News Post
Cheap abundant methane turned to ethylene
A world first in process engineering is underway in the US after Siluria Technologies successfully started large-scale production of ethylene from natural gas. This breakthrough promises to decouple gasoline production from oil, the company says.
Ethylene is the most common industrial chemical, used to build a great range of plastics used in shopping bags, packaging, and drinks bottles. It’s also a key building block for the production of solvents, lubricants, coatings and pharmaceuticals to name a few. Until now, industry has made ethylene by breaking apart larger hydrocarbon molecules found in naphtha in crude oil, or ethane in natural gas. Such is the abundance of cheap natural gas in the US that chemical companies including Chevron, Sasol and ExxonMobil are spending billions of dollars building ethane crackers in the US.
What’s novel about Siluria Technology’s new process is that it joins together the shorter methane molecules found in natural gas to produce ethylene, in what the company describes as a “revolutionary breakthrough”. Methane is the cheapest, most abundant component of natural gas – and there are huge quantities ‘stranded’ at gas fields such as the Bakken shale plays in the US where it’s simply flared off as the costs for transportation are too high.
Siluria’s new ethylene production plant, constructed at its partner Braskem’s polyethylene site in LaPorte, Texas, has begun full-scale operation and is set for commercial-scale use under licence by Linde before the end of 2018. It uses an oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) process. In OCM, methane is activated on a catalyst surface forming methyl free radicals which then join in the gas phase to form ethane. This is then dehydrogenated to produce ethylene and water.
Siluria says its breakthrough came through a combination of catalyst development and screening, and by employing a highly-motivated and creative research and engineering team.
A second process package to convert ethylene to gasoline has been under development at Siluria’s OCM pilot facility in California since November 2013. This would open up a new route to automotive fuels, supplementing production from oil. This could help add significant value to energy companies’ lowest value product, Siluria says.
“This revolutionary breakthrough has the potential to shift the foundation of the hydrocarbon economy by using abundant natural gas, to produce high-value chemicals and fuels,” says Ed Dineen, Siluria’s CEO. “We are well positioned with our commercial and engineering partners to now move quickly to full commercialisation of our proprietary technologies.”
Siluria’s partners in the project include Braskem, Linde, Amec Foster Wheeler and Saudi Aramco.
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