Powering India and Helping Africa’s Economy through MTO Process
Team Members Heading link
- Sinan Masoud
- Khalil Shebadeh
- Emily Sobie
- Esteban Vazquez-Elizondo
Advisor: Bipin Vora
Project Description Heading link
The goal of the project is to increase Africa’s GDP through investing in a methanol plant due to the large reservoirs of natural gas in Angola. This will not only help boost their economy but will also allow it to provide India with lower cost methanol for the methanol-to-olefins (MTO) advanced plant. The project will only focus on the MTO process in India with the idea that India will invest in a methanol production plant in Angola. There is a growing demand for ethylene in India due to the population and economic growth they are experiencing. The demand will be satisfied with the MTO plant. Using the UOP/Hydro Process for the MTO process will be beneficial to India as the west-coast is filled with petrochemical plants. The goal is to either sell the excess power to plants in the surrounding region and to be able to control the ethylene and propylene selectivity through temperature changes of the reactor. We will use a SAPO-34 catalyst in order to get the highest yields out of our products. Furthermore, we will able to optimize our utilities by reusing our products as refrigerants, which will in the end help with the optimization of our process. Plant capacity of ethylene and propylene is roughly 660,000 MT/yr.
See supporting documentation in the team’s Box drive.