Evaluation of alternative carbon based ethylene production in a petrochemical cluster

Abstract

Due to the heavy dependence on fossil-fuels as raw materials, the defossilization of feedstocks in the petrochemical industry represents a challenge. A large number of possible process routes that use alternative carbon sources (ACS) like CO2, biomass, and waste are being developed for the feedstock replacement. For instance, to produce ethylene, more than 40 ACS process routes were identified. These multiple options make the selection of the promising process route a complex task. By replacing feedstocks, a process can change significantly and the impacts related to these changes in a highly interconnected industrial cluster can create cascading effects due to system interdependencies. This work aims to understand the cascading impacts in carbon flows and prices of implementing an ACS production process in an ethylene cluster. The results show that PVC will be the highest impacted and defossilizing one value-chain can have cascading effect on other value-chains as observed for PET.