Dow Invests in Methane Research to Identify New Production Methods

Dow has awarded more than $6.4 million in research grants to Cardiff University and Northwestern University as part of the Dow Methane Challenge, which was initiated to identify collaborators and approaches in the area of methane conversion to chemicals. Approximately 100 proposals from around the world were received from top universities, institutes and companies. By bringing together its chemists and chemical engineers with the teams from these leading universities, Dow hopes to develop world-changing technologies.

The focus of the challenge was the conversion of methane, the major component of natural gas, to chemical feedstocks. Methane is particularly attractive as a raw material because of the presence of large reserves of natural gas in many parts of the world. However, the technology to convert these reserves to chemicals and liquid fuels remains elusive.

Mastery of methane chemistry would provide a completely new foundation for production of chemicals and liquid fuels, bringing an alternative to petroleum in these applications and enabling the use of plentiful, though often remote, natural gas that today is uneconomical to transport to market. Further, it could help reduce the flaring of gas associated with petroleum production and might even provide a means to upgrade landfill gas.

The Methane Challenge is a long-term, innovative discovery initiative and is part of the Alternative Feedstock Program, a portfolio of opportunities addressing near, intermediate and long-term options for providing advanced raw materials for chemical production. Other parts of the program address more immediate feedstock issues, such as the recently announced sugarcane-to-PE project in Brazil and research on clean chemical production from coal.


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