Utilization of renewable sources of biogas for small-scale production of liquid fuels

Low energy density in agricultural or biotechnological raw materials dictates the need for their local processing. Small-scale agricultural products or waste processing plants can`t profitably use technologies common in largescale petrochemistry, including the complex and expensive process of steam reforming of biogas into syngas for its subsequent conversion to liquid fuel. The work suggests using small-scale sources of inexpensive and easily obtained biogas and other renewable hydrocarbon gases for the production of liquid biofuel by their air conversion in recently developed matrix reformers into low-cost nitrogen-rich syngas, followed by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis in a cascade of sequential reactors. Autothermal matrix reformers are very compact, simple in design, have several times more specific volume capacity than traditional technologies, and allow processing biogas with a high concentration of CO2. The advantages of low-cost conversion of biogas to liquid fuel based on nitrogenenriched syngas with subsequent Fischer-Tropsch synthesis are discussed.