Converting natural gas to ethylene and propylene using the UOP/HYDRO MTO process

The development of new ways to convert natural gas, especially methane, to higher valued products is one of the keys to increasing the utilization of this abundant natural resource. The combination of methanol production using state-of-the-art mega methanol technology with the new methanol-to-olefins (MTO) process developed by UOP and Norsk Hydro provides an economically attractive route from natural gas to ethylene and propylene. These light olefins are feedstocks for a wide variety of high-value petrochemicals and polymers. The UCP/HYDRO MTO process utilizes a SAPO-34-containing catalyst, which provides up to 80% yield of ethylene and propylene at near-complete methanol conversion. The process has great flexibility to produce a product with a range of ethylene/propylene ratios, depending on the operating conditions used. A major end use for both ethylene and propylene is the production of polyolefins. Since polymerization catalysts are very sensitive to a wide variety of poisons, trace by-products in the MTO light olefin effluent have been identified. Conventional treating methods have been shown to be effective for removing these by-products to the specification levels required for olefin polymerization processes. This work has shown that the ethylene and propylene produced by the MTO process is a suitable feedstock for olefin polymerization.