Article

Cite This: Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2019, 58, 12801−12815 pubs.acs.org/IECR

Network Modeling of the U.S. Petrochemical Industry under Raw

Material and Hurricane Harvey Disruptions
Sean E. DeRosa,*,†,‡ Yosuke Kimura,‡,§ Mark A. Stadtherr,∥ Gary McGaughey,§
Elena McDonald-Buller,§ and David T. Allen§,∥
†
Sandia National Laboratories, P.O. Box 5800, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185, United States
§
Center for Energy and Environmental Resources, The University of Texas at Austin, 10100 Burnet Road, Austin, Texas 78758,
United States
∥
McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, 200 East Dean Keeton Street, Austin, Texas
See https://pubs.acs.org/sharingguidelines for options on how to legitimately share published articles.

78712-1589, United States

*
S Supporting Information
Downloaded via JAMES COOK UNIV on August 20, 2019 at 08:20:50 (UTC).

ABSTRACT: A geographically resolved network model of the

U.S. chemical industry in 2017 is constructed, and optimal
chemical flows between units are calculated using linear
programming. A baseline solution and three disruption
scenarios (primary raw material disruptions, reported Hurricane
Harvey ethylene cracker disruptions, and assumed capacity
disruptions based on the Hurricane Harvey geographic storm
track) are studied to determine how the structure of the
industry is modified to adapt to widespread and geographically
specific disruptions. The calculated impacts of the assumed
Hurricane Harvey disruption include 170 chemical units in 26
states that change production level as a result of supply chain
disruptions during the storm. The systemic impact for the
assumed Hurricane Harvey disruption is 19.3 million tonnes of gross chemical production. The day with the largest impact on
gross chemical production shows a reduction from baseline operations of 1.3 million tonnes (42% of baseline). This model can
be used for analysis of future disruption scenarios and to test resilience strategies, including impacts of new manufacturing
configurations or technologies.

1. INTRODUCTION United States. Harvey has been identified as the most

The Gulf of Mexico region has onshore and offshore energy
resources and infrastructure that are among the most extensive
in the United States.1 Within this region, Southeast Texas is a
global center for fuel refining and chemical manufacturing.
Southeast Texas accounts for 30% of total U.S. refining
capacity1 and is one of the largest global centers of natural gas-
and natural gas liquid-derived materials manufacturing, such as
for ethylene. Driven by the abundance of natural gas and
natural gas liquid feedstocks from Texas shale plays, new
capacity is being added to this already extensive system.
In August 2017, Southeast Texas experienced catastrophic
flooding associated with Hurricane Harvey. Harvey initially
made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on August 25, 2017
near Rockport, Texas, along the middle Texas coast. The storm
stalled for 4 days between approximately August 26−30, 2017,
over or near the Texas coast, creating torrential rainfall within
the Houston, Beaumont, and Port Arthur metropolitan areas
(Figure 1). Peak accumulated rainfall associated with Harvey
in the region was more than 60 in. On August 30, Harvey
made its final landfall in southwestern Louisiana, eventually
weakening and then moving northeast over the southern
significant tropical cyclone rainfall event in United States
history.2
The unprecedented nature of the storm highlighted
challenges associated with the highly concentrated network
of fuel and chemical manufacturing systems in the U.S. Gulf
Coast region and its dependence on pipeline, rail, shipping and
other transport infrastructures. At its peak on August 30, more
than 80% of Texas ethylene production was offline, with 65−
70% restored by mid-September.3,4 Ports experienced a
suspension of vessel traffic but were reopened relatively
quickly, in contrast to the more significant supply chain
disruptions caused by rail systems due to track repair and
replacement after the storm. IHS Markit5 noted constraints
across all chemical supply chains in logistics as well as
alignment of raw material availability and demand during the
process of returning to equilibrium conditions. These
Received: February 21, 2019
Revised: June 15, 2019
Accepted: June 18, 2019
Published: July 8, 2019

