(60a) Future Feedstocks for Petroleum and Petrochemical Industries

The rising crude oil price along with its depleting reserve has made it imperative that a systematic search must ensue to find out the feed-stocks which could be adopted for the petroleum and petrochemical industries in future. While there are number of feed-stocks in the horizon, techno-economic criteria would determine which ones are to be adopted and when. In that respect sustained availability of the feed-stocks, their price, investment required for their adaptation in the existing plants, maturity of the technologies to be used for such adaptation; are the main issues to be considered before selecting any feed-stock in future. In this article, the scenario of future feed-stocks has been developed taking into consideration the above-mentioned criteria. Systematic phase-wise adaptation of different feed-stocks depending upon their availability and other techno-economic criteria has been described. Status of different technologies to be used for adaptation of the respective feed-stocks has been highlighted.