Economic Profiling on Oxidative Coupling of Methane and Opportunities for Integration

Abstract

Oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) has been investigated through catalysis, reaction engineering and various processes to achieve the valued economic performance of producing ethylene from natural gas for more than 40 years. Studies on OCM focus on the reactions’ performance and catalyst options with the absences of economic analysis. More recent studies on the reaction’s performance investigates the economic limitations of the reactions to add value, they are carried out on specific systems in the lack of a systematic analysis approach. These analyzed systems highlight a gap of a basic analysis that presents the economic potential as well as motivate the development of an economic screening method. A method that is quick and applicable by any system of reactions that displays an understanding of the economic performance of the reactions and the required minimum of key performance indicators such as selectivity for profitable potential. This research will present the development of the screening method and its application to OCM reactions in the form of ‘value addition/destruction maps’. The minimum selectivity found for the OCM standalone system in an ideal scenario considering material flows was 58%, this selectivity indicates the minimum performance when considering 100% conversion of methane. The energy flow was also considered as part of the analysis, which decreased the minimum selectivity to 37%. The minimum represents the point where any lower value means that the system will never generate profit. The results were effective in the use of the developed methodology of screening, it was used to identify the economic weaknesses of OCM through the analysis and motivate the idea of integrating it with a different process to add value. The simulations of the power plant and OCM processes were completed, and then both processes were integrated and simulated to analyze the economic performance. The power plant process added value to the OCM process, however not to the extent of making it profitable, but signified the idea of integrating processes to add overall value to result in potential profit.