Techno-Economic Analysis of the Butane Dehydrogenation Process with Membrane Reactors

Abstract

The rise of the oil price together with the increase in global demand of 1,3-butadiene led the petrochemical industry to seek alternative solutions to the oil fed steam cracking and catalytic cracking. Catalytic dehydrogenation of light alkanes, obtained from shale gas, is therefore an interesting alternative. It offers the advantage of having a high selectivity and lower costs and the hydrogen obtained can be used as fuel or sold. This type of technology is already commercialized and installed worldwide. The CATADIENE® LUMMUS is the reference technology on the market. Dehydrogenation reaction from n-butane to 1,3-butadine is highly endothermic, so high reaction temperatures are needed to achieve good conversion. The required operating conditions promote undesirable cracking reactions, resulting in high amount of coke deposition on the catalyst surface, leading to catalyst deactivation. In this study, it is proposed to substitute the conventional packed-bed reactors of the benchmark CATADIENE technology with packed-bed membrane reactors, to separate hydrogen from the reaction zone and thus push the equilibrium reaction towards the desired product. This solution gives the opportunity to reduce the intensive operating conditions and the undesired coke production, while keeping the same conversion of n-butane as in the reference process. This study aims to assess the techno-economic feasibility of the implementation of the membrane reactors into the CATADIENE process for the direct dehydrogenation of n-butane.

Date of Award	7 Oct 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Politecnico di Milano
Supervisor	Giampaolo Manzolini (Supervisor 1), Fausto Gallucci (Supervisor 2), Camilla Brencio (Supervisor 2) & Luca Di Felice (Supervisor 2)