Natural Gas to Olefins

In the last decade, the United States has seen a significant boost in domestic natural gas and oil production. With this available new feedstock of Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs), the potential to construct a profitable olefins plant is very high. Olefins, mainly ethylene and propylene, are among the highest produced and used petrochemical in the world. The plant researched and designed in this report has the capacity to produce over 1.5 billion pounds of ethylene and propylene utilizing North Dakota NGLs. This plant will be located in the gulf coast region and consists of ten crackers which convert a 75/25 mass percent feed of ethane and propane respectively into the desired olefins. After the crackers are five quench towers which stop the reaction and cool the products. A large fractionation system then follows the quench towers to purify the ethylene and propylene to 99.9% and 99.7% polymer grade purity respectively. The overall projected cost for this plant is $1.26 billion dollars with an initial return rate of 23%. This estimated cost is based on our running simulation, current feed and product costs, priced equipment for the plant, and basic heat integration.