Biomass to Ethylene (B2)

Introduction

Today ethylene is one of the most widely used organic compounds in the world with a global production of over 100 million tons per year. The widespread use of ethylene illustrates why engineers must continue to develop processes to more efficiently produce the organic compound. Currently, almost all of the commercially available ethylene is produced by steam cracking with petroleum as the starting ingredient. This process is a profitable and efficient method of making ethylene, but it is neither sustainable nor environmentally friendly. Furthermore, the volatility of the petroleum market makes the production of ethylene via petroleum cracking dependent on the petroleum market.

We investigated whether or not there was a sustainable and efficient method of producing ethylene, and we identified and developed a process that fulfills those two criteria. In this report we will provide a detailed explanation of our developed process, along with an economic analysis.

Executive Summary

The objective of this process is to create ethanol from biomass and then to convert this bio-ethanol to ethylene. The overall process feed is corn stover, which is degraded into simple sugars and fermented with the organism Zymomonas Mobilis to create ethanol. The ethanol is then converted to ethylene using packed bed reactors with an aluminum oxide on gamma-alumina catalyst. The working plant capacity is 2000 MT/day of corn stover. Refer to Appendix I for a overall process flow diagram.

The secondary objective of this process is to evaluate the feasibility of this process by considering economics and safety. All of these items will be discussed in the following sections.