Company's Breakthrough Technology Uses Captured CO2 and Natural Gas to Make Ultra-Clean and Environmentally Friendly Synthetic Crude Oil
SANTA BARBARA, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 01/03/12 -- Carbon Sciences Inc. (OTCBB: CABN), the developer of a breakthrough technology to make liquid transportation fuels from natural gas and carbon dioxide, today announced that its breakthrough technology could also be used to make CarbonCrude™, the company's version of an ultra-clean and environmentally friendly synthetic crude oil. The ultimate goal of most gas-to-liquids (GTL) operations is to produce finished liquid transportation fuels from natural gas. But in many situations, such as certain oil fields and offshore platforms, the associated natural gas stream is often too limited for conventional GTL fuel production, and too substantial to be released into the atmosphere. Flaring (burning) this excess gas, resulting in carbon dioxide emissions, is not politically acceptable in many parts of the world. Converting the associated natural gas into liquefied natural gas (LNG) is a costly process and requires LNG infrastructure that is not readily available near most oil field operations. Therefore, the existence of associated natural gas in oil fields often makes those reserves uneconomical to develop or costly to operate.
The CarbonCrude process consists of two steps. The first step relies on the company's breakthrough natural gas reforming catalyst that consumes carbon dioxide to produce syngas. The carbon dioxide required for this step can often be found in the natural gas stream, by flaring some of the gas and capturing the CO2, or by capturing CO2 from local power generators. The second step is a low-intensity Fischer-Tropsch process that converts syngas into low cost CarbonCrude, instead of a high cost complete fuel.
Byron Elton concluded, "Associated gas is a big problem for resource holders and can negatively affect oil field economics. By converting this excess gas into synthetic crude oil using our low capital, clean-tech solution, we believe we can deliver both economic and social value to oil field operators. We intend to aggressively target oil field operators with our CarbonCrude solution."
About Carbon Sciences Inc. Carbon Sciences has developed a breakthrough technology to make liquid transportation fuels from natural gas. We believe our technology will enable the world to reduce its dependence on petroleum by cost effectively using natural gas to produce cleaner and greener liquid fuels for immediate use in the existing transportation infrastructure. Although found in abundant supply at affordable prices in the U.S. and throughout the world, natural gas cannot be used directly in cars, trucks, trains and planes without a massive overhaul of the existing transportation infrastructure. Innovating at the forefront of chemical engineering, Carbon Sciences offers a highly scalable, clean-tech gas-to-liquids (GTL) process to transform natural gas into transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The key to this cost-effective process is a breakthrough, methane dry reforming catalyst that consumes carbon dioxide. Our proprietary catalyst is now undergoing rigorous commercial testing to meet the needs of the natural gas industry and will be available for use in pre-feasibility studies of new GTL plants. To learn more about Carbon Sciences' breakthrough technology, please visit www.carbonsciences.com and follow us Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/carbonsciences.