© 2019 American Chemical Society 12801 DOI: 10.1021/acs.iecr.9b01035

Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2019, 58, 12801−12815
Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research
Figure 1. Map of the Texas Gulf Coast. The blue line indicates
Hurricane Harvey storm track, and chemical plant locations are noted
with crosses.
disruptions to Gulf Coast fuel and commodity chemical
infrastructures can have national and global implications.
There is a need to continue to advance the assessment and
mitigation of vulnerabilities to extreme weather events, in
particular in a region prone to hurricanes and flooding,
especially given complex supply chain dynamics.6−8
Toward meeting this need, a geographically resolved
network model of the U.S. chemical industry in 2017 was
constructed to model the behavior of chemical supply chains
and their response to disruptions. The model uses a linear
program to calculate optimal chemical flows between units
based on constraints on material availability, plant capacity,
and reaction stoichiometry. Disruption scenarios were
simulated to identify the impacts they have on supply chain
configurations and plant utilization. A disruption scenario that
approximates the shutdown pattern that plants might
experience for the Hurricane Harvey storm track was run to
calculate both direct (plants in the storm path) and indirect
effects (plants that had to change production level because of
supply chain disruptions).
2. CHEMICAL NETWORK MODEL
The model used in this study represents the U.S. chemical
manufacturing industry as an interconnected network of
chemical processes that convert a small number of primary
raw materials into a large number of intermediate and final
products. Such chemical manufacturing network models
originated with Stadtherr and Rudd,9,10 who used a linear-
programming (LP)-based problem formulation to minimize
the total feedstock carbon used by the U.S. petrochemicals
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industry. Subsequently, Rudd et al.11 used a more detailed
model, including energy utilization and production cost data,
to perform additional optimization-based studies of the
behavior of the industry. Several variations of this type of
model have since been used in a variety of contexts, as
discussed in more detail by DeRosa and Allen,12,13 who have
provided an updated model framework and populated it with
updated industry data. In most instances of this type of model,
each chemical process is represented as a single network node,
without any geographic resolution for individual chemical
manufacturing plants. For the work presented here, we have
developed a geographically distributed network model of the
industry, as described below.
2.1. Network Formulation. The chemical network model
is constructed as a directed graph with nodes representing
chemical manufacturing units, material imports and exports,
and material supplies and sinks and directed edges representing
the potential flow of a material from one node to another. The
nodes are defined to represent the U.S. chemical manufactur-
ing industry in 2017, and the edge flows are calculated by
solving an LP problem that is defined in section 2.2.
2.1.1. Chemical Manufacturing Unit Nodes. One group of
nodes in the network are those representing major chemical
manufacturing units in the U.S., as shown in Figure 2. Data for
these unit nodes are obtained from the 2017 ICIS Supply and
Demand Database14 and include primary product and
capacity; company; site; state; and production route,
technology, and licensor. Other unit nodes that are not
included in the ICIS data are added as needed, such as
isomerization units15 and ammonia plants.16 The constructed
network includes 1075 units in 46 states, that produce 97
unique main products. Each unit node is capable of accepting
raw materials from other network nodes and distributing
products and byproducts to other nodes.
Stoichiometry is assigned to each unit node to describe the
technology used to produce its main product. The ICIS
database does not include full process stoichiometry; thus, the
stoichiometry of each technology is identified from DeRosa
and Allen,12 which is based on the 2012 IHS Process
Economics Program Yearbook.17 While 2012 stoichiometry
data is an approximation to 2017 operating conditions, in
general, technology stoichiometry does not change significantly
after plants are built. When the ICIS description of the
technology used at a unit (production route, technology, and
licensor) exactly matches a process technology described by
DeRosa and Allen12 and the IHS Yearbook,17 the IHS
stoichiometry is used exactly. In other cases, units are assigned
a modified or approximated stoichiometry based on available
information. For example, one refinery stoichiometry is used
for all refinery locations in the U.S. The stoichiometry reflects
the mass proportions in the 2017 refinery net production from
EIA.18 Refinery aromatic capacity is from EIA19 and assumed
to be equal proportions of benzene, toluene, and mixed xylene.
Other refinery capacity constraints are from the ICIS Supply
and Demand Database. Steam cracker stoichiometry is
estimated using the reported input and output material
magnitudes from the January 2017 Hodson Report.20 Pyrolysis
gasoline and fuel gas ratios and composition are estimated
using the data in DeRosa and Allen.12
Describing each unit’s technology by its complete
stoichiometry allows the model to fully capture details of all
the raw materials required, the primary product, and all
byproducts produced at a unit. Thus, a full supply chain model
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Figure 2. Chemical manufacturing unit locations included in the representation of the 2017 U.S. petrochemical industry.
can be constructed to calculate raw material requirements and
product shipments for every unit node.
2.1.2. Import and Export Nodes. Imports and exports of
materials are treated as special types of unit nodes, which, like
regular unit nodes, can be assigned a capacity and a geographic
location (e.g., port, pipeline terminal). That is, import nodes
are treated as units that draw material from supply nodes and
distribute it for use by other network nodes. Similarly, export
nodes are treated as units that collect material from other
network nodes and send it to a sink node. The total 2017 U.S.
import quantities for 45 chemicals and export quantities for 49
