Petrochemicals Without Refining? New Process Allows the Production of Ethylene Directly from Crude

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Glatt Ingenieurtechnik GmbH

EDL Anlagenbau Gesellschaft mbH

Pörner Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH

IHS Group

The Aramco process, IHS said, works along an entirely different concept from that of the Exxon Mobil crude-to-olefins process. As of yet, IHS cautioned, the Aramco process is still only a proposed project; no facility actually has been built to test the process.

The IHS report said the Aramco process begins by feeding the whole barrel of crude to a hydrocracking unit, which removes sulfur and shifts the boiling point curve significantly toward lighter compounds. The gas-oil and lighter products are sent to a traditional steam cracker, while the heavier products are sent to a proprietary, Aramco-developed deep-fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCC) that maximizes olefin output.

A 200 Dollar per Ton Benefit

“We at IHS Chemical estimate the cash-cost for this Aramco crude-to-olefins process would be $200-per-ton cheaper than for a naphtha cracker,” Pavone said. “The hydrocracker and deep-fluid catalytic cracker add significant capital costs, though, so at 15 percent pre-tax return on investment (ROI), we estimate the Aramco process would pencil in at roughly equivalent costs to naphtha cracking in Saudi Arabia.”

The IHS report is based upon a “bottoms-up” Class-3 process design and proprietary steam cracking kinetic reaction software simulation of both the Exxon Mobil and Saudi Aramco crude-to-olefins processes. “To the best of our knowledge,” Pavone said, “our IHS Chemical analysis is the first in-depth independent analysis of these new crude-to-olefins technologies.”

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