how many wells

Anyone calculated how many wells LNC will require for a 20,000 bbl/d FT plant??

Well I just did. And I didn't like the answer that much.

Based on previous LNC literature I estimate they will require about 130 production wells producing 15 kNm3/hr of syngas each to feed a 20k bbl/d plant. Now that's a lot of wells to control and manage at once. And BTW for each production well you probably will need an injection well.

In fact at over 250 wells, that may be too many wells to control and manage properly!!!!

Perhaps they will upscale the production per well, but that remains to be seen, since the figures above are already upscaled from Soviet experience by a factor of 2 - 3 and based on their own publications. Even if they upscale again by a factor 2 it still looks messy. Use of air as I have posted before, limits you at large scale IMO. So they need to start using oxygen gasification and upscale the gasification process by a factor 4. Then they will only require about 30 wells in total which is a much nicer number!

Anyone done similar calcs and reached any conclusions??