Inside Cover: Oxidative Dehydrogenation of Ethane: A Chemical Looping Approach (Energy Technol. 10/2016)

Throwing ethane for a chemical loop: The cover art illustration presents a chemical looping (CL)–oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) scheme for ethylene production from ethane. CL–ODH uses promoted Mg6MnO8 as the oxygen carrier (i.e., redox catalyst). In the ODH reactor, the promoted Mg6MnO8 is reduced while converting ethane to ethylene and water. The reduced redox catalyst is then transferred to the regenerator where it is re-oxidized with air before circulating back to the ODH reactor to complete the chemical loop. Heat from the regenerator is also transferred to the ODH reactor along with the redox catalyst particles. The CL–ODH scheme is shown to be able to achieve significantly higher ethane conversion and ethylene yield than thermal cracking while reducing the energy consumption and CO2/NOx emissions. You can read more in the Full Paper by Luke Neal, Seif Yusuf, John Sofranko, and Fanxing Li from North Carolina State University on page 1200 in Issue 10, 2016 (DOI: 10.1002/ente.201600074).