(298g) Low-Thermal-Budget Conversion of Natural Gas Integrated with Industrial Electrification

The shale gas revolution in the United States in recent years has resulted in an oversupply of methane and ethane, the major components of natural gas and natural gas liquids, respectively, and this trend will continue for the foreseeable future. Due largely to these cheap resources, the chemical industry has moved manufacturing plants back to the United States, creating thousands of jobs, while enjoying healthy margins compared to international rivals that typically use more expensive oil-based naphtha as feedstock. However, the ethylene production from ethane or naphtha is energy intensive and represents the single most energy consuming process in the chemical industry. To achieve significant progress in the reduction of both the energy consumption and the carbon footprint for ethylene production, especially from abundant natural gas (NG) or natural gas liquids (NGLs) resources, simple process optimization may not be sufficient, owing to the maturity of the manufacturing industry (centralized and vertical integrated), where materials and energy efficiencies have been extensively optimized with a long track record of reliable operation. Therefore, it is vital to develop transformative methods that are capable of fully exploiting the potential of NG/NGLs as a feedstock. Using ethane, one of primary components in NGLs, as the feedstock, we demonstrated that electrochemical activation of ethane for co-production of ethylene and hydrogen at reduced temperatures with significant reduction in process energy and CO2 emission, compared to the commercial ethane steam cracking process. If the heating value of produced hydrogen is taken into account, the electrochemical deprotonation process actually has a net gain in processing energy. This electrochemical activation process could have significant impact when integrated with renewable energies towards industrial electrification.