chemicals are also calculated from the ICIS Supply and
Demand Database.
2.1.3. Supply and Sink Nodes. The final group of nodes are
the supply and sink nodes. Supply nodes provide material
inputs to the unit nodes. If there are both domestic supplies
and imports available, then these are represented by distinct
supply nodes (one to directly supply the material to unit nodes
and the other to supply the import species to only import
nodes); otherwise, for a given material, there is only one supply
node. There are supply constraints on the primary raw
materials. These materials include crude oil, methane, ethane,
propane, butanes, and natural gasoline (assumed to be 50% n-
hexane and 50% n-pentane). The magnitudes of the primary
raw material supplies are calculated from EIA reported field
production plus imports, not including refinery and blender net
production (which will be produced at refinery unit nodes).21
Other materials that may be needed in the network are either
produced within the network as intermediates (88 materials)
or are treated as unconstrained raw materials (available
exogenously in amounts that will not constrain the production
level of any unit node, 138 materials). The chemicals included
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in these categories are listed in the Supporting Information.
Supply nodes are not assigned a specific location, and there is
no transport cost (see section 2.2) for flows of mass from
supply nodes to unit nodes.
Sink nodes collect material outputs from the unit nodes. In
traditional chemical network models, sink nodes have
represented demands for end products and are constrained
in the LP problem to ensure that demand is met. Because this
model is being used for disruption analysis and we may not
expect demand constraints to always be met, a more general
type of sink node is used here. If there are both exports and
domestic consumption of a material, then these are
represented by distinct sink nodes; otherwise, for a given
material there is only one sink node. Any product from a unit
node establishes an edge from the unit node to the sink node
for that material. This general treatment eliminates the need to
distinguish between intermediate and final end products, which
may not always be straightforward. Sink nodes are not assigned
a specific location, and there is no transport cost for flows of
mass from unit nodes to sink nodes. The components of the
network structure are summarized in Table 1.
2.2. Mathematical Formulation. Let N represent the set
of all network nodes, and S, K, and U represent the sets of all
supply, sink, and unit (including import and export) nodes,
respectively. The sets S, K, and U are disjoint and N = S ∪ K ∪
U. Let I be the set of all chemicals in the model and J the set of
all technologies used. Each edge in the network represents the
potential flow of one chemical i ∈ I from one node n ∈ N to
another node m ∈ N. More specifically, if all chemicals i ∈ I
that are inputs to a node n belong to the set IIN,n and all that
are outputs from n belong to IOUT,n, then the set of all edges
representing the potential flow of i is given by Ei =
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Table 1. Summary of Components in the Network Model of ai,jn. Each unit node n is viewed as consisting of three types of
the 2017 U.S. Chemical Manufacturing Industry subnodes:
Nodes 1. For each i ∈ IIN,n there is a collection subnode which
collects inputs of species i from other nodes and combines
type subtype count subtotal
them into a single stream with flow Xi,n. That is
unit nodes manufacturing unit nodes 1075
import nodes 45 ∑ Yi , m , n = Xi , n , ∀ i ∈ IIN, n , ∀ n ∈ U
export nodes 49 1169 m∈U ∪S (1)
supply nodes primary raw material supply nodes 6
2. There is a reaction subnode at which the transformation
import material supply nodes 45 51
that characterizes technology jn takes place. By definition of the
sink nodes domestic sink nodes 291
input−output coefficients, the flows in and out of this node are
export sink nodes 49 340
Xi , n = ai , j Xb j , n , ∀ i ∈ IIN, n ∪ IOUT, n , ∀ n ∈ U (2)
n n
total 1560
Materials 3. For each i ∈ IOUT,n there is a distribution subnode which
type count takes the single stream Xi,n produced at the reaction subnode
and divides it into separate streams for distribution to other
primary raw 7
network nodes. That is
other raw 138
intermediate/final products 88 Xi , n = ∑ Yi , n , m , ∀ i ∈ IOUT, n , ∀ n ∈ U
exclusively final products 60 m∈U ∪K (3)
total 293
Technologies
A schematic of a network node showing the subnode
structure is given in Figure 3.
type count
In order to separately track imports to and exports from the
manufacturing technologies 155 U.S. industry, imported and exported materials are treated as
distinct species in the model. For example, methanol and
methanol-import are treated as separate species, with
methanol-import supplied by a supply node and converted
{(n , m) |i ∈ IOUT, n ∩ IIN, m ∧ (n , m) ∉ S × K}. For each edge into methanol at an import node, which, as noted in section
(n, m) ∈ Ei, the magnitude of the flow of i from n to m is 2.1.2, is just a special type of unit node. Similarly, methanol-
denoted Yi,n,m. Note that Yi,n,m may have a value of zero; that is, export is treated as a separate species and methanol is
the network model provides a superstructure whose edges may converted into methanol-export at an export node, also a
not all be used for chemical flows. Each technology j ∈ J is special type of unit node.
assigned a main product (or basis species) bj ∈ I, and the 2.2.2. Supply Nodes. Each supply node n ∈ S provides
input−output coefficients ai,j for species i in technology j are output of a single species; thus, IOUT,n is a singleton set. Also, n
determined relative to this species. That is, ai,j is the amount of has no input edges, so IIN,n = φ. The supply node is viewed as
species i consumed or produced in technology j relative to the consisting of a single distribution node, which takes a supply
amount of species bj produced. stream Xi,n and divides it into separate streams for distribution
2.2.1. Unit Nodes. Each unit node n ∈ U implements a to network unit nodes. That is
technology jn ∈ J which transforms its input chemicals into
output chemicals. The stoichiometry of the transformation ∑ Yi , n , m = Xi , n , ∀ i ∈ IOUT, n , ∀ n ∈ S
occurring in unit n is given by the input−output coefficients m∈U (4)

