27/2/2018 US Ethylene Plant Development; Announcement, Plans, and New Technology

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Posted on August 11, 2016 by Marshall Frank — No Comments ↓
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Just over a year ago, in June 2015, Shell Chemical received

approval from Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental How Did You Learn
About IHRDC's
Protection to proceed with its plans to build an ethane cracker Blog?
in Beaver County, Pa. (see my October 2015 blog). After a year Web Search
of further project evaluation and preliminary site
LinkedIn
development, Shell announced its go ahead on June 7, 2016
IHRDC.com
for its 1.5 billion metric ton per year ethylene plant based on
ethane from Marcellus and Utica shale gas. Friend /
Colleague
This $6 billion complex, which, in addition to the ethane Email Message
cracker, will include three polyethylene plants totaling 1.6
Other
billion metric tons per year, is scheduled for completion in
2020. Shell was offered some incentives from the state of
Pennsylvania including a 15 year tax amnesty and an
additional tax break providing a credit of $2.10/gal for ethane
purchased from Pennsylvania-based natural gas drillers.
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This is the first ethylene plant to be built outside the US Gulf Montreal
Coast in the last 20 years. Its location offers a logistical Protocol
marketing advantage in that more than 70 percent of North Amended to
Phase-Out
American polyethylene customers are closer to the complex’s Hydrofluorocar
Western Pennsylvania’s location than US Gulf Coast (USGC) bons (HFCs)
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27/2/2018 US Ethylene Plant Development; Announcement, Plans, and New Technology

polyethylene producers. This is illustrated in the graphic below 2 March 2017

which was published on Shell Chemicals’ websites.
Renewable Jet
Fuel Tested on
a Commercial
Airline

13 December 2016

Unconventiona
l Oil Assets in
Bankruptcy
Reorganization
s

9 February 2016

Oil, Money, and

Pemex
As reported in my earlier blog, the Shell Chemical project was
4 November 2014
one of three petrochemical complexes based on ethane
feedstock from Marcellus and Utica shale gas being considered
for the region. The Appalachian Shale Cracker Enterprise Three Carbon
Dioxide
(ASCENT) project led by the Brazilian company, Odebrecht, Utilization
was considering a Parkersburg, West Virginia location. This Technologies
project is essentially on hold and Odebrecht has withdrawn as
lead company, leaving it to its wholly owned subsidiary, 3 June 2016
Braskem, to decide whether to proceed or not.

The third complex being headed by PTT Thailand’s US

subsidiary, PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC America) in
conjunction with the Japanese trading company, Marubeni,
selected a site in Belmont County, Ohio. Their project plan
includes a 1.0 million metric ton per year ethane cracker with
the ethylene output used as feedstock for several polyethylene
plants including two producing medium density and high
density polyethylene with a capacity of 700 million metric tons
per year. Technip Stone and Webster technology has been
selected to provide the process design package for the ethylene
plant. PTTGC America has engaged Fluor and Bechtel to
provide Front-End Engineering work with the aim of making a
final investment decision for the $5.7 billion complex by the
Archives
December 2017
end of 2016 or early 2017.
October 2017
July 2017
U.S. Gulf Coast May 2017
March 2017
Meanwhile on the US Gulf Coast, for the past year, a small January 2017
demonstration plant has been testing a novel ethylene December 2016
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27/2/2018 US Ethylene Plant Development; Announcement, Plans, and New Technology

production technology developed by Siluria October 2016

Technologies known as oxidative coupling of methane (OCM). August 2016
This technology involves converting methane to ethylene over July 2016
a catalyst via the following reaction: June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
This reaction has been known for years but previous efforts to January 2016
develop a catalyst to operate at reasonable temperatures and December 2015
pressures and at a sufficient overall yield and catalyst life has November 2015
been difficult. The challenge is to make it economically October 2015
competitive against the traditional methods of producing August 2015
ethylene via conventional non-catalytic steam cracking of July 2015
ethane, natural gas liquids and naphtha. Siluria appears to June 2015
have met the challenge through its development of novel metal May 2015
oxide nano-wire catalysts. April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
After a year of testing various conditions and catalysts at its 1.0
January 2015
ton/day demonstration plant, operated by Braskem Americas
December 2014
at its Laporte, Texas, polypropylene plant site, Siluria is ready
November 2014
to proceed to a commercial plant. By hosting and operating
October 2014
Siluria’s demonstration plant, Braskem is entitled to certain
non-exclusive technology options as well as the opportunity to
be an ethylene customer of future Siluria OCM plants.

