PROCESS DESIGN FRAMEWORKS FOR ECONOMIC UTILIZATION OF SMALL-SCALE AND UNCONVENTIONAL FEEDSTOCKS
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2019 Elsevier B.V. To meet the increasing demands for energy, chemicals and commodity products, there is a substantial push for utilizing unconventional feedstocks such as stranded natural gas, shale gas, biogas and landfill gas. These feedstocks pose significant challenges for centralized processing due to variabilities in scale, availability, compositions and geographical locations. Small-scale and modular plants are needed for utilizing these hard-to-access resources. However, the capital intensity (i.e., cost per unit production) of small-scale plants are much higher compared to their large-scale and centralized counterparts. To this end, we first propose a design approach that reduces the overall cost intensity of small modular chemical processes by creating new opportunities for economies of numbers (as opposed to economies of scale). The key idea is to depart from asynchronous design of single-processes and adopt a common-functionality based design of multiple processes. This involves exploring synergies between a multitude of chemical processes and synthesize them all concurrently. An optimization-based concurrent design framework is developed for standardization of modular units with common functionality. An augmented Lagrangean-based decomposition algorithm is used. Using the framework, we concurrently synthesize small-scale methanol and ammonia processes with considerable reduction in capital intensities compared to those obtained by asynchronous designs. To increase the operating profitability of small-scale modular processes, we then leverage the principles of flexible processing wherein a multipurpose/multiproduct master process produces several products in response to varying market conditions.
