NEXTECH MATERIALS, LTD. — Department of Energy SBIR Phase II: 29i

Description

The emergence of shale gas in the U.S., has led to huge capital investments into new facilities to convert these low cost, plentiful natural gas reserves into valuable products. Among technologies used, Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) of natural gas is typically the first processing step in the production of hydrogen, methanol and ammonia. These products together account for about ~$12B U.S. market and over $105B worldwide. Industrial gas suppliers, refiners, chemical and plastic manufacturers and fertilizer companies together operate thousands of high-temperature, high-pressure fixed-bed facilities around the world that carry out SMR reaction to convert natural gas into syngas for onward separation or further processing into said chemicals. Nexceris has developed a new catalyst support technology specifically designed for use in energy-intensive reactions. HeatPathTM is designed to increase the thermal conductivity of packed beds used in SMR and other highly endothermic and exothermic reactions, by taking a fundamentally different approach to conventional catalyst development, targeting enhanced energy efficiency through heat transfer improvements at industrial operating conditions. This high conductivity support material will increase hydrogen productivity by enhancing heat and mass transfer and improving intrinsic catalyst activities, allowing the size of reactor systems to be reduced with the same hydrogen output, saving both capital and energy cost. In Phase II, Nexceris researched catalyst support materials and catalyst formulations, and in parallel, developed detailed computer models of the SMR reaction, which in turn were used to design and develop a high thermal conductivity support product, based on a proprietary mixture of ceramic phases. Manufacturing efforts during and after Phase II have demonstrated the catalyst support will meet the demanding requirements for mechanical strength, abrasion resistance and stability in the aggressive SMR environment. This is accomplished using a novel manufacturing technology that allows the material to be produced at low-cost via dry-pressing and other high-volume catalyst manufacturing routes. In this Phase IIB effort, Nexceris proposes to accelerate the development, scale-up, pilot demonstration, and commercialization of HeatPath to meet our customer’s target requirements. By completing the risk mitigation of a Nexceris-Customer shared DFMEA analysis, we seek to accelerate the pace of bringing the product to market.