From Raw Materials to High Demand Household Products-The Production of Polypropylene

• Ahmad Abusubaih
• Kathya Chavez
• Jon Chiu
• Yier Li
• Marium Murtaza

Advisor: Dennis O’Brien

Now more than ever, there is a worldwide demand for the hugest contributor in making household consumer products, propylene. Propylene is the main chemical product used in markets relating to packaging, textiles, plastics, technical products, and more. As the population is increasing 1.05% each year, the demand for propylene keeps increasing, leading to a ‘propylene gap’ between the demand and the supply of propylene. To fix the gap, a promising direction is to use the most well-known way of producing propylene, the propane dehydrogenation process (PDH). The technology that implements this process the best is UOP’s Oleflex™ unit. It is a promising catalytic technology that can produce high purity and quality propylene from a propane rich stream- making this a leading process in successfully producing the primary product, propylene. Our goal has been to take this technology one step further. Our solution results in 99.7% product purity and 32% selectivity, creating a competitive product that’s desired in the market. Additionally, based on today’s prices, our advanced process is shown to be highly profitable, creating an NPV of 270 million dollars without including any profits from byproducts. Moreover, our process has significantly reduced the environmental footprint of the amount of CO2, NOx, and NH3 produced by a factor of 30%. Other aspects include the ability to have a fast startup (<36 months), higher on-stream availability, and an automatic catalyst regeneration system allowing for continuous operation. So even though the need for consumer goods is growing at a face pace rate, the process we designed inspired by the Oleflex™ unit aids in supplying the demand day by day, and ultimately providing the essential resources humans need now and in the future.

See supporting documentation in the team’s Box drive.