INVESTIGADORES
DIAZ Maria Soledad
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
OPTIMAL DESIGN OF A SHALE GAS-BASED ETHYLENE PLANT
Autor/es:
ALEJANDRO PEDROZO; BELEN RODRIGUEZ REARTES; CHEN; M. SOLEDAD DIAZ; IGNACIO E. GROSSMANN
Reunión:
Congreso; IV Reunión Interdisciplinaria de Tecnología y Procesos Químicos; 2018
Resumen:
The exploitation of unconventional gas is increasingworldwide, associated with the development of hydraulicfracturing horizontal drilling technology, which has madeprofitable the recovery of shale gas. The US EnergyInformation Administration forecasts that world natural gasproduction will increase, driven by shale gas exploitationdeveloped mainly in six countries: USA, China, Argentina,Canada, Mexico and Algeria (EIA, 2016).From shale gas exploitation, natural gas liquids(NGLs) are available at low prices (Amghizar et al., 2017).The abundance of low-cost ethane encourages ethyleneproduction, since the synthesis of this olefin from ethane ismore profitable than from naphtha feedstocks.Ethylene is a fundamental building block for thesynthesis of bulk chemicals and intermediates. Theconventional process to produce ethylene is via thermalcracking of hydrocarbons with steam, which is called steamcracking (SC). This is a mature technology with more than50 years of application and development, and in manycases it has the best economics.However, SC is an energy intensive process andproduces significant CO2 and NOx emissions due to thehigh temperature required within the cracking furnaces. Forthis reason, there is increasing interest in the developmentof alternative processes to improve energy efficiency andenvironmental performance.In this work, ethane-based ethylene production byconventional steam cracking and alternative technologiesare studied by means of a superstructure optimizationapproach. The optimal solution includes the design ofreactor units, the separation train, and utility system, whichcomprise the key components of the plant. Equipmentsizing is performed and capital cost is estimated usingconventional equipment cost correlations (Ulrich andVasudevan, 2004; Towler and Sinnott, 2012). Net presentvalue (NPV) is considered as the objective function.