Energy is one of the most vital elements required by the modern, civilized world. Without it, our way of life would not exist as we enjoy it today. The world has an abundance of natural resources that we convert into energy from which we benefit on a daily basis. These energy types include electrical, hydro-electric, chemical, thermal, nuclear, wind, and solar. Fossil fuels and natural gas are energy sources that have stored potential energy that when released, transform into kinetic energy (force). It is the conversion of potential energy (PE) to kinetic energy (KE) that powers our way of life. Efficiency in any energy conversion process is of paramount importance. Greenway is leading the world in developing solutions to provide efficient, cleaner energy with newly developed, patented, cost-effective, and scalable systems to convert natural gas to liquid fuels. Greenway Innovative Energy, Inc. is taking the lead in economically viable Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) fuel technology. For decades, the world has sought an energy solution that would generate a cleaner fuel that is transportable, with an incremental reduction in environmental impact. The world expects change and innovation in energy production and conversion. It is this expectation that the Greenway solution promises to meet.

Today, coal and oil are our primary energy mainstays for sources of high volume, portable energy solutions. The drawback with these fuels is that they bring with them a high environmental cost. Cleaner natural gas is abundant, inexpensive, and plentiful throughout the United States. In many cases, natural gas is a stranded resource in capped wells due to the significant expense to transport it, namely expensive pipeline infrastructure. Investment in such infrastructure and its associated regulatory hurdles are often prohibitive. The GIE technology offers a solution that can convert natural gas into a usable liquid fuel economically and within the framework of the current United States regulatory environment.

Today, there is no practical way to economically transport natural gas from a remote location to existing distribution systems. While technologies like cryogenics, which convert natural gas to a transportable liquid state at hundreds of degrees below zero are available, they are highly specialized and require expensive infrastructure. Pipelines are the standard transport infrastructure.

Pipelines are tested and proven but are not without controversy, political challenges, and are costly to install and maintain. The current cost of a pipeline is estimated to be $750,000 per diameter inch per mile. In addition to the high cost, pipelines are only possible if right-of-ways are obtained. Building new pipelines to take advantage of recently discovered natural gas reserves is a barrier to entry for higher utilization of this clean and economical resource. These economic, political, and social barriers leave vast amounts of natural gas stranded in capped wells and remote storage facilities. GIE is writing “new rules” for natural gas to liquid fuel conversion and delivery which will dramatically change the world’s energy landscape and will positively impact US dependence on imported oil.

GREENWAY’S SOLUTION IS AN INNOVATIVE NEW TECHNOLOGY THAT WILL CHANGE THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY

The newly developed Greenway gas-to-liquid (GTL) solution offers the ability to monetize stranded natural gas in capped wells, remote storage facilities, or gas being flared into the atmosphere. The legacy GTL processes have been widely studied and documented for over 100 years, but these existing technologies have never performed in a reliable and economical way and cannot be delivered on a small scale. It is the economics of the process and scalability of the solution that GIE will revolutionize with intellectual property developed in association with the University of Texas at Arlington.

Greenway started working on GTL technology in 2009. Utilizing a concept introduced by the late Dr. Conrad Greer and further developed by Raymond Wright, the current President of Greenway Innovative Energy, Inc., the company designed an economical, scalable system to convert natural gas into liquid fuel. The company formed a diverse team of experts from both private enterprise and academia to advance the technology toward commercialization. After many years of research and improvements to the design and processes, GIE is proud to announce this breakthrough technology and to make it available for deployment. In order to demonstrate this innovative approach to GTL technology, a small-scale GTL system, representative of the company’s commercial design concept, was completed at UTA in April 2017. This prototypical plant successfully produced liquid diesel fuel from natural gas drawn from the city natural gas supply at UTA laboratory.

The proprietary Greenway system that performs the initial natural gas to syngas conversion is called the “G-Reformer®”

Converting natural gas to liquid fuel (GTL) consists of two steps. The first step involves converting natural gas to a secondary gas, called synthetic gas (syngas). Syngas is a non-naturally occurring component used in many industrial processes. There are different types of syngas (each with a different chemical composition) making them more suitable for some conversion processes than others. Plastic and fertilizer, for example, are often created from syngas. The second step involves converting the syngas from the G-Reformer® into synthetic fuel. This process is performed by a proprietary Fischer-Tropsch (FT) unit. While FT units are widely available from a variety of manufacturers, Greenway has designed and tested an FT unit specifically to create a pure liquid fuel which can be used either as a fuel on its own, or blended with petroleum-based fuels. Just as the catalytic converter in an automobile converts harmful by-products of the internal combustion process to less harmful gases that are pushed out the exhaust pipe, the FT process converts a mixture of carbon monoxide gas and hydrogen gas (syngas) into liquid hydrocarbons, water, and tail gases. The FT unit can be customized to convert many hydrocarbon compounds to other hydrocarbon compounds. One of the elements used in an FT unit is a catalyst. The catalyst is a “bed” of beads or pellets through which gas is pushed, under pressure, where the hydrocarbon undergoes a chemical change as it passes through. Catalysts are typically made of metals and are custom designed for specific processes. Greenway and UTA have developed a proprietary catalyst designed for the company’s proprietary GTL process.

