The shale gas revolution in the United States has led to an abundance of natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs), which in turn has caused supply/demand imbalances leading to lower prices. This has created opportunities for petrochemical and midstream companies to try to convert these lower priced NGL’s to higher valued products such as motor fuels. These upgrade efforts, however, face many challenges similar to the ones involved in conversion of methane to liquid fuels. These challenges include both chemical and engineering issues along with the need to reduce capital and operating costs to make these upgrading processes economically favorable. An overview of the current commercially available processes with potential application to NGL upgrading and their challenges will be presented. Specific issues with the conversion of individual NGL fractions will also be discussed.

Upgrade options for NGL’s

255th National Meeting (2018)

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