Process Intensification and Integration for Sustainable Design
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Dr. Mahmoud El-Halwagi is the McFerrin Professor at Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University and the Managing Director of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station?s Gas and Fuel Research Center. Dr. El-Halwagi?s main areas of expertise are process integration, synthesis, design, operation, and optimization. Specifically, Dr. El-Halwagi?s research focuses on sustainable design. In addition to the theoretical foundations he helped lay down in these areas, he has been active in education, technology transfer, and industrial applications. He has served as a consultant to a wide variety of chemical, petrochemical, petroleum, gas processing, pharmaceutical and metal finishing industries. He is the coauthor of more than 250 papers and book chapters, the co-editor of five books, and the author of three textbooks. Dr. El-Halwagi is the recipient of several awards including the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Sustainable Engineering Forum (AIChE SEF) Research Excellence Award, the National Science Foundation's National Young Investigator Award, the Lockheed Martin Excellence in Engineering Teaching Award, the Celanese Excellence in Teaching Award, and the Fluor Distinguished Teaching Award. Dr. El-Halwagi received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles and his M.S. and B.S. from Cairo University.
Content
Shale gas as an option for the production of chemicals and challenges for process intensification
Design and Techno-Economic Analysis of Separation Units to Handle Feedstock Variability in Shale Gas Treatment
Sustainable Design and Model-Based Optimization of Hybrid RO-PRO Desalination Process
Techno-Economic and Environmental Assessment of Ultrathin Polysulfone Membranes for Oxygen-Enriched Combustion
Process Intensification of Membrane-based Systems for Water, Energy and Environment Applications
Design of Internally Heat-Integrated Distillation Column (HIDiC)
Section 2 - Process Integration
Graphical Analysis and Integration of Heat Exchanger Networks with Heat Pumps
Insightful Analysis and Integration of Reactor and Heat Exchanger Network
Fouling Mitigation in Heat Exchanger Network through Process Optimization
Decomposition and Implementation of Large-Scale Interplant Heat Integration
The Synthesis of Combined Heat and Mass Exchange Networks (CHAMENs) with Renewables Considering Environmental Impact
Optimization of Integrated Water and Multi-Regenerator Membrane Systems Involving Multi-Contaminants: A Water-Energy Nexus Aspect
Optimization Strategies for Integrating and Intensifying Housing Complexes
Sustainable Biomass Conversion Process Assessment
1
Shale Gas as an Option for the Production of Chemicals and Challenges for Process Intensification
Andrea P. Ortiz-Espinozaand Arturo Jiménez-Gutiérrez
Tecnológico Nacional de México, Instituto Tecnológico de Celaya, Chemical Engineering Department, Ave Tecnologico y Garcia Cubas, Celaya, 38010, Mexico
1.1 Introduction
Shale gas is unconventional natural gas trapped or adsorbed in shale rock formations. As opposed to conventional natural gas, shale gas is difficult to extract because of the low porosity of the rock formations in which it is confined. This particular characteristic implied a high cost for the extraction of this gas, so that its production remained unfeasible until the development of more suitable extraction technologies, such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling [1]. Hydraulic fracturing is a stimulation technique used to increase the flow rate of gas and oil in low permeability reservoirs. This method consists in injecting high-pressurized fluids into the well to create fractures and maintain them opened to allow the flux of gas and oil [1,2]. Hydraulic fracturing is generally combined with horizontal drilling to increase the area covered with a lower number of wells. These two technologies have led to an increase in the net production of natural gas in the United States (US) for more than a decade, which has been referred to as the shale gas revolution [1,3].
The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of shale gas and its potential to produce value-added chemicals. This chapter addresses the following aspects: shale gas composition and places where deposits are located, effect of shale gas discoveries on natural gas prices, alternatives to produce chemicals from shale gas, and opportunities for process intensification.
1.2 Where Is It Found?
Although shale gas has been known for a while, the first shale gas well was drilled in 1821 in Chautauqua, NY, its exploitation was possible only until the development of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies. After the oil crises of the 1970s, the US government and some oil and gas companies, separately, initiated the investment in research projects to evaluate and make shale gas extraction possible. From the beginning of the 2000s, technical and economic factors promoted the idea to produce natural gas from shale formations. The Barnett shale play was the first basin to be exploited in a large scale, with the hydraulic fracturing technology being tested there. Following the success to extract natural gas from the Barnett shale play, shale gas extraction began in other locations. Table 1.1 gives basic information about the major shale gas plays in the United States.
