Flare gas monetization and greener hydrogen production via combination with crypto currency mining and carbon dioxide capture

In view of the continuous debates on the environmental impact of blockchain technologies, in particular, cryptocurrency mining, accompanied by severe carbon dioxide emissions, a technical solution has been considered assuming direct monetization of associated petroleum gas currently being flared. The proposed approach is based on the technology of low-temperature steam reforming of hydrocarbons, which allows flare gas conditioning toward the requirements for fuel for gas piston and gas turbine power plants. The generation of electricity directly at the oil field and its use for on-site cryptocurrency mining transform the process of wasteful flaring of valuable hydrocarbons into an economically attractive integrated processing of natural resources. The process is not carbon neutral and is not intended to compete with zero-emission technologies, but its combination with technologies for carbon dioxide capture and re-injection into the oil reservoir can both enhance the oil recovery and reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. The produced gas can be used for local transport needs, while the generated heat and electricity can be utilized for on-site food production and biological carbon dioxide capture in vertical greenhouse farms. The suggested approach allows a significant decrease in the carbon dioxide emissions at oil fields and, although it may seem paradoxically, on-site cryptocurrency mining actually may lead to a decrease in the carbon footprint. The amount of captured CO₂ could be transformed into CO₂ emission quotas, which can be spent for the production of virtually “blue” hydrogen by steam reforming of natural gas in locations where the CO₂ capture is technically impossible and/or unprofitable.

Recent advances in one-stage conversion of lipid-based biomass-derived oils into fuel components - aromatics and isomerized alkanes

Nowadays, production of biofuels is a rather hot topic due to depleting of conventional fossil fuel feedstocks and a number of other factors. Plant lipid-based feedstocks are very important for production of diesel-, kerosene-, and gasoline-like hydrocarbons. Usually, (hydro)deoxygenation processes are aimed at obtaining of linear hydrocarbons known to have poor fuel characteristics compared to the branched ones. Thus, further hydroisomerization is required to improve their properties as motor fuel components. This review article is focused on conversion of lipid-based feedstocks and model compounds into high-quality fuel components for a single step - direct cracking into aromatics and merged hydrodeoxygenation-hydroisomerization to obtain isoparaffins. The second process is quite novel and a number of the research articles presented in the literature is relatively low. As auxiliary subsections, hydroisomerization of straight hydrocarbons and techno-economic analysis of renewable diesel-like fuel production are briefly reviewed as well.