Comparative Techno-Economic and Environmental Analysis of Ethylene and Propylene Manufacturing from Wet Shale Gas and Naphtha

In this work, we perform a comparative techno-economic and environmental analysis for manufacturing ethylene and propylene from naphtha and from shale gas with rich natural gas liquids (NGLs). We first propose two novel process designs for producing ethylene and propylene from NGLs-rich shale gas. These two designs employ steam co-cracking of an ethane–propane mixture and an integration of ethane steam cracking and propane dehydrogenation, respectively. For benchmarking, we also consider a conventional process design in which ethylene and propylene are produced via steam cracking of naphtha. Detailed process models are developed for all the three designs to obtain the mass and energy balances of each unit operation. On this basis, techno-economic analysis and life cycle analysis are conducted for each of the three designs in order to systematically compare the production costs and life cycle environmental impacts of ethylene and propylene manufactured from shale gas and naphtha based on the same conditions. The economic analysis indicates that manufacturing ethylene and propylene from NGLs-rich shale gas is more attractive than from naphtha. The environmental impact analysis shows that manufacturing ethylene and propylene from NGLs-rich shale gas results in lower life cycle water consumption but higher life cycle greenhouse gas emissions.