| dc.description.abstract | To meet the increasing global needs for energy, chemicals and commodity products, there is a substantial push for utilizing unconventional feedstocks such as stranded natural gas, shale gas, biogas and landfill gas. However, unconventional feedstocks pose significant challenges for centralized processing due to variabilities in scale and availability. In addition, the geographical sparsity, low feedstock quality and time-varying supply of unconventional natural gas feedstocks render existing chemical facilities inefficient for their utilization. As a result, it is challenging for conventional stick-built plants to keep up with evolving product demands and feedstock availability. An alternative is to develop small-scale, modular and intensified processes which are better suited for handling challenges associated with unconventional feedstocks and can better accommodate dynamic market conditions, process variabilities and geographical sparsity. However, the capital intensity (i.e., cost per unit production) of small-scale plants is much higher compared to their large-scale and centralized counterparts. In this thesis, to counter the diseconomies of scaling, computational frameworks and methodologies are proposed for cost-effective development of small-scale technologies. The proposed methodologies are based on principles rooted in multi-scale process development, dynamic process intensification and equipment standardization where small-scale, modular and intensified equipment modules with optimal materials are designed and operated for distributed chemical manufacturing. The utility of the developed computational frameworks is demonstrated through several midstream and downstream case studies prevalent in unconventional natural gas supply chains. | en |
