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Dagle, Robert A

Publications and source records attributed to Dagle, Robert A.

Dimethyl ether production from methanol and/or syngas

Disclosed are methods for producing dimethyl ether (DME) from methanol and for producing DME directly from syngas, such as syngas from biomass. Also disclosed are apparatus for DME production. The disclosed processes generally function at higher temperatures with lower contact times and at lower pressures than conventional processes so as to produce higher DME yields than do conventional processes. Certain embodiments of the processes are carried out in reactors providing greater surface to volume ratios than the presently used DME reactors. Certain embodiments of the processes are carried out in systems comprising multiple microchannel reactors.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Single-Step Syngas-to-Distillates (S2D) Process Based on Biomass-Derived Syngas – A Techno-Economic Analysis

This study reports the comparison of biomass gasification based syngas-to-distillate (S2D) systems using techno-economic analysis (TEA). Three cases, state of technology (SOT) case, goal case, and conventional case, were compared in terms of performance and cost. The SOT case and goal case represent technology being developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for a process starting with syngas using a single-step dual-catalyst reactor for distillate generation (S2D process). The conventional case mirrors the two-step S2D process previously utilized and reported by Mobil using natural gas feedstock and consisting of separate syngas-to-methanol and methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) processes. Analysis of the three cases revealed that the goal case could indeed reduce fuel production cost over the conventional case, but that the SOT was still more expensive than the conventional. The SOT case suffers from low one-pass yield and high selectivity to light hydrocarbons, both of which drive up production cost. Sensitivity analysis indicated that light hydrocarbon yield, single pass conversion efficiency, and reactor space velocity are the key factors driving the high cost for the SOT case.

Biomass↗

Syngas Conditioning

A brief review of water gas shift (WGS) catalysis is provided. An overview of the four general classes of WGS catalysts is presented, which include: 1) high temperature shift (HTS), 2) low temperature shift (LTS), 3) sulfur-tolerant shift catalysts, and 4) precious metal-based shift catalysts. A review of WGS utilizing monoliths or other reactor technologies that pertain to fuel cell applications, an area of increasing interest over the past several years, is also presented. Ratnasamy and Wagner have recently provided an outstanding and comprehensive review of WGS catalysis. A particular emphasis of that work is “catalyst surface structures, active sites, reaction intermediates, and mechanisms”, particularly for noble metal-based catalysts1. The summary provided here is a succinct review of water gas shift catalysis and reactors, with an emphasis on fuel processing applications for fuel cells, and is not intended to provide a comprehensive review of WGS technology.

08 HYDROGEN↗