Wanted: Ethane Cracker - News, Sports, Jobs - The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register
This ain't really intended for posting on the WV Coal Association's R&D Blog - although they're certainly free to use it if they want to, anyway they see fit.
If they do, it will serve as introduction to some future reports in the works about China, and their development of a plastics manufacturing industry founded on Coal, a topic we begin to introduce via our closing comments herein.
And, we don't wish, or mean, to fault companies who honestly believe they have raw material opportunities which could help them to expand their businesses into new areas, bringing with them a variety of economic and employment benefits.
We honestly wish them Godspeed.
But, we couldn't resist commenting further on the Coal Country press sell-out to what some in the national press are calling the Shale Gas Ponzi scheme, or scam; especially since one of our key advisors felt strongly about the issues we address in this dispatch.
We had something else in the works for today, and might yet get to it, especially since it, too, relates in a way to those same issues; but, we were influenced to adjust our priorities.
First of all, if the press hasn't looked into shale gas well decline rates, and the enormous amount of capital that thus has to be poured into a shale gas field just to maintain an established production level, with what that might mean for future escalations in the price of natural gas, there's no excuse for you/them, at all.
That, aside from the radium and frack-waste water contamination issues, as seen, for one example, in:
West Virginia Coal Association | Penn State: Marcellus Frack Fluids Bring Ancient Radium to the Surface | Research & Developme; concerning, from just this past December: "Penn State: Analysis of Marcellus flowback finds high levels of ancient brines. Brine water that flows back from gas wells in the Marcellus Shale region after hydraulic fracturing is many times more salty than seawater, with high contents of various elements, including radium and barium. The chemistry is consistent with brines formed during the Paleozoic era, a study by an undergraduate student and two professors in Penn State's Department of Geosciences found".
But, what is beginning to become truly ludicrous is all of the ink being devoted to the fabled "ethane cracker", as in the article linked above, and as in a number previous and similar.
We don't even know where to begin, but, here's an easy one, as excerpted from "Wanted: Ethane Cracker":
"The project, if constructed, could bring 125 permanent chemical jobs to the (Wheeling/northern WV) area".
In other words, roughly as many jobs, at maybe, only maybe, comparable wages, as an average conventional three-section underground coal mine, with a small surface support facility and a prep plant working three shifts - - - all of which is just totally unremarkable for the coal industry.
And, another excerpt:
"most of what would come out of the ethane cracker would be ethylene, the basis for the plastics industry".
Well, no, ethylene isn't.
You can make some plastics - - notably, of course, polyethylene, and, with some jiggling of molecules, polypropylene - - by starting with ethylene
Those are a part of the plastics industry, but are most definitely not The plastics industry.
Two very major types of plastic manufactured as key products by at least one company in the upper Ohio Valley, plastics which are critical to modern American manufacturing, polyurethane and polycarbonate, really, we are assured by a retired chemist who used to be involved in making the both of them, couldn't give a rat's patoot about ethylene, although that company at one time was assessing - - perhaps still is if they haven't tripped onto the fact of how small the shale gas resource really is and what difficulties are involved in keeping the gas flowing on a consistent basis - - investment in an ethane cracker of their own.
Ditto, for the most part, epoxy and it's various compounds and derivatives.
All of the raw materials for those plastics, by the way, can be made from Coal and/or via various biological processes. One key ingredient, as a rudimentary or basic raw material, for polycarbonate can be acetone, which the British had developed industrial-scale facilities for making, via biological fermentation, before World War One.
Another key, very basic ingredient for polyurethanes and polycarbonates can be carbon monoxide. And, if you don't know by now how we can make ourselves some carbon monoxide, you really haven't been paying attention. Here's a hint:
West Virginia Coal Association | Bayer Improves Coal + CO2 = Carbon Monoxide | Research & Development; concerning: "United States Patent 7,473,286 - Carbon Monoxide Generator; 2009; Assignee: Bayer Material Science, AG, Germany; The present invention relates to a novel generator for the reaction of carbon-containing raw materials and also to an improved process for the production of carbon monoxide gas (CO gas) having a high degree of purity using such a generator. Carbon monoxide gas is frequently produced in the art by means of a continuous process in which carbon-containing raw materials are reacted with oxygen and carbon dioxide ... . (The) reaction in the combustion zone is controlled by injecting CO2 and O2 into the furnace together through the (described apparatus) ... so that the (O2) is diluted by the stream of CO2 gas. Adequate mixing of the gases is achieved by means of suitable ... . Suitable fuels which meet the above-mentioned demands and which can be reacted successfully in terms of technology and economy to CO gas in the process described herein are, for example ...coal".Further, from the Wheeling newspaper article:
"This ethylene would then need to go to another plant that would further process it before this product could go to plastic companies".
