<p>The present work is focused on
the synthesis of small-scale (modular processes) to produce olefins from light
alkane resources in shale gas.</p>
<p>Olefins, which are widely used to
produce important chemicals and everyday consumer products, can be produced
from light alkanes - ethane, propane, butanes etc. Shale gas is comprised of
light alkanes in significant proportion; and is available in abundance. Meanwhile,
shale gas wells are small sized in nature and are distributed over many
different areas or regions. In this regard, using shale gas as raw material for
olefin production would require expensive transportation infrastructure to move
the gas from the wells or local gas gathering stations to large central
processing facilities. This is because existing technologies for natural gas
conversions are particularly suited for large-scale processing. One possible way
to take advantage of the abundance of shale resource for olefins production is
to place small-sized or modular processing plants at the well sites or local gas
gathering stations.</p>
<p>In this work, new process
concepts are synthesized and studied towards developing simple technologies for
on-site and modular processing of light alkane resources in shale gas for
olefin production. Replacing steam with methane as diluent in conventional
thermal cracking processes is proposed to eliminate front-end separation of
methane from the shale gas processing scheme. Results from modeling studies
showed that this is a promising approach. To eliminate the huge firebox volume
associated with thermal cracking furnaces and allow for a compact cracking reactor
system, the use of electricity to supply heat to the cracking reactor is considered.
Synthesis efforts led to the development of two electrically powered reactor
configurations that have improved energy efficiency and reduced carbon
footprints over and compare to conventional thermal cracking furnace configurations.</p>
<p>The ideas and results in the present work are radical in nature and could
lead to a transformation in the utilization of light alkanes, natural gas and
shale resources for the commercial production of fuels and chemicals.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/12082128 |
| Date | 12 October 2021 |
| Creators | Peter Oladipupo (8669685) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Processes_for_Light_Alkane_Cracking_to_Olefins/12082128 |
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