Manufacturing Ethylene from Wet Shale Gas and Biomass: Comparative Technoeconomic Analysis and Environmental Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

This paper presents comparative technoeconomic and environmental analyses of three ethylene manufacturing pathways based on ethane-rich shale gas, corn stover, and corn grain. The shale-gas-based pathway includes two processing steps, namely, shale gas processing to produce ethane and ethane steam cracking to manufacture ethylene. The two biomass-based pathways also contain two processing steps each, namely, bioethanol production via fermentation and ethylene manufacturing via bioethanol dehydration. A distributed–centralized processing network that consists of distributed ethane/bioethanol production and centralized ethylene manufacturing is employed for each of the three pathways. Detailed process simulation models are developed for major processing steps, and the three pathways are then modeled on five different ethylene production scales. On the basis of the detailed mass and energy balances and life cycle inventory results, we conduct technoeconomic and life cycle analyses to systematically compare t...