Worldwide demand for clean energy is growing. Governments in Europe, Africa, Asia and the United States are imposing ever-stricter clean air requirements. The transportation industry is rapidly developing new engine technologies that will run significantly cleaner, if given the right fuel. And the global petroleum industry is searching for cost-effective ways to deliver such a fuel and unlock the vast economic and energy potential of trillions of cubic feet of stranded natural gas they own but which has no value because it cannot be brought to market.

Syntroleum Corporation, the developer and owner of the proprietary Syntroleum Process for converting natural gas into synthetic liquid fuels and specialty products, believes it holds the solution to these problems.

The "Syntroleum Process" is a simplification of traditional Gas-to-Liquids technologies aimed at substantially reducing both the capital cost and the minimum economical size of a GTL plant. Syntroleum believes that the Syntroleum process can, in some circumstances, be cost effective in GTL plants with throughput levels as low as 2,000 barrels per day, and can be competitive with other GTL processes at any plant size.

Syntroleum's strategy is to license its technology for making synthetic fuels to all comers, particularly, but not limited to, those oil and gas companies with international interests and operations. Syntroleum also plans to build and own GTL plants that convert natural gas into high-margin specialty products such as synthetic lubricants, solvents and chemical feedstocks.

What is the Syntroleum Process? read more

The Syntroleum Process is a process for converting natural gas into synthetic oil which can then be further processed into fuels and other hydrocarbon-based products. The process is based on two primary steps:

The conversion of natural gas into synthesis gas. In the first step in the process, natural gas is reacted with air in a proprietary auto-thermal-reformer reactor to produce a nitrogen-diluted synthesis gas, consisting primarily of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

The conversion of synthesis gas into synthetic crude. In a reaction based on Fischer-Tropsch chemistry, the synthesis gas flows into a reactor containing a proprietary catalyst developed by Syntroleum, converting it into synthetic hydrocarbons commonly referred to as "synthetic crude oil."