Methane-to-gasoline startup receives funding from Saudi Aramco

FuelFix : Siluria Technologies, based in San Francisco, California, is developing a process for converting methane into gasoline and ethylene. To date, it has received nearly $100 million in venture capital funding. Methane-to-gasoline conversion seemed promising in the 1980s but was abandoned in favor of the Fischer–Tropsch process, which converts a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons. Siluria claims to have identified a catalyst that makes its technique more efficient than Fischer–Tropsch. Of the funding the company has received, Siluria announced yesterday that $30 million came from Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian state oil and gas company. Ed Dineen, Siluria’s CEO, says that the company hopes to have the process commercialized and a plant running by 2017 or 2018. In the meantime, the company plans to install a demonstration unit in Houston, Texas, later this year.