How to Increase the Performance of the Methane Oxidative Coupling Process?

After a more than three decades intense investigation of Oxidative Coupling of Methane (OCM) process, still its performance needs to be significantly improved in order to be able to compete with the commercially available ethylene production technologies such as ethane and naphtha cracking. In a miniplant scale experimental facility constructed at Berlin Institute of Technology, different unit operations such as membrane and fluidized bed reactors, carbon dioxide separation units as well as ethylene separation units have been tested under wide range of operating conditions and their results were analyzed in order to improve the performance of the whole OCM process. Moreover, various potentials for reactor and process integration were also analyzed for this aim. For instance, integrated OCM-ethane dehydrogenation reactor, dual-membrane reactor for integrating the OCM reaction and dry methane reforming and utilizing the generated carbon dioxide in the OCM reactor to synthesize methanol have been investigated in details.