PRECISION COMBUSTION, INC. — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 17f

Description

Use of our advanced adsorption technology with newly developed sorbents has the potential to disrupt ethylene manufacturing, reducing significantly the manufacturing energy requirements by replacing current state of the art cryogenic ethylene separation and purification with our sorption technology- Implementation of a two-stage module can achieve 99-5%, or better, pure ethylene from a mixed hydrocarbon inlet stream without the need for cryogenic temperatures or high pressures- Energy use associated with ethylene separation and purification portion of ethylene manufacturing can be reduced by as much as 75%, with a 30-50% overall reduction in process energy consumption- Rather than expending significant energy on compressor/expanders to achieve the low temperatures needed for state-of-the-art cryogenic distillation used for industrial ethylene separation and purification, only moderate heating, which can be provided by heat exchange with the ethylene steam cracker, is required, to overcome the moderate heat of adsorption of ethylene on the sorbent materials- As a result, energy requirements for producing 99-5% pure ethylenewill drop from 7-7 GJ/metric ton to less than ~2 GJ/ton, corresponding to savings of ~$85 per metric ton of ethylene produced, about 10% of the product value- Full implementation could save over 250 billion kW-hr/year- Our new process for ethylene purification is applicable to existing large scale ethylene steam-cracking facilities and to much smaller distributed facilities, including those based on advanced processes proposed for shale gas upgrading- The advantages of our process are the results of both the high selectivity and capacity exhibited by the sorbents, and especially the result of the unique attributes of our sorption device, which include low thermal mass, enhanced heat transfer rates and tolerance to rapid thermal cycling, and avoid flow channeling observed in pellet or fluidized beds-