Techno-economic feasibility of propane dehydrogenation in novel membrane reactors

Abstract

The rising global demand of propylene led the petrochemical industry to switch from traditional steam cracking to on-purpose propane dehydrogenation technologies, which use shale gasses as feedstock. These direct dehydrogenation processes have been already commercialized and installed worldwide to full ll the global propylene demand. Among them, the CATOFIN technology dominates the industrial market. Propane dehydrogenation technologies operate their reactors at high temperatures to achieve high conversion, because the dehydrogenation reaction from propane to propylene is highly endothermic. This leads to undesirable cracking reactants, resulting in high amount of coke deposition on the catalyst surface and catalyst deactivation.
In this study, it is proposed to substitute the conventional packed-bed reactors
of the benchmark CATOFIN technology to packed-bed membrane reactors, to separate hydrogen from the reaction zone and thus push the equilibrium reaction towards the desired propylene product. This gives the opportunity to reduce the intensive operating conditions and the overall energy consumption of the plant, while keeping the same conversion of propane as in the benchmark process. This study aims to assess the techno-economic feasibility of the implementation of the membrane reactors into the CATOFIN process for the direct dehydrogenation of propane.

Date of Award	30 Jun 2021
Original language	English
Supervisor	Fausto Gallucci (Supervisor 1), Camilla Brencio (Supervisor 2), José A. Medrano (Supervisor 2) & M.F. (Fernanda) Neira d'Angelo (Supervisor 2)