The nation’s goal to increase energy efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint calls upon many industries to relook at the way people produce and consume energy. The oil and gas industry has practiced thermal cracking of petroleum fractions and natural gas components for the past 100 years. Thermal cracking produces an extensive list of compounds, including ethylene and other alkenes and diolefins that are utilized across the petrochemical industry. The process has hundreds of individual pieces of equipment and more than twenty sections, some containing many unit operations. These sections of the systems are used to recover and purify major products of the ethane to ethylene reaction, this includes gases like methane and hydrogen. Such processing is capital intensive and costly to operate. Oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) has been investigated as an alternative for producing ethylene from ethane. The ethane is reacted with an oxidizing agent in the presence of a mixed metal oxide catalyst to produce the ethylene. The ODH of ethane is exothermic and, therefore, the ODH reaction is more energy efficient than the steam cracking process. If the ODH reaction is quenched quickly, byproduct production is minimal. However, the ethylene conversion, ethane selectivity, and ethylene yield are highly dependent on the catalyst used and reaction conditions. As disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication: US 2019 / 0248717 A1, the ethylene is separated from combustible, reactive, or non-reactive byproducts by cryogenic separation, distillation, or membrane separation. However, cryogenic separation and distillation are expensive and energy-intensive techniques. Additionally, the membrane separation is quite selective and only separates the ethylene from the combustible, reactive, or non-reactive byproducts. The combination of an exothermic main reaction and a separation train that does not require hydrogen and methane removal and purification pushes the overall processing closer to zero energy. The high selectivity, conversion and therefore yield of ethylene will minimize CO2 production thus offering the possibility of minimal CO2 production. These processing features offer many new ways to design ethylene plants reducing energy consumption and CO2 production. These will be reviewed via cost of production models and techno-economic analyses.

Ethylene Zero – On the way to Manufacturing with zero energy and zero CO2

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.