Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Ethylene from Wet Shale Gas and Biomass

This paper presents comparative techno-economic and environmental analyses of three ethylene manufacturing pathways based on wet shale gas, corn stover, and corn grain. A distributed-centralized processing network that consists of distributed ethane/bioethanol production and centralized ethylene manufacturing is employed for each of the three pathways. Based on the detailed mass and energy balances and life cycle inventory results, we conduct techno-economic and life cycle analyses to systematically compare the economic and environmental performances of the three pathways. The results indicate that the shale gas-based pathway is the most attractive due to the lowest breakeven ethylene prices; however, it leads to the highest greenhouse gas emissions. On the contrary, the corn stover-based pathway results in the lowest greenhouse gas emissions but the highest breakeven ethylene prices.