Natural Gas Processing from Midstream to Downstream

15 Techno‐Economic Analysis of Monetizing Shale Gas to Butadiene

Ecem Özinan and Mahmoud M. El‐Halwagi

Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University, USA

Chapter Menu

1. 15.1 Introduction
2. 15.2 Process Description
3. 15.3 Techno‐Economic Analysis
4. 15.4 Conclusions

15.1 Introduction

Butadiene or 1,3 butadiene (C₄H₆) is a colorless diolefin, which is gaseous at 298 K. The global production capacity of butadiene is about 13 million tons per year. It is a major building block in the petrochemical industry that is used in manufacturing important products such as styrene‐butadiene rubber (SBR), polybutadiene, styrene‐butadiene latex, acrylonitrile‐butadiene‐styrene resins, adiponitrile, and chloroprene. There are three common routes to produce 1,3 butadiene. These are [1]:

• • Steam cracking or naphtha cracking
• • Catalytic dehydrogenation of n‐butane and n‐butene (also known as the Houdry process)
• • Oxidative dehydrogenation of n‐butene

Among these production routes, steam cracking is the most conventional production route where naphtha, ethane, propane, or butane is cracked to produce ethylene as the main product and 1,3 butadiene as a side product of this process. Naphtha or ethane is fed to a pyrolysis furnace where cracking takes place at a relatively high temperature (around 1,100 K) [2]. The cracking products such as hydrogen, ethylene, propylene, butadiene, and heavier hydrocarbons are quenched. The cooled gases are compressed, and the ...