That could be pretty much true, though not necessarily. But, where, exactly, is this other plant? As in the article, which states that: "Appalachian Resins reportedly is planning a plastics plant/ethane cracker in Marshall County", the developer, bless 'em, might be planning to use the ethylene almost on site, which would compound the local employment and income benefits.
And, we hope that is the case, if these plans proceed.
But, back to "ethylene". It is, irregardless, an important product and could be profitable to make for sale and shipment elsewhere.
Did you know that it can be made from various alcohols?
For one example, from a major company who supplies very major European plastics manufacturers, see:
"United States Patent: 4247731 - Manufacture of Lower Alkenes from Methanol and Dimethyl Ether; 1981; Inventor: Friedrich Wunder, et. al., Germany; Assignee: Hoechst AG, Frankfurt; Abstract: Lower alkenes, especially ethylene, areproduced from methanol and/or dimethyl ether in the presence of aluminum silicate catalysts containing manganese".And, should you have forgotten where we might get the Methanol, we remind you of two of our previous reports:
West Virginia Coal Association | Exxon Converts More Coal to Methanol | Research & Development; concerning: "United States Patent 4,348,487 - Production of Methanol via Catalytic Coal Gasification; Exxon Research and Engineering Company; A process for the production of methanol from a carbonaceous feed material ... (and) ... wherein said carbonaceous feed material comprises coal"; and:
West Virginia Coal Association | California March 2012 Efficient CO2 to Methanol | Research & Development; concerning: "United States Patent 8,138,380 - Electrolysis of Carbon Dioxide ... for Production of Methanol; 2012; University of Southern California; An environmentally beneficial method of producing methanol from varied sources of carbon dioxide including flue gases of fossil fuel burning power plants".As we've explained and documented in our dispatches, the "dimethyl ether", specified in "United States Patent 4,247,731", is a sort of "de-oxygenated" version of Methanol, and, if wanted, can be made as well from Coal or CO2, or, easily from the Methanol.
In any case, once all of your migrant well drillers and transient pipeline layers are done and gone, you are pinning your economic hopes and wishes on a little old ethane cracker, maybe with an integral plastics plant, that'll employ about as many people as a little old southern West Virginia "punch" mine.
That, when, with a little bit of education and information, your citizens and their elected leadership, and maybe, and probably for the most part likely, your area's corporate leadership, could get behind a movement to employ your truly vast and long-term resources, Coal and Carbon Dioxide, to make, on a large scale and with a genuinely meaningful expansion of employment opportunities, first, Methanol, and, then, through Methanol, not just, as in the above "United States Patent 4,247,731- Manufacture of Lower Alkenes from Methanol and Dimethyl Ether", the seemingly-desirable "ethylene"; but, as in:
West Virginia Coal Association | Australia CO2 to Methanol; US Methanol to Gasoline | Research & Development; concerning, in part: "United States Patent 5,191,142 - Process for Converting Methanol to ... Gasoline; 1993; Assignee: Amoco Corporation, Chicago; Abstract: A process for efficiently converting methanol to ... gasoline components is disclosed";some stuff that's genuinely needed on a truly large scale; stuff that could result in - - could demand that we add - - one heck of a lot more than "125 permanent ... jobs".
But, since the Wheeling newspaper article that inspired this dispatch centered on the production of "ethylene" from an "ethane cracker", here, again, is how it can be produced, via Methanol, from Coal:
"United States Patent Application: 0100145125 - Producing Light Olefins Through the Conversion of Methanol and Ethanol
Date: June 10, 2010
Inventor: Zaiko Xie, et. al. Shanghai
Assignee: China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, Beijing
Abstract: The present invention discloses a process of producing light olefins through the conversion of methanol and ethanol. The process comprises: ... contacting the feed with the catalyst and allowing it to react, to give a stream containing ethylene and propylene. Background: An important approach for producing light olefins from non-petroleum feedstock is the conversion of oxygenates, for example, lower alcohols (methanol, ethanol), ethers (dimethyl ether, methyl ethyl ether), esters (dimethyl carbonate, methyl formate) and the like to olefins, especially the conversion of lower alcohols to light olefins. The production of light olefins from methanol is a promising process, because methanol can be produced in large scale from coal".--------------------------
We have the resources within our power - - not just in our grasp but literally beneath our feet, and, if we consider and include the vast resource of Carbon Dioxide, literally in the air we breathe - - to free ourselves completely from the foreign economic chains that bind us to dangerous places and to situations that are harmful to us now, and that will harm our children, negatively impact their lives, for generations to come.
A little honest and open, and full, reportage concerning our real potentials, potentials founded on the full and complete use of, by far, our most abundant domestic energy and raw material resource, Coal, now, could prove good preventive medicine against any such future harm.