. If this technology is used in Bangladesh it will be able to utilise the natural resources of the country.

 No wonder the technology holds huge potential for countries like Bangladesh. It is high time that the government should consider this technology seriously to meet the energy demand for Bangladesh.

 I have served in International oil and gas companies for several years including NIKO Resources and Sangu Operations. At present I am serving as a researcher in the Petroleum Division of CSIRO which is the Australian National Research Organization. I am involved in several projects which aim to revolutionize the use of natural gas to address the issue of environmental friendliness as well as fuel efficiency. I acknowledge the support from Dr Lu aye, Dr Tuan Ngo and Dr Nick Burke for this article. The author can be contacted at rezwanakbd@yahoo.com

 

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