The Changing Landscape of Hydrocarbon Feedstocks for Chemical Production Implications for Catalysis: Proceedings of a Workshop (2016) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Shale Gas Boom and Its Impact on the American Chemical Industry
2 The Shale Gas Boom and Its Impact on the American Chemical Industry
Pages 7-18
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From page 7... ...
As such, an economically competitive catalytic process that reduces energy use, capital demands, and carbon emissions could offer significant benefits for the chemical industry. While olefin production has been growing steadily at more than a 4 percent compound annual growth rate since the 1990s, the U.S.
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From page 8... ...
reserves of natural gas were falling, and chemical plants were being disassembled and moved to production sites outside of the United States. Chemical industry researchers even began looking at other feedstocks such as syngas -- a mixture consisting primarily of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide -- produced from coal, biomass, and methane.
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From page 9... ...
More importantly for the U.S. chemical industry, natural gas from shale is "wetter" than from other sources, meaning it has a higher percentage of the natural gas liquids that the chemical industry desires.
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From page 10... ...
Between 2005 and 2014, the value of chemical shipments increased by 48 percent, chemical exports doubled, capital expenditures in the United States rose by 77 percent, and chemical industry research funding jumped 50 percent (see Figure 2-3)
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From page 11... ...
He also noted the low cost of natural gas liquids and the high demand for ethylene and propylene has created an optimal scenario for the chemical industry, one in which the price spread between raw material and product makes chemical production highly profitable. Natural gas liquids contain a significant amount of propane, with the result that propane prices have fallen far enough that it has become economical to produce high-demand propylene directly from propane via catalytic propane dehydrogenation.
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From page 12... ...
chemical industry (see Figure 2-5) , but the predominant component of shale gas is still methane and it, too, has uses as a chemical feedstock.
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From page 13... ...
He noted that one of the bigger challenges facing chemists is to link what is known about catalysis with insights from materials science research to create industrial-scale catalysts that will be stable and resist sintering under the sometimes harsh conditions required for many conversion processes involving light alkanes (e.g., reforming to synthesis gas (syngas) , dehydrogenation, and aromatization)
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From page 14... ...
Methane steam reforming, in which methane reacts with water to a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen in the presence of a catalyst is a mature technology, but the challenge, said Lercher, is to understand the process by which carbon deposits on the catalyst and renders parts of the catalyst inactive. The probability and rate of the carbon deposition increases as the C-O-H ratio in the reacting mixture changes, for example, by replacing water with carbon dioxide in the reacting mixture.
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From page 15... ...
Direct partial oxidation of methane to methanol using electrophilic late metal catalysts has, at times, generated excitement from chemists (Periana et al., 1993, 1998, 2003) , but these reactions require concentrated sulfuric acid and/or sulfur trioxide dissolved as oxidant.
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From page 16... ...
Researchers have been investigating catalytic approaches aimed at wringing costs out of today's steam-cracking ethylene plants, largely by reducing the costs of separating ethylene from unreacted ethane, which accounts for 80 to 90 percent of the capital costs of an ethylene plant. "It only makes sense to go from steam cracking to oxidative dehydrogenation if we can operate with 95-plus percent selectivity and a 60 percent conversion operating in a pressure range that works for industry," said Lercher.
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From page 17... ...
In his opinion, a concerted research effort combining kinetics, spectroscopy, and theory should be used to understand the catalytic process on an atomistic and molecular level and to translate that knowledge into the development of catalysts with precisely tailored properties that will retain their integrity under industrial operating conditions. He also suggested that chemical engineers and chemists work together with the goal of creating optimal reactor designs for specific catalytic processes.
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