Ciencias Exactas y Ciencias de la Salud

Ethylene is one of the main building blocks in the chemical production industry. Conventional production routes are expensive and have bigger environmental impacts day by day. These drawbacks can be addressed by comparing existing conventional routes with two alternative biorefinery routes to see if a better option can be found. The conventional routes involve the Steam Cracking of Naphtha and Natural gas. Both routes are energy-intensive and overall expensive. Two alternative “Green Routes” were proposed to compare them against the existing ones and to find if they are sustainable. These routes consist on the production of 1 kg/hr of ethylene via bioethanol dehydration and via bio methanol to olefins. Based on the results obtained in the LCA, the best route is bioethanol dehydration. This can be attributed to the smaller environmental impact that this route has. Literature often mentions that most biorefinery routes strive to be carbon neutral, which is a point in favour for route 3 and 4. Route 4 or biomethanol to olefins production is an attractive option, however, it is also in third place due to the energy demand from the methanol to olefins process. This energy demand puts route 4 in a negative perspective on the overall environmental assessment. The outcome of this study shows that route 4 (biomethanol to olefins) emits 1357.13 kg CO2 eq per kg of ethylene produced. Looking into the behavior of the route, most of the impact can be attributed to block 3 which is responsible for 1187.76 kg CO2 eq per kg of ethylene produced. This result implies that the block that must be optimized is block three, which corresponds to the methanol-to-olefins process, and that if this block were improved, the route would become an attractive alternative.

Ciencias Exactas y Ciencias de la Salud

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