Process Modeling and Analysis of Manufacturing Pathways for Producing Ethylene and Propylene from Wet Shale Gas and Naphtha

This work addresses the comparison of manufacturing ethylene and propylene from wet shale gas and naphtha regarding economic and environmental performance. We first propose two shale gas-based pathways for the manufacturing of ethylene and propylene by employing the steam cracking of ethane-propane mixture and the integration of ethane steam cracking and propane dehydrogenation, respectively. We also investigate a conventional pathway considering the steam cracking of naphtha. We develop detailed process models and conduct techno-economic and environmental analyses for all pathways. The results shows that manufacturing ethylene and propylene from naphtha requires 90 ~ 110% higher production costs than from wet shale gas. However, manufacturing ethylene and propylene from wet shale gas results in higher greenhouse gas emissions by 20 ~ 40% than from naphtha.