Читать книгу Process Intensification and Integration for Sustainable Design - Группа авторов - Страница 24

An analysis of shale gas availability and its potential implications to support a shale gas industry that expands its use as an energy source to include transformation processes into value‐added chemical products has been presented. Designs for shale gas transformation into valuable chemicals such as methanol and ethylene are examples of current efforts to produce higher value‐added molecules particularly valuable as precursors of important end products. The development of extraction technologies has provided the basis for the development of shale gas monetization strategies. It has been shown how the profitability of shale gas processes may be in conflict with other important considerations such as the process safety, which sets the incentive for the development of multi‐objective optimization formulations to obtain designs that offer the best compromises between such conflicting metrics. Another interesting challenge, in addition to the development of efficient and profitable shale gas flowsheets, lies in the design of intensified processes for flowsheets originally based on conventional reaction and separation units. Current intensification methodologies could be taken as a basis, with the challenge of its application for cases based on gas‐phase reactions that involve complex reaction mechanisms and different types of separation processes. The development of membrane‐based processes seems like a promising alternative in the search for innovative shale gas intensified processes.