March 28, 2024

Pearl GTL is the biggest gas to liquid (GTL) synthetic fuel plant in the world. Operational since June 2011, this facility resulted from the cooperation of some of world most skilled engineers and engineering companies. Shell, Qatar Petroleum, KBR, JGC Corporation as well as Veolia combined their expertise to give Qatar the most advanced GTL plant in the world and a major economic asset for its development.

For Qataris, Pearl GTL is a successful technological bet. It has indeed been achieved in June 2011 after 5 years of work and now produces 45 million cubic meters of liquefied natural gas per day. GTL fuel technology was considerably enhanced over last ten year and now allows producing liquid fuel out of natural gas with unique quality. Liquid fuel thus produced is sulfur-free, biodegradable and comparable to an excellent quality of diesel fuel.

In spite of its staggering cost, Pearl GTL remains an exceptional economic opportunity for Qatar. It will indeed enable the country to further the exploitation of its massive petrol and gas resources in a more efficient way. Pearl GTL is set in the North Field reserve which is estimated to contain more than 10% of the world’s total gas resources. North Field extraction point is literally the source of Qatar’s economic growth. Setting up a state-of-the-art GTL plant in North Field is therefore both a prestige and strategy-driven decision for Qatar which is aiming at establishing its status as major exporter of energy.

More efficient and environmentally friendly, synthetic fuel derived from natural gas is a booming market. However old this type of energy is, it was given up in favor of petrol for a long time before technological progress and environmental considerations made it profitable again. In 2009, world GTL production capacity was still mainly concentrated in Africa, Qatar and Malaysia. Since then, several projects have been launched or achieved such as the Escravos GTL project in Nigeria that should operational in 2013. With Pearl GTL, Qatar is of course reinforcing its identity as one of the early and leading producer of GTL in the 21st century. The plant is undoubtedly a strategic investment from which Qatar will gain a lasting dominant position on the GTL market as well as worldwide technological prestige.

Pearl GTL is indeed equipped with the best technology in every regards. Concerning GTL production itself, Shell provided Pearl GTL plant with middle distillate synthesis capacity of its own device (SMDS). This SMDS process is the result of more than thirty years of research and was at first experimented at Bintulu GTL plant in Malaysia: there it has then proven to be able to produce 14,700 barrel of gas per day using a minimum amount of time and resources.

The American company KBR as well as the Japanese company JGC Corporation both stood among the main contractors. Both of them are really competent companies: KBR has been building power plants since 1901 and JGC Corporation has been the partner of petrochemical industry since 1925. In this respect, they offered their world-renowned engineering skill to design most of the facility and conducting the work. German industrial group MAN SE was part of the project too and provided six reactors used to produce liquid hydrocarbon. MAN provided eight of the turbomachinery dedicated to the air separation system in the plant as well.

Aside from fuel production facility, Pearl GTL’s water treatment system also stands for a major highlight. When it comes to petrochemical industry, water use and treatment is a question that must be addressed. It is therefore no accident that Veolia Water was chosen to equip Pearl GTL with the finest water treatment technology. This French company has been developing its expertise in water treatment for more than a century. It has also patented several cutting edge reverse osmosis and crystallization water filtering techniques that have been implemented within Pearl GTL.

Veolia water treatment system for Pearl GTL is labeled Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD). It aims to treat and reuse every waste waters coming from the plant. Relying on its past work experience with petrochemical industry Veolia indeed came up with an exceptional realization. Not only is Veolia’s ZLD system able to recycle twelve different types of effluents but it also enables Pearl GTL to spare significant amount of water. Here is an especially appealing feature for a country where water stands among the rarest resources. Using its century old expertise in water treatment, Veolia gave Qatar and Pearl GTL a unique piece of engineering the most water efficient facility in the world to address specific needs.

Much smaller groups and companies also significantly contributed to Pearl GTL’s success. Most of those companies were directly called upon by Qatar Petroleum and Shell because of their highly specialized skills. Small engineering company Cegelec was thus offered to realize power and telecommunication installation for 38 of the plant’s tanks. Works got done in 2010 and therefore stood among other success completed by Cegelec in Qatar since the company has settled here in 2003. Contribution of small groups with unique engineering abilities reveals the quality of Shell and Qatar Petroleum’s network.

Being international giants in the fields of energy, both of them simply know which company in the world has the most relevant expertise to tip exceptional projects such as Pearl GTL over the edge. Along with Cegelec, Qatar Petroleum and Shell thus also entrusted a small Swiss group called Endress+Hauser to set up measuring instruments in the Pearl plant. Endress+Hauser have been Shell privileged partner for several years now. Its contribution to Pearl GTL was therefore rather natural and its undoubted reliability led Shell to take part in a formal partnership of global scale with this industrial group recently. As far as one can tell, equipment in Pearl GTL’s plant seems to have been chosen with special care in order to attain the highest technology level as possible.

Pearl GTL is the spearhead of Qatar petrochemical industry. It is the glorious achievement of an international industrial and technical cooperation orchestrated by Shell and Qatar Petroleum. As a matter of fact, Pearl is vowed to support Qatar’s prestige and economic performance. There is indeed no doubt that the project was a success : it has started in June 2011 to exploit Qatar most important resources in gas and petrol and since then has been regarded as one of the most advanced achievement in term of petrochemical engineering. Qatar’s ambition to host such a project has paid and is therefore, righteously saluted.

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