2023-02-15 13:50:00
GLOBAL OIL GAS CHANGES
By CHARLES FORSBERG Principal Research Scientist, MIT
ENERGYCENTRAL - Feb 6, 2023 - There is a negative-carbon road ahead for the gas and oil industry. Our studies and workshops show we can replace all crude oil with cellulosic biomass (corn stover, forest debris, etc.) liquid drop-in hydrocarbons if the conversion process uses massive external sources of heat and hydrogen. Current biofuels strategies use biomass as (1) a carbon source for the liquid hydrocarbon product, (2) a carbon source to remove the oxygen that is 40% of the biomass as carbon dioxide, (3) a hydrogen source for the liquid hydrocarbon and (4) an energy source to operate the process. As a consequence, no more than a third of oil demand could be met by conventional biofuels strategies. If use massive quantities of external hydrogen and heat, then sufficient cellulosic biomass to replace all crude oil, sequester carbon and enable a more sustainable agriculture—without significant changes in food and fiber prices. Cellulosic biomass becomes primarily a carbon source. We through away the campfire model of biofuels processing.
Heat is provided by nuclear reactors at large-scale bio-refineries (250,000 barrels per day) that will likely be existing oil refineries with changes in the front end. In the near-term, the low-cost low-carbon hydrogen is from natural gas with sequestration of the carbon dioxide byproduct--the low-cost option today. Exxon recently announced a project to produce a billion cubic feet of hydrogen per day with 98% of the carbon sequestered. That carbon footprint is very similar to wind and solar hydrogen that have large amounts of embedded carbon dioxide in them from the manufacturing process. In the longer term, hydrogen from nuclear, wind or solar. Our most recent paper in Hydrocarbon Processing [ Can large integrated refineries replace all crude oil with cellulosic feedstocks for drop-in hydrocarbon biofuels? (hydrocarbonprocessing.com) ] provides the details for such a transition by the oil and gas industry.
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