Siluria Technologies recently announced it has proven the commercial viability of its oxidative coupling of methane-to-ethylene (OCM) technology after a successful first year of operations at its demonstration plant in La Porte, Texas.

The OCM technology is the first commercial process to directly convert natural gas into ethylene, according to Siluria. Ethylene is a key feedstock used in the petrochemicals industry worldwide. The OCM process converts methane into ethane and ethylene (C2 hydrocarbons). In the OCM reaction, methane (CH4) is activated on the catalyst surface, forming methyl free radicals (CH3), which then couple in the gas phase to form ethane (C2H6). The ethane subsequently undergoes dehydrogenation to form ethylene and water.

Wholly owned by Siluria, the plant is co-located with a polymer plant operated by Braskem America Inc. The company is also working jointly with Linde Engineering to deliver the breakthrough technology to the marketplace. According to the company, the demonstration plant is the final pre-commercial scale-up of Siluria’s OCM process technology.

“Braskem’s world-class operations team has worked closely with Siluria and has been key in making this demonstration facility a success,” Gary Koehler, vice president of operations, was quoted as saying.

Siluria Interim CEO and President Erik Scher commented: “Both our proprietary catalyst and OCM process have performed reliably at our demonstration plant, further validating the commercial performance of our multiple years of pilot plant operations. This paves the way to move forward with commercial ethylene production projects in process in the U.S. and abroad.”

Since the plant’s start-up in early 2015, the company has completed 18 test campaigns designed to replicate customer-specific commercial operating conditions, which includes varying temperatures, pressures, flow rates and inlet gas compositions, according to Siluria.

The plant’s feedstock flexibility has also been fully verified, running on both air and oxygen, and varying the amount of ethane that can be incorporated into the process as a co-feed, according to the company.

Siluria said it will continue to advance its OCM technology at the La Porte facility, utilizing data generated by the plant to improve its proprietary models and refine the design basis for commercial plants. Siluira will also use the plant to develop and test new catalysts and process technologies to create the valuable materials required for manufacture of building materials, chemicals, coatings and a wide range of other products, the company stated.

“Our La Porte plant and the engineering teams in San Francisco and Houston who support it are critical elements of Siluria’s existing technology infrastructure, and they will allow us to continually expand our technologies' market impact with our global partners,” Scher said. “The team and overall infrastructure we have built over the last seven years serve as a basis for us to develop new solutions to convert other low-value sources of carbon into the high value products that the world needs.”

Brandy Jules can be reached at bjules@hartenergy.com.