Light hydrocarbon aromatization

The economics of light hydrocarbon aromatization processes do depend on the initial investment cost, mainly construction cost, and the price difference between the feedstock and aromatics. Due to the massive construction cost and no expected widening in the feedstock/BTX price difference, the payout years of a construction cost would be lengthy. 

Life Testing of Light Hydrocarbon Aromatization Catalysts... 

The feedstocks to the styrene process are ethylbenzene and superheated steam, and a typical unit produces hydrogen, small amounts of light hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide as gaseous products, and a Hquid product stream containing 95% + styrene and minor amounts of toluene, benzene, and other aromatics. In an integrated plant, the benzene can be recycled to the ethylbenzene unit, while the other by-products usually are consumed as fuel for the highly endothermic process. 

Novel Production Methods for Ethylene, Light Hydrocarbons, and Aromatics, edited by Lyle F. Albright, Billy L. Crynes, and Siegfried Nowak... 

In the moving bed processes, the preheated feed meets the hot catalyst, which is in the form of beads that descend by gravity to the regeneration zone. As in fluidized bed cracking, conversion of aromatics is low, and a mixture of saturated and unsaturated light hydrocarbon gases is produced. The gasoline product is also rich in aromatics and branched paraffins. 

Selectivity to desired products including light hydrocarbons, gasoline, or diesel fuel depends upon the catalyst employed, the reactor temperature, and the type of process employed. Products of the F-T synthesis are suitable for further chemical processing because of their predominantly straight chain structure and the position of the double bond at the end of the chain. By-products formed on a lesser scale include alcohols, ketones, acids, esters, and aromatics. 

The aromatization of liquefied petroleum gases (LPG) has been investigated for more than a decade due to its economical and strategic importance for the exploitation of natural gas reserves and valorization of light hydrocarbons obtained from petroleum refining. Commercially, these reactions using gallium modified ZSM-5 zeolite catalysts are known as Cyclar process, developed jointly by UOP and BP [1]. 

Existing processes for producing oil and gas products have required the development of phase behavior and other thermodynamic data on light hydrocarbons, heavy hydrocarbons, and the acid gases CO2 and HoS. For this reason a lot of basic data are available on these systems but there is still a lot we don t know such as how to characterize the behavior of hydrocarbon fractions containing numerous paraffin, naphthene, and aromatic components. Additional basic data on these systems would help to improve the efficiency of these existing processes. 

Light hydrocarbons (Ci to C4) and aromatics (mainly Ce to Ce) were produced by ZSM-5 due to the the conversion of olefins and paraffins. Thus,these results provide evidence for cracking of olefins, paraffins and cyclization of olefins by ZSM-5 at 500 C. The steam deactivated ZSM-5 catalyst exhibited reduced olefin conversion and negligible paraffin conversion activity. 

Sweetening of light hydrocarbon streams n-paraffin separation improving jet fuel quality purification of aromatics... 

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