Integrated Membrane Reactor for Enhancing Thermal & Chemical Reactors

With development of shale gas fracking, large amounts of methane and ethane have now become available at low cost. With this low cost ethane it is desirable to convert low cost ethane to high value ethylene. Oxidative dehydration (ODH) for low cost conversion of ethane to ethylene is a potentially attractive route. ODH is an exothermic process for converting ethane to ethylene. By contrast processes today to make ethylene from petroleum are endothermic. Therefore by definition ODH is a heat process intensification process. A major limitation of ODH is the cost of concentrating the 25% ethylene from ODH to 99.9% ethylene (polymer grade ethylene) for chemical processing. CMS has recently developed custom amorphous fluoropolymers (CAF) membranes which show excellent ethylene-ethane flux, selectivity, and stability. This program will modify CAF and associated membranes for separating and concentrating ethylene to make polymer grade ethylene (99.9% ethylene) at costs 25% lower than distillation. CMS will develop enhanced CAF membranes for low cost concentrating of 25% ethylene (coming from the ODH reactor) to polymer grade ethylene (99.9% ethylene) for costs 25% lower than distillation. Phase I will show process feasibility.