EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The main objective we are doing this project is to produce ethylene. Our company
needs to produce 99.9% purity of ethylene from raw material given which is sweet natural
gas. Natural gas consists of some components, which are methane, ethane, nitrogen, water,
carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

To produce ethylene, the feed or raw material which is natural gas need to go
through some of the process selection that have been chosen. In our production, ethylene is
produced from natural gas through the oxidative coupling of methane (OCM). So firstly,
3192.76 kmol/hr of natural gas which equivalent to 1 million ton per year will enter the
OCM reactor together with the oxygen from the air separation unit (ASU). Then it will go to
the next unit process which is cooler and then isothermal compressor followed by acid gas
removal which consists of amine absorber and amine regenerator.

These units need amine as a solvent to separate dissolved gases from the main
stream. The solvent that we used are monoethanolamine (MEA) which functions to separate
carbon dioxide partially from the main stream. Next, dryer is designed to increase the
production of ethylene by removing 100% composition of water. After dryer, demethanizer
is used to heat up the inlet gas feed just enough to release methane between the others.
Then, C2 splitter to split between C2 compounds such as ethane and ethylene to increase
the purification of ethylene produce and the purify of ethylene that we get at the end of our
process is 99.96%. Finally, we need to change the ethylene product from gas to liquid. So,
we used condenser for some reasons.

Furthermore, a recycle stream is also introduced to our plant in order to increase the
production of ethylene and decrease the waste produced by the company. The bottom
stream from the demethanizer is recycled back to the reactor. Purging is done to prevent
the accumulation inside the reactor. The recycle stream increased the final yield from
1.439% to 2.975%.

In this project, natural gas that we used in producing ethylene is directly buy from
supplier and the average price is around RM 574.835 per ton. For the selling price, the
average price is RM 5342.48 per ton and our target profit for the year 2020 is RM
19,501,776.41.