Naphtha commercial prices

In this chapter we consider some commercial routes and emerging technology for the production of olefins Irom coal. For the most part olefins are made from natural gas and crude oil derivatives - LPG, naphtha, gas oil or residual fuel oil. The cost of these feed-stocks are tied one way or another to the prevailing price of crude oil and the petrochemical operations have to bid for feedstock against the oil-refiners demand for them to produce transport fuels. For example, a major feedstock is ethane. In developed economies the price of ethane is directly linked to the prevailing price of crude oil or indirectly via the natural gas price, which is linked one way or another to the price of crude oil. 

Lower olefins are today produced by steam cracking of naphtha, LSR or other paraffinic feeds. Hie actual methanol price does not allow the methanol to olefins process to compete economically. However, if methanol will become more available firom natural gas transforming routes, then there is a great chance for that process to become commercial. 

The oxidation of butane or naphtha is also used for the commercial production of acetic acid. The relevant processes were developed in the 1950s and 1960s, when increasing refinery capadties led to attractive prices for light hydrocarbon cuts. Not all mixtures of hydrocarbons are good feedstock for this process. The desirable ratio of methyl to methylene groups is 1 1 and the alkene content must be very low. 

As mentioned before, the OCM process has not been applied on a commercial scale due to a combination of technical and economical reasons. Especially the fact that the namral gas price has been coupled to the oil price made it impossible to get any advantage from the process of converting natural gas into ethylene compared to naphtha cracking of oil. In the last decade the economical landscape has been changed due to the shale gas developments in North America. " The gas price has reached an independent status compared to oil production, making the use of natural gas more competitive. Beside this also the research has discovered more stable, suitable catalysts. This means in short that the OCM process is becoming more attractive (Graf, 2008)... 

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