Simultaneous Synthesis of the Downstream Process and the Reactor Concept for the Oxidative Coupling of Methane (OCM)

Abstract

Abstract The Oxidative Coupling of Methane (OCM) is a promising alternative for the oil based production of olefins. The aim is the catalytically conversion of methane containing natural gas to ethylene, which builds up a base for olefins and further synthesis. The overall yield is still limited to 30%. Beside new catalysts and reactors, new concepts for integrated downstream processes are necessary to overcome the exist limitations [3]. To meet this target as fast as possible, the downstream process, the reactor and the catalyst are designed simultaneously. This novel strategy causes particular interactions between the downstream process, the reactor and the catalyst design. Design specifications for each part of the plant are established as targets such as carbon dioxide concentration. In order to modify and investigate the different approaches in our mini plant easily, the whole process is designed and built up modular. The entire process is divided into three units: reaction, purification and separation unit. On each unit interfaces of each unit the targets and the process specification are defined by laboratory screenings. Due to the novel process design strategies, the downstream impose specification to the reaction unit and the catalyst too e.g. maximum carbon dioxide concentration for the reaction product. For this purpose different reactor concepts like membrane reactors, fluidized bed and fixed bed reactors have to be investigated along with different integrated downstream concepts. The most promising reactor concepts are discussed in this article regarding their implementation and their influence on the separation process. The downstream concept should also be design appropriately for the OCM Process. Therefore a novel hybrid purification process, a combination of a membrane and an amine unit for the carbon dioxide removal could be implemented and is presented in this article. The modification results of this novel hybrid process are presented along with the simulation results for the hybrid process and they are discussed regarding the whole OCM Process. Thus the results have to be validated in our mini plant.