Figure 3. An example of a unit node showing the subnode structure and internal and external flows. This is unit node “U1” which uses technology
“T1”. This technology implements the transformation 0.5A + 0.75B → C + 0.25D, with species “C” as the basis species. Thus, n = U1, j = T1, bT1 =
C, aA,T1 = 0.5, aB,T1 = 0.75, aC,T1 = 1, aD,T1 = 0.25, IIN,U1 = {A, B}, and IOUT,U1 = {C, D}. The input species “A” and “B” are collected from all other
nodes that have these species as outputs. The output species “C” and “D” are distributed to all other nodes that have these species as inputs.

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Figure 4. Baseline solution flows of two different chemicals: (a) styrene and (b) vinyl chloride.

2.2.3. Sink Nodes. Each sink node n ∈ K receives inputs of a Xb j , n ≤ Cn , ∀ n ∈ U (6)

single species; thus, IIN,n is a singleton set. Also, n has no
output edges, so IOUT,n = φ. The sink node is viewed as
consisting of a single collection node, which collects inputs
from network unit nodes and combines them into a single
stream with flow Xi,n. That is
Xi , n = ∑ Yi , m , n , ∀ i ∈ IIN, n , ∀ n ∈ K
m∈U
2.2.4. LP Problem. Equations 1−5 provide the core
constraints for the linear programming model that is used in
this study. Other constraints are production capacity at unit
nodes, measured in terms of amount of basis species, and
supply capacity at supply nodes
n
Xi , n ≤ Cn , ∀ i ∈ IOUT, n , ∀ n ∈ S (7)
as well as nonnegativity of flows
Xi , n ≥ 0, ∀ n ∈ N , ∀ i ∈ IIN, n ∪ IOUT, n (8)
(5) Yi , n , m ≥ 0, ∀ i ∈ I , ∀ (n , m) ∈ Ei (9)
A typical objective for an industry network model is
minimum total industry cost, while satisfying product demand
constraints. However, this study involves analysis of
disruptions, during which we cannot expect product demand
to be met. Thus, we aim to use an objective that reflects, at
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Figure 5. Mass flux across species in the baseline solution for select species. Arrows show direction of flux between species; both color and width
show the magnitude of flux. In general, upstream materials are located to the left and top of the figure, with flows mostly proceeding downstream to
the right side.
least in an approximate way, the goal of industry during a
disruption. We have chosen to use as this goal the
maximization of total production, with some consideration of
transportation costs between unit nodes, as a disruption may
require obtaining inputs from different locations. Production at
a unit node n is measured by Xbjn,n, the amount of main product
(basis species) produced. Thus, total production is given by
Σn∈UXbjn,n. Subtracting a measure of transportation costs
between unit nodes given the modified production objective
P= ∑ Xb jn , n
− ω∑ ∑ dn , mYi , n , m
nϵU i ∈ I (n , m) ∈ Ei
n∈U ,m∈U
Here dn,m is the distance along the edge (n, m) between two
unit nodes (determined on an “as the crow flies” basis from the
known geographic coordinates of each node), which is taken to
be representative of the unit cost of transportation along this
edge. Because the two terms in P represent different attributes
of the objective, a weighting factor (conversion factor) ω is
needed to adjust the relative importance of the transportation
cost term. For the studies reported here a value of ω = 10−4
m−1 was used. This was determined by running a base case of
the model (no disruptions) at gradually increasing values of ω
and determining the value at which the optimal LP solution
began to show changes. At this value of ω, the objective P
primarily reflects total production level, but with some
sensitivity to transportation cost. The complete LP problem
then is to maximize P subject to the constraints provided by
eqs 1−9. The independent (decision) variables in the LP
problem are those appearing in the nonnegativity constraints,
Article
eqns 8 and 9. It is recognized that the number of independent
variables could be reduced by using constraints to perform
algebraic eliminations. To maintain clarity, we have not done
this here.
2.2.5. Limitations. In practice, we would expect each unit
node to have the capacity to maintain inventories of its inputs
and outputs. However, because inventory capacity data is not
readily available, inventory variables are currently not included
in the network model. Moreover, significant inventory relative
to throughput is relatively expensive to maintain in chemical
manufacturing because of the typically large volumes of
throughput and for safety and environmental reasons.
In the current model, transportation costs are treated solely
(10)
