GAS-TO-LIQUIDS
Our gas-to-liquids technology turns natural gas into high-quality liquid fuels, base oils for lubricants, and other liquid products usually made from oil. It is founded on more than 45 years of research, development and commercial experience.
What is gas-to-liquids?
Shell’s gas-to-liquids (GTL) technology converts natural gas – the cleanest-burning fossil fuel – into high-quality liquid products that would otherwise be made from crude oil. These products include transport fuels, motor oils and the ingredients for everyday necessities like plastics, detergents and cosmetics.
GTL products are colourless and odourless. They contain almost none of the impurities – sulphur, aromatics and nitrogen – that are found in crude oil.
GTL production can help countries with natural gas resources grow their economies as new gas supplies come on-stream to satisfy growing global demand for liquid products.
Employees at the Pearl GTL plant
World’s first and biggest GTL plants
Shell began developing GTL technology in the 1970s. We opened the world’s first commercial GTL plant in Bintulu, Malaysia in 1993 and the world’s largest GTL plant, Pearl GTL, in Qatar in 2011.
Our Bintulu plant in Malaysia celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2018, highlighting the potential longevity of such an investment. Out of its 435 staff, 89% are from the local Sarawak region and 98% are Malaysian.
At the heart of our GTL plants is our proprietary Shell GTL technology. We have invested more than $1 billion and filed over 3,500 patents in developing the gas-to-liquids process.
We continuously improve our GTL technology by enhancing our designs, refining our processes and adding new GTL products. Responding to demand for smaller GTL facilities, we have developed a concept that allows considerable flexibility in production capacity. In 2014, we signed an agreement to conduct a feasibility study for a GTL plant in Mozambique.
How the GTL production process works
The GTL process consists of three stages:
In the first stage synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, is manufactured from natural gas by partial oxidation. Impurities are removed from the syngas.
A second stage converts the synthesis gas into liquid hydrocarbons using a catalyst. In this stage, a liquid is formed which looks and feels like wax at room temperature.
The final stage is cracking and isomerisation, which “tailors” the molecule chains into products with desired properties. This yields high-quality liquids such as diesel, kerosene and lubricant oil.
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