Sustainable Gas-to-Wire via dry reforming of carbonated natural gas: Ionic-liquid pre-combustion capture and thermodynamic efficiency

Remotely located oil fields with high gas-oil ratio and high carbon dioxide content impose challenges for efficient and sustainable gas processing and monetization. This work investigates gas-to-wire coupled to carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery as a solution to handle the high flow of carbonated natural gas simultaneously accomplishing three missions: high revenues from electricity exportation; and elimination of concerns from long-distance gas transportation and carbon dioxide destination. A novel Gas-to-Wire concept is proposed matching the low-emission target tied to high carbon dioxide intake with a pre-combustion strategy using dry reforming of carbonated gas followed by ionic-liquid absorption carbon capture coupled to high-pressure stripping to lower carbon dioxide compression costs. The novel process is thermodynamically, environmentally and economically compared to an analogous Gas-to-Wire using conventional aqueous-monoethanolamine absorption capture and low-pressure stripping. Results show that the ionic-liquid Gas-to-Wire has cumulatively the following advantages over the aqueous-monoethanolamine counterpart: (i) higher overall thermodynamic efficiency of 23.5% against 16.3%; (ii) lower heat-penalty due to lower stripping heat-ratio; (iii) 7.8% lower power demand due to lower carbon dioxide compression power; and (iv) 60.4% higher net value due to 41.7% greater electricity exportation demanding only 5.3% higher investment due to smaller carbon dioxide compression train.