Modular methanol manufacturing from shale gas: Techno‐economic and environmental analyses of conventional large‐scale production versus small‐scale distributed, modular processing

Abstract

This article presents comparative techno-economic and environmental analyses of four representative shale gas monetization options, namely, conventional shale gas processing, large-scale methanol manufacturing, modular methanol manufacturing with shale gas supplied by pipelines, and modular methanol manufacturing with consideration of plant relocation. We first present shale gas supply models for the four gas monetization options. Next, the process designs for shale gas processing and methanol manufacturing from shale gas are described. We develop detailed process simulation models for shale gas processing and methanol manufacturing with different scales using raw shale gas extracted from the Marcellus, Eagle Ford, and Bakken shale plays. On this basis, techno-economic analyses and environmental impact analyses are conducted for the four shale gas monetization options to systematically compare their economic and environmental performances based on the same conditions. The results show that modular methanol manufacturing is more economically competitive than conventional shale gas processing, although it leads to higher environmental impacts. Besides, modular methanol manufacturing is better than large-scale methanol manufacturing for raw shale gas produced from distributed, remote wells from both economic and environmental perspectives. V C 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 64: 495-510, 2018 499 SGP, LMM, and MMM are short for shale gas processing, large-scale methanol manufacturing, and modular methanol manufacturing, respectively. HP is short for high pressure. a Values are based on HHV.

Waste respirator processing system for public health protection and climate change mitigation under COVID-19 pandemic: Novel process design and energy, environmental, and techno-economic perspectives

“…The stream mixture is sent to the pre-reformer (550 °C, 21 bar) and the heavy components are cracked into lighter components. The irreversible cracking reactions follow the stoichiometric equation given in [47] . Methane stream from the demethanizer is preheated, and 16% of this stream is mixed with saturated steam.…”

A comparative technical and economic analysis of different processes for shale gas conversion to high value products

“…Minbu Young and Fengi analyzed the profitability of shale gas economically and environmentally. They concluded that methanol production on a small scale was more economical than the common processes of shale gas conversion and enormous ranges of methanol production [40]. Ross et al considered autothermal reforming as the suitable and probable method for high-capacity methanol production [41].…”

Valorization of Shale Gas Condensate to Liquid Hydrocarbons through Catalytic Dehydrogenation and Oligomerization

“…In a modular plant, the process equipment and its supporting components are mounted within a structural metal framework and each module is a self-contained process [50]. There are many factors that determine whether a process is amenable to modularization, and process complexity is one of the main factors.…”