Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: A Novel, Nanostructured, Metal-organic Frameworks-Based Product Loss Prevention Technology in the Oil and Natural Gas Sector
EPA Contract Number: 68HE0D18C0021Title: A Novel, Nanostructured, Metal-organic Frameworks-Based Product Loss Prevention Technology in the Oil and Natural Gas Sector
Investigators: Ozdemir, Osman K
Small Business: Framergy, Inc
EPA Contact: Richards, April
Phase: I
Project Period: October 1, 2018 through March 31, 2019
Project Amount: $100,000
RFA: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) - Phase I (2018) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) , SBIR - Nanomaterials and Clean Technology
Description:
To reach the end user, oil and gas production at the wellhead must be transmitted through the country and distributed to a wide range of customers. This logistical system requires natural gas gathering lines, processing facilities, product storage tanks and lots of other equipment. What results is air pollution caused by industry losses during these operations and the use of continuous or intermittent venting/flaring to mitigate other issues.One of the main components of this pollution is Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), with the increasing popularity of unconventional Oil & Natural Gas production in the US, controls on VOC release will become increasingly important to maintain current health and safety standards.
In this activity, framergy, in collaboration with Texas A&M University, showed the feasibility of a combined methane and VOC capture technology that can be used at well sites, natural gas gathering and processing facilities, storage tanks/ sites, and transmission facilities to reduce pollution. The Phase I results have shown that this technology is capable of separating, storing and recycling natural gas and VOCs. This innovation is a combination of VOC-philic solvents and novel Metal-organic Frameworks (MOFs) adsorbents targeted to capture a wide range of volatile products and light hydrocarbons before they are vented into the atmosphere.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
The technology is a combination of a liquid and solid adsorbents (MOFs) targeted to capture a wide range of volatile products before it is vented into the atmosphere, where both the liquid and solid absorbents are recoverable with potentially significantly longer reusable life cycles than activated carbons. The purpose of this research has been evaluating the feasibility of different configurations of these liquid and MOFs-based solid adsorbents for the highest capacity capture, storage and separation of natural gas and VOCs lost in the oil and natural gas sector.
Over the course of the Phase I period, by collaborating with the industry, framergy identified VOCs that are of immediate interest to oil and natural gas sector. The team chose to use the Maximum Incremental Reactivity (MIR) scale to help guide VOC selection.The MIR is a measure of the maximum amount of ozone that can be formed by adding a particular VOC to a mixture of NOX-rich air at the margin. Armed with this information, framergy researched the Houston-Galveston-Brazoria Ozone Nonattainment Area, to determine what VOC controls would be most impactful based on reactivity and volume.The Big 12 are the vanguard of target species, and were used to create a final gas testing list of Ethylene, Propylene, Formaldehyde and 1,3 Butadiene. Ethylene and Propylene represent light hydrocarbons which will help round out framergy's previous work with methane/tail gas; and Formaldehyde is a species framergy has worked with on an industry project.
To test the feasibility of using its chemically and physically stable Metal-organic Frameworks (MOFs), the Company laid out three gas treatment strategies to address the capture and recycling of a wide range of VOCs covering low molecular weight volatile organics to low partial pressure heavier VOCs. The initial strategy involved post-synthetically creating mesoporosity in PCN-250 to increase its uptake capacity for heavier VOCs. Secondly, framergy, in collaboration with Texas A&M University, successfully functionalized PCN-250 to incorporate VOC-philic agents into the PCN-250 framework. This functionalization involved anchoring a range of fatty acids into the micropores and post-synthetically created mesopores of PCN-250. Based on the single component and mixed VOCs exposure tests, among these three strategies, the dual scrubber-based strategy was selected for further development. This innovative, dual scrubber strategy leveraged the individual advantages of VOC-philic fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) for the capture of low partial pressure heavy VOCs and PCN-250's high uptake capacity towards lower molecular weight volatile organics.
Single component isotherms showed that framergy's PCN-250 (trademarked by framergy and sold as AYRSORBTM F-250) has higher ethylene, propylene, butadiene capacity compared to commercial activated carbon, silica and zeolite sorbents at ambient pressure. During the course of the Phase I, PCN-250 set record uptake capacity of all known sorbents for ethylene and propylene.In addition, using breakthrough testing equipment, framergy evaluated the effects of mixtures of these VOCs towards total VOC uptake capacity and identified the breakthrough events of each mixture in continuous flow configuration.
Finally, framergy challenged its dual scrubber technology against an actual wellhead gas simulant containing a range of volatile organics from C1 to C7. When used alone, the VOC-philic FAME scrubber captured close to 40% of the VOCs present in the wellhead gas simulant. When used in series, the FAME scrubber and PCN-250 scrubber captured 100% of the VOCs contained in the simulant in continuous flow. Encouraged by this result, framergy conducted a survey in the shale gas basins located in close proximity to its headquarters in College Station, TX. The Freestone site, where Eagle-Ford and Barnett shales meet, has shown numerous point and fugitive VOC emission sources for the potential integration of framergy's dual scrubber technology in Phase II.
Conclusions:
The research findings showed that framergy, in collaboration with Texas A&M University, has successfully proved the feasibility of a natural gas and VOCs scrubber technology which can fully capture these lost emissions at the wellhead. During the course of the activity, PCN-250 proved to be a new class of adsorbent capable of handling lower molecular weight volatile organics.
This technology is suitable as both a portable temporary or as a permanent installation, allowing for utilization on a wide range of Oil and Gas sector facilities such as: storage tank relief vents, process equipment vents such as glycol dehydrators, amine recovery systems, oil/condensate/water truck loading activities, deinventory and blowdown of towers/drums and other production equipment, vent controls for compressor seal leaks or by-pass events, as well as pipeline pigging operations where products are either free vented to the atmosphere, combusted using flares and other destruction devices which typically do not operate at designed efficiencies, or VRU units which typically have significant operational downtime. During the course of this activity, framergy began to work through regulating PCN-250 as a chemical in the US, presented the technology at the most impactful Oil & Gas technology scouting event and secured granted composition of matter claims through the US Patent and Trademark Office. There is now a major opportunity to commercialize this MOF through which Oil & Gas operators can use to meet stricter VOC requirements.
SBIR Phase II:
A Novel, Nanostructured, Metal-organic Frameworks-Based Product Loss Prevention Technology in the Oil and Natural Gas Sector | Final ReportThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.