Producing Synthetic High-Octane Gasoline from Associated Petroleum Gas

A way of producing high-octane gasoline from associated petroleum gas (APG) by combining APG aromatization with Fischer–Tropsch (FT) synthesis is proposed. APG aromatization is studied experimentally in a flow setup at a pressure of 0.1 MPa and temperatures of 450–600°C on ZnO/ZSM-5/Al2O3 catalyst. It is shown that the conversion of С3+ hydrocarbons is greatest in the 550–600°C range of temperatures to reach 22.7–27.8%, while the yield of aromatics is 8.8–10.9%. FT synthesis is studied on hybrid Co-Al2O3/SiO2/ZSM-5/Al2O3 catalyst at a temperature of 250°C, a pressure of 1.0 MPa, and GHSV = 1000 h−1. One liter of an experimental synthetic gasoline fraction is produced on a pilot setup to analyze its principal physicochemical properties and possible qualities of utilization. Calculations show that blending the gasoline fraction of FT synthesis with products of APG aromatization allows the octane number to be raised from 78.5 to 92.8 while the density grows from 710 to 778 kg/m3. The proposed engineering solutions can be used for converting APG into high-octane synthetic gasoline on modular Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) units.