Techno-Economic and Process Safety Analysis of Ethane to Ethylene Production Process through Oxidative Dehydrogenation (ODH) Route

Ethylene is one of the most important building blocks in the chemical industry and provides the starting point for many essential consumer products; e.g. paints, plastics, and pharmaceuticals. Conventionally, ethylene is produced from ethane through steam cracking at the refineries. However, harsh reaction condition (850°C reaction temperature) and potential hazardous by-product H₂ formation through steam cracking cause the need to look for alternative safer routes of ethylene production. Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is working on a novel route (ODH) of ethylene production, which produces water instead of hydrogen as a by-product during ethylene production. Our initial techno-economic analysis indicates that the minimum selling price of ethylene has to be around $1.85/kg to make the ODH process to be profitable. This presentation will describe the effects of the presence of steam (as a diluent) on the ODH process economics, and process energy efficiency. Additionally, a detailed inherent process safety analysis result of the ODH process will be presented to indicate the most crucial units of the process.