Alchemix Corporation has invented and patented the HydroMax technology for the production of syngas, a mixture of hydrogen (H₂) and carbon monoxide (CO). HydroMax is an advanced gasification technology that can provide hydrogen and tailored syngas to produce fuels and chemical precursors generally derived from oil and natural gas. The process can utilize waste or lower hydrocarbons sources such as coal, petroleum coke and biomass.

Gasification has been practiced commercially since the late 1930’s. What makes HydroMax an important advance is that it uses molten metal as a reaction medium. Molten metal-based gasification has the advantage of high thermal inertia over gasification technologies which employ steam as their reaction medium. Compared to conventional gasification, HydroMax technology is stable, lower in cost, more efficient and produces less greenhouse gases (GHG). Due to its high thermal inertia, feedstocks, which vary in thermal content, can be efficiently used alternately or in combination. Unlike conventional gasification, HydroMax has the flexibility to use a wide variety of feedstocks which can further reduce feedstock cost and a facility’s carbon footprint.

Historically, the use of gasification technology has been limited by high capital cost, low efficiency, high GHG emissions, and the low cost of oil and natural gas. Today, high prices, political risk and volatility characterize oil and natural gas markets. These factors have now established gasification as a viable alternative to oil and natural gas because of the ability to hedge long-term costs by entering into long-term supply contracts for low-cost politically secure feedstocks.

HydroMax enjoys a number of advantages over all commercially available gasification technologies. Most of these stem from its use of molten metal, rather than steam, as its active agent, converting solid and liquid hydrocarbons to syngas from which impurities can be easily removed.

Advantages associated with the use of molten metal as the HydroMax gasification medium include:

1. High Thermal Inertia
   
   High thermal inertia is the result of the heat stability that is achieved by having a great mass of molten metal that is resistant to variations in moisture, energy or the ash content of feedstocks.  Conventional gasification technology characteristically loses efficiency and reliability when there are substantial variations in feedstock moisture and thermal content.  Having high thermal inertia allows HydroMax to be more efficient, reliable and flexible.  HydroMax plants will accept a wide variety of feedstocks and combinations of feedstocks.  This feature will allow HydroMax plants to use the lowest cost and least polluting combination of feedstocks available.  
   
   
2. Recovery of Metal Values
   
   In some feedstocks, such as petroleum coke, there are commercial quantities of high value metals such as vanadium and nickel.  These metals can be captured directly using HydroMax technology and sold as co-products.  In these cases, the value of these metals may add substantially to the revenue received from the production of hydrogen, electricity or other primary products.
   
   
3. Recovery of Cementatious Materials
   
   Most hydrocarbon feedstocks contain meaningful amounts of ash, mainly silica and alumina.  The HydroMax technology requires the use of fluxing materials such as, calcium, in the form of lime or limestone.  Lime and silica are the principal ingredients in Portland cement.  When slag is tapped periodically from HydroMax reactors, it may be used directly as cement or blended to make cement or bricks.  The heat required to make cement conventionally is substantial, as is the carbon dioxide (CO₂) released in its production.  By producing cement as a co-product of HydroMax operations, net CO₂ emissions per unit of cement will be reduced substantially from conventional production methods.
   
   

Aside from advantages that occur from using a molten metal bath, HydroMax expects to realize substantial improvement in efficiency and reduction in CO₂ emissions over conventional gasification technologies.  The sources of these improvements include:

1. Proprietary technology that effectively reduces CO₂ produced in the gasification process.
   
   
2. Increased efficiency via a higher percentage conversion of feedstock into syngas as well as the production of co-products.
   
   
3. The ability to accept a wide variety of feedstocks, allowing the flexibility of feeding biomass, including municipal waste, to reduce fossil fuel content and net CO₂ emissions.
   
   

HydroMax technology adapts two, well understood, existing technologies-bath smelting and the gas cleaning systems employed in conventional gasification.

Bath smelting technology is widely used to convert the oxides or sulfides of tin, iron, lead, zinc, copper and nickel into metal.  Over 100 bath smelters are operating around the world.  The popularity of bath smelters stems from their high reliability, low cost and control of emissions.  In the HydroMax technology, hydrocarbons are injected into molten iron.  The liquid or solid hydrocarbons injected are quickly reduced to syngas.  Various other materials contained in the hydrocarbons, such as sulfur and mercury, will also be gasified and subsequently removed.  Inert material such as calcia, silica and alumina will form a slag. This slag will be tapped periodically and made into saleable cement or bricks. Metals that may be contained in the hydrocarbon feed, such as nickel and vanadium, will be captured in the liquid phase, periodically tapped and ultimately recovered, as an enriched iron alloy.

More than half the cost of both conventional and HydroMax gasification is associated with syngas cleanup.  These cleanup processes are well understood and are in widespread commercial use.  The specific processes used for gas cleanup will vary depending upon the contaminants that must be removed. 

There have been a number of demonstrations by independent contractors of the unique application that HydroMax makes of bath smelters.  A strong theoretical base, modeling and results of these demonstrations indicate that HydroMax technology will work at commercial scale.  Detailed design of an efficient first commercial plant, however, will require substantially more data that can only be obtained from the sustained operation of a commercially scaleable bath smelter reactor.  Plans for the installation of this test facility have been developed, and it is expected that the engineering and construction will commence in 2008.

HydroMax technology is the subject of 4 United States Patents having 240 allowed claims of invention.  An additional 90 pages of patent claims were filed in 2006 and still more were initiated in 2007.  Patents have been filed in countries where management believes the HydroMax technology might be profitably employed.  Numerous international patents have been granted and many more are pending.