as a function of distance. However, in practice there are other
important considerations, such as the available transportation
modes (pipeline, rail, ship, truck) and proximity to the
appropriate transport infrastructure. For the disruption studies
reported here it is not apparent that the transportation terms in
the objective function play a significant role, as seen in results
presented below. Thus, it is not clear that a more sophisticated
treatment of transportation costs would alter our conclusions.
Optimization-based network models assume that the
industry acts as a whole to optimize some appropriate
objective, such as minimum total production cost. However,
the industry is actually operated by a number of independent
firms, each representing a subnetwork within the overall
industry network, and presumably, each firm will act to
optimize its own subnetwork. There is no guarantee that the
industry behavior predicted by optimizing the overall network
will be the same as the behavior predicted by optimizing the
subnetworks.
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3. CASE STUDY RESULTS
The U.S. network is used to calculate the edge configuration in
a baseline and then three different disruption scenarios to
determine impacts of the disruption on plant utilization and
chemical flows.
3.1. Baseline Solution. The edge connections are
calculated for the 2017 industry representation with no
disruption (“baseline” scenario). Of the 1169 units, 1042
have 100% utilization, 93 have 0% utilization, and 34 have a
utilization value between 0 and 100%. The units with zero
utilization are mostly refineries, PE, and plasticizer units and
are small capacity units that would not contribute much
magnitude to the objective function. For example, the
refineries with zero utilization represent 15% of national
capacity.
An example of the network solution is shown in Figure 4 for
two different chemicals, styrene and vinyl chloride. Styrene is
produced (both primary and byproduct production) almost
entirely along the Gulf Coast but is consumed throughout the
country (consumption nodes are represented by “x” in the
figure). Vinyl chloride has different behavior, with production
and consumption centered on the Gulf Coast with five
consumption sites and one production site located outside of
the Gulf Coast.
The material flux from upstream to downstream chemicals
(not unit nodes) for the baseline solution is shown in Figure 5.
Large fluxes occur for the primary raw materials (dark red
arrows on the left side) because their magnitude of use by the
industry is higher than the specialized intermediates seen
throughout the rest of the figure. The figure also shows the
number of downstream materials that are dependent on each
chemical. For example, many of the refinery outputs in the
lower left corner are not used by any other technologies in the
model, while propylene (which is slightly to the right of the
refinery materials) has a significant number of connections to
other downstream materials.
Shadow prices for the 1169 manufacturing units, import
nodes, and export nodes are shown in Figure 6. In this case, the
shadow price is defined as the marginal change of the benefit
function as the capacity level for each manufacturing unit or
import/export node is increased. Only units or nodes
producing at full capacity will have a nonzero shadow price
Figure 6. Shadow price versus capacity for the baseline network
solution.
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(a unit not operating at full capacity will have a shadow price of
zero, because increasing the unit’s capacity will not affect its
production level). It is notable that the units with the highest
shadow prices are not necessarily upstream materials. The
shadow price result takes into account the industry’s
downstream capacities which may limit the benefit of more
raw material production, thus providing a more nuanced
indication of where the industry could be expanded to enhance
overall productivity benefit. The negative shadow prices are
due to the impact of shipping cost relative to mass production.
The five units with the highest shadow prices (3.41−3.49)
are all phthalic anhydride units in Louisiana and Illinois and
phthalic anhydride imports. In the baseline solution, the four
domestic phthalic anhydride units and one import unit are all
at 100% utilization and there is no byproduct production of
phthalic anhydride in the model. While no major production
issues have occurred in the phthalic anhydride market over the
past few years, U.S. imports of HS291735 (acids; aromatic
poly(carboxylic acid)s; