Texas A&M Qatar Starts Gas and Fuels Research Center to Promote Innovation

Five hundred students couldn't be wrong. As Qatar spent the last fifteen years building its LNG export business, Texas A&M's decision to start its decade-old Qatar campus certainly paid off once the small country became the world's largest natural gas exporter. Deciding that it's the perfect time to innovate the lucrative downstream part of the business, University regents just approved the new Qatar Gas and Fuels Research Center, which will serve as a collaborative hub fostering state-of-the-art technologies to produce, explore and, of course, make money from the deluge of shale gas unlocked by inevitable advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling (press release).

"We would like to carry out scientific research to create novel gas processing pathways that work better, cheaper and greener than existing technologies," Dr. Mahmoud El-Halwagi, managing director of the center, said in an interview with Fuel Fix. That's no idle boast. After all, Qatar hosts Shell's 260,000-barrel-a-day Pearl GTL plant, where company research cut production costs by finding better catalysts and creating improved Fischer-Tropsch reactors. Newer research would probably work on reducing the huge amounts of energy lost and the high levels of CO2 emissions during the process. Especially since environmental concerns in the US are likely to generate public and regulatory pushback. At this point, Shell has already dropped its plans for a new Texas GTL plant, and most other companies are looking to export LNG as a less expensive option. Of course, it's always important to remember that the natural gas used at Pearl is basically provided for free by Qatar. The new research center will include 19 researchers in Qatar and College Station and will operate as a unit of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES). Although it was initially funded by TEES and the Qatar campus, the new center expects to be fully self-sufficient after three years through federal grants and industry partnerships.

Through the Qatar campus, A&M has had access to one of the world's most plentiful sources of research money. Qatar spends 2.8 percent of its annual gross domestic product - about $1.5 billion - which allows up to 35 percent of a project to be conducted outside the country. This year Texas A&M at Qatar received $31.7 million in research funding. See student-built GTL vehicle's first trial run, video above. Dr. Nimir Elbashir said, "Texas A&M at Qatar played a critical role in the birth of this center because of the tremendous support received from the industry and from Qatar Foundation." The Qatar campus has come a long way since it was first founded. The university didn't even have its own labs until 2007. (Student video about a day-in-the-life of a ChemE student.) By offering specialized post graduate courses in energy and natural gas processing, Qatar aims to train its own highly skilled Qatari engineers and technical staff, an important move for a country where companies like Shell and ExxonMobil usually find workers outside. (See recruiting video.)

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Photos: various, Texas A&M Qatar