Siluria has partnered with the Linde Group to provide

complete engineering packages incorporating Siluria’s OCM
Categories
Announcements
front-end technology into Linde’s back-end ethylene recovery
Competency
and purification expertise. Some of the investors in the
Oil and Gas
technology include Maire Tecnimont, Saudi Aramco, and the
Industry News
Saudi polypropylene producer, National Petrochemical
Oil and Gas
Industrial Co.
Industry Training
Petroleum Industry
Siluria claims that as long as crude oil prices (in $/barrel) are News
at least 8 times higher that natural gas prices (in $/MMBTU), Petroleum Training
its technology offers an economical advantage over News
conventional naphtha cracking. For example with crude oil at Renewable Energy
$40/bbl as long as natural gas prices are below Talent Management
$5.00/MMBTU then Siluria claims that its OCM technology is
more economical. However, competing against conventional
ethane cracking may prove more difficult. This is especially
true in the US since hydraulic fracking of tight shale deposits
has resulted in large supplies of natural gas and associated
About Us
ethane. Of all the hydrocarbon feedstocks that can be utilized About

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27/2/2018 US Ethylene Plant Development; Announcement, Plans, and New Technology

in steam cracking technology, ethane provides the highest Contact Us

overall yield (80-85 wt%) of ethylene. Events

Successful implementation of OCM technology still faces

significant challenges. While Siluria claims that the oxygen
required may be provided by air as well as high purity oxygen,
it is doubtful whether air would be used as this would impose
severe economic penalties on the downstream recovery section
in separating ethylene and other streams from the nitrogen
carried in with the air. Therefore, high purity oxygen, which
avoids the nitrogen issue, would require the additional capital
investment of an adjacent air separation plant or an additional
feedstock expense for the source of high purity oxygen.

In the OCM reaction some of the carbon in the methane feed is

unavoidably oxidized to carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
To avoid this potential yield loss, the process includes a
methanation step employing the following reactions:

In this process the carbon oxides are reacted with hydrogen,

reconverted to methane and then recycled to the OCM reactor.
Some if not all of the hydrogen is provided as a by-product of
the oxidative coupling reaction since the reaction mechanism
involves the formation of ethane which undergoes
dehydrogenation to ethylene. If there is not sufficient
hydrogen available as a by-product of the oxidative coupling
reaction then it will have to be provided from an outside
source.

Siluria has also developed a second technology (ETL) for

converting ethylene to liquids which involves ethylene
oligomerization to distillate fuels such as gasoline and diesel as
well as aromatics. More about this technology in a future blog
post.

It will be interesting to see when and if Siluria’s OCM

technology achieves full commercial status and offers
competition to conventional steam cracking for ethylene
production.

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27/2/2018 US Ethylene Plant Development; Announcement, Plans, and New Technology

About Marshall Frank

Marshall E. Frank retired from Chem
Systems, where he was President and
Managing Director, responsible for
international consulting activities in
North and South America and Asia Pacific. During his
more than thirty years with the company, he had
technical and administrative responsibility for a large
number of multidisciplinary projects, both single-client
and multi-client sponsored. Mr. Frank’s areas of expertise
include natural gas utilization and conversion, the
petrochemical industry, the refining and petrochemical
interface, and alternative fuels. He also directed Chem
Systems’ Financial Practice, which provided assistance to
lenders in assessing the various risks associated with the
financing of major international energy, petrochemical,
and polymer projects. Prior to joining Chem Systems, Mr.
Frank was involved in process evaluation, process
engineering, and the startup of many of Halcon/SD’s
proprietary processes at Scientific Design Company. Mr.
Frank received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from
Cornell University.

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Posted in Oil and Gas Industry News Tagged with: ethylene, Odebrecht,
petrochemical, PPT Thailand, Shell Chemical

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