Toward Carbon Neutrality for Natural Gas Liquids Valorization from Shale Gas

Toward Carbon Neutrality for Natural Gas Liquids Valorization from Shale Gas

Natural gas

Hydrogen storage

Fuel cells

Shale gas

Decarbonization

Carbon dioxide

Gas emissions

Chemical industry

Liquids

Dehydrogenation

Ethylene

Renewable energy resources

Global warming

Fossil fuels

Electrification and decarbonization of the chemical industry are the keys to achieve carbon neutrality for human society, which necessitates the transition from fossil resource-based chemical production to renewable energy-based chemical production. To facilitate this transition, intermediate solutions with fossil resources as carbon sources and renewable electricity as energy sources are desirable steps. Shale resources, although often regarded as a bridge fuel, are still processed in an energy-intensive manner, and even worse, large amounts of associated gas are directly flared on site. In this research note, we introduce several decarbonization flowsheets for the process to first convert natural gas liquids (NGLs) to mainly ethylene in an energy-intensive dehydrogenation reactor and subsequent conversion of ethylene into value-added and easy-to-transport liquid fuels. Decarbonization of such an energy-intensive process through direct electrical heating of the thermal dehydrogenation reactor in conjunction with electricity from the byproduct hydrogen and a fuel cell has potential to reduce storage of the intermittently available renewable electricity to a manageable scale. Use of such processes could enable valorization of shale gas NGLs at a distributed scale without any carbon dioxide emissions during the chemical conversion step. 2022 American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.

4469-4474

12

61

Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research

2022

Chen, Zewei

Rodriguez, Edwin

Agrawal, Rakesh

journalArticle

8885885

10.1021/acs.iecr.1c04913