Environmental burden mitigation potential of oil field gas-assisted coal-to-olefin production

Liping Ye, Fei Xie, Jinglan Hong, Donglu Yang, Xiaotian Ma and Xiangzhi Li

Energy, 2018, vol. 157, issue C, 1015-1024

Abstract: Coal-to-olefin (CTO) projects, an energy strategy, are increasing in number in China but suffer from high consumption and pollution. In this study, a life cycle assessment is studied to determine whether oil field gas-assisted CTO systems have the potential to solve these problems. Oil-to-olefin is presented for comparison. Results showed that the current CTO scenario generally exerts a higher environmental impact than oil-to-olefin. The effects on carcinogens, climate change, and fossil depletion, which were provided mainly by chromium to water, carbon dioxide to air, and hard coal consumption, respectively, are the main contributors to the environmental burden. Oil field gas-assisted coal-to-methanol production decreases the potential impact on climate change, carcinogens, and fossil depletion by 40%, 9%, and 50%, respectively, because it consumes less coal (>73%) than conventional coal-to-methanol production. Oil field gas-assisted CTO is an attainable and effective means of carbon reduction in the CTO industry in China. It is highly recommended for further improving the environmental performance of the CTO industry.

Keywords: Life cycle assessment; Oil-to-olefin; Coal-to-olefin; Oil field gas; Greenhouse gas emission; Energy consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544218310119
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:157:y:2018:i:c:p:1015-1024

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2018.05.167

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().