The challenges and opportunities for integration of solar syngas production with liquid fuel synthesis

Reforming of methane is practiced on a vast scale globally for the production of syngas as a precursor for the production of many commodities, including hydrogen, ammonia and synthetic liquid fuels. Solar reforming can reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of syngas production by up to about 40% by using solar thermal energy to provide the endothermic heat of reaction, traditionally supplied by combustion of some of the feed. This has the potential to enable the production of solar derived synthetic fuels as drop in replacements for conventional fuels with significantly lower CO2 intensity than conventional gas to liquids (GTL) processes. However, the intermittent nature of the solar resource – both diurnal and seasonal – poses significant challenges for such a concept, which relies on synthesis processes that typically run continuously on very stable feed compositions. We find that the integration of solar syngas production to a GTL process is a non-trivial exercise, with the ability to turn down the capacity of the GTL synthesis section, and indeed to suspend operations for short periods without significant detriment to product quality or process operability, likely to be a key driver for the commercial implementation of solar liquid fuels. Projected costs for liquid fuel synthesis suggest that solar reforming and small scale gas to liquid synthesis can potentially compete with conventional oil derived transport fuels in the short to medium term.