Membranes on Polyolefins Plants Vent Recovery

Gas separation by membranes has acquired increasing importance in the petrochemical industry and is now a relatively well-established unit operation, especially in the monomer recovery of polymer production processes. Considering the current tight monomers market, polymer degassing steps present potential improvement opportunities, through the recovery of vent streams containing monomers. The economic analysis presented in this report is based upon the installation of a membrane-based propylene recovery unit in a polypropylene plant, a unit similar to MTR VaporSep®. Such measure was demonstrated to be attractive in the US Gulf Coast, due to propylene scarcity, which has recently raised its market value. The alternative of using such vent streams as fuel showed to be less interesting, since fuel prices are low, due to natural gas growing offerings.

About the Publication Program

The Improvement Economics Program is a program that provides, by way of periodic reports, insightful and unbiased reviews on process improvement opportunities, from both a technical and economic perspective. Each report presents the following topics:

• opportunity description
• schematics, such as flow diagrams
• technical details, such as heat and material balances, key performance indicators
• environmental impact analysis
• capital and operating costs breakdown
• alternative solutions overview