Table 1.1 Major shale gas plays in the United States.
Source: Adapted from EIA 2018 [4].
Shale play State(s) Percentage of dry shale gas production in 2018 Marcellus PA, WV, OH, and NY 32.7 Permian TX and NM 12.3 Utica OH, PA, and WV 11.3 Haynesville LA and TX 11.0 Eagle Ford TX 7.1 Woodford OK 5.0 Barnett TX 4.4 Mississippian OK 3.8 Niobrara-Codell CO and WY 3.4 Bakken ND and MT 2.7 Fayetteville AR 2.3 Rest of the United States "shale" 4.0Apart from US reserves, recoverable shale gas resources around the world have been found in countries such as China, Argentina, Algeria, Canada, Mexico, Australia, South Africa, and Russia [3,5]. Despite these discoveries, several factors such as geological aspects and the lack of the necessary infrastructure have curbed the development of the shale gas industry in those other countries [6,7]. Table 1.2 shows the production rates in 2018 for the six countries with more unproved technically recoverable shale gas resources.
Table 1.2 Recent shale gas reserves and production in for the six countries with more shale gas reserves.
Source: From EIA 2015 [13].
Country Unproved recoverable reserves by 2013 (Tcf) Production in 2018 (Bcf/yr) References China 1115.20 353.15 [8] Argentina 801.50 365.00 [9] Algeria 706.90 No production [10] United States 662.50 (by 2015) 7079.62 [4] Canada 572.90 182.80 [11] Mexico 545.20 No production [12]1.3 Shale Gas Composition
One particular characteristic of shale gas is its varying composition. Shale gas composition depends heavily on the location of the sources, and it may variate even within wells in the same play. The primary component of shale gas is methane, but it also contains considerable quantities of natural gas liquids (NGLs) such as ethane and propane. Apart from these components, shale gas also contains acid gases such as CO2, H2S, and inorganic components such as nitrogen [5,14]. The separation of NGLs from methane has induced industries to look for alternatives to transform them into more valuable products, but at the same time the varying composition of shale gas represents a challenge for the treatment plants, which have to be robustly designed to handle such variations in the gas composition.
1.4 Shale Gas Effect on Natural Gas Prices
The high availability of natural gas, generated as a result of the increasing production of shale gas, has caused a noticeable drop of its price in the United States. Moreover, the ability to extract natural gas from deposits that are not associated to crude oil reservoirs has uncoupled natural gas and crude oil prices [1]. These facts have contributed to what has been defined as the new era of cheap natural gas, in which it has been priced consistently under US$5 per million Btu for almost a decade in the United States [15]. In particular, natural gas prices in 2019 have shown a decrease from 3.18 at the beginning of the year to US$2.07 per million Btu in September [16]. Even more, in an extreme situation, producers at the Waha hub in the Permian basin in West Texas had to pay the pipeline to take the excess of gas, showing a negative US$9 in April, which contributed to an average price of only 73 cents per million Btu for the first eight months of 2019, compared with an average market price of US$2.10 in 2018 (which is also lower than the five year average from 2014 to 2018 of US$2.80) [17]. These trends create an opportunity for the development of technologies to transform shale/natural gas into value-added chemicals. One additional point to consider is the increasing amount of liquefied natural gas that is being exported from the United States [18]. As this quantity grows, international natural gas prices may also get affected.
The main consumers of natural gas are the electricity generation industry, the residential sector, the industrial sector, and the chemical industry. Low natural gas prices have incentivized the electric power plants to switch from coal to natural gas, with an impact not only on the economy of these systems but also on the environment by reducing the total greenhouse gas emissions [1].
Another sector that has shown interest in switching from oil-based feedstocks, such as naphtha or crude oil, to natural gas is the chemical industry. The availability of inexpensive natural gas and NGLs has boosted the chemical industry to create new plants for the production of value-added chemicals using methane and NGLs as feedstock [5,19].
1.5 Alternatives to Produce Chemicals from Shale Gas
Due to the increasing availability of low-cost natural gas, the chemical industry has started to invest in the research and development of chemical routes that can transform methane into value-added chemicals. Some of the chemical compounds that have received special attention are methanol, ethylene, propylene, and liquid fuels obtained from syngas. Some of the processes to produce the aforementioned chemicals are discussed...