The second step involves converting the syngas from the G-Reformer® into synthetic fuel. This process is performed by a proprietary Fischer-Tropsch (FT) unit. While FT units are widely available from a variety of manufacturers, Greenway has designed and tested an FT unit specifically to create a pure liquid fuel which can be used either as a fuel on its own, or blended with petroleum-based fuels. Just as the catalytic converter in an automobile converts harmful by-products of the internal combustion process to less harmful gases that are pushed out the exhaust pipe, the FT process converts a mixture of carbon monoxide gas and hydrogen gas (syngas) into liquid hydrocarbons, water, and tail gases.

The FT unit can be customized to convert many hydrocarbon compounds to other hydrocarbon compounds. One of the elements used in an FT unit is a catalyst. The catalyst is a “bed” of beads or pellets through which gas is pushed, under pressure, where the hydrocarbon undergoes a chemical change as it passes through. Catalysts are typically made of metals and are custom designed for specific processes. Greenway and UTA have developed a proprietary catalyst designed for the company’s proprietary GTL process.

GREENWAY’S G-REFORMER® – A MAJOR TECHNOLOGY BREAKTHROUGH

The overwhelming problem with existing GTL technology has always been an inability to efficiently create syngas optimized for processing through an FT unit specifically designed to create liquid fuels. GIE has solved this problem with its proprietary GIE unit, called the G-Reformer®, which performs the natural gas to syngas conversion.

Prior to Greenway’s technology innovations, the most common method of syngas creation has been steam methane reformation, which is neither scalable nor economical. Smaller scale plants are prohibitively expensive. Some companies have attempted GTL technologies without commercial success. Typically, these companies have focused on improving the catalyst or the FT unit, leaving the overall problem unsolved by not addressing the issues associated with the reformer. Prior to GIE’s technology development, no improvements in the FT design could overcome the high cost of steam methane reforming.

Greenway’s initial effort was to build a small-scale FT unit and to perfect the catalyst. In conjunction with UTA, the company succeeded in creating a catalyst optimized for liquid fuel production. The missing link was the invention of the scalable G-Reformer® for syngas production. Based on seven years of research and testing, GIE’s proprietary G-Reformer® was designed, built, and tested successfully at lab scale.

In 2017, GIE connected the newly invented G-Reformer® to a specially designed Fischer-Tropsch unit and is producing liquid fuel daily. With the first drop of fuel, the future of energy for the world was transformed.

The company estimates that a commercial plant producing 500 BBL per day of cleaner, high cetane fuel can be built at a cost which will allow the plant to be financially viable over a relatively short period with a projected Return-on-Investment (ROI) estimated to be from two years to six years.

The company is currently finalizing plans to build the first 500 BBL plant in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where the company and its associates are based.

MAJOR SIDE-BENEFITS THAT IMPROVE PROJECT ROI AND REMOTE LOCATION ACCESS

As part of the GTL process, the unit generates three byproducts. Firstly, it generates water as a by-product of the produced liquid fuel. The water can easily be made suitable for consumption with technologies readily used in municipal water plants throughout the United States. The Greenway GTL process is also exothermic, meaning it gives off a significant amount of heat. Since several areas of the plant require heat, the heat generated by the process can be reused within the system. Since the heat must be managed, utilizing it within the GIE system is an environmentally and economically prudent approach. The third by-product are tail gases that may be used internally by the GTL plant for compression, electric generation, or in other ways.

Greenway plants can be built in remote locations, generating fuel for decades while producing water. Also, the scale of the Greenway GTL plant allows it to be located in remote areas far away from any electrical or pipeline infrastructure. With GIE’s technology, previously stranded natural gas can be converted into a useful product (high cetane fuel) that is easily transported by tanker truck. It is also anticipated that this technology will result in job creation in areas that need them. These jobs will come from plant operations in addition to those related to the logistics involved with transporting significant amounts of fuel and water.

Lastly, the Greenway technology can have a positive economic impact in developing countries by facilitating the harvesting of stranded natural gas to produce inexpensive liquid fuel, with the added benefit of generating potable water, both of which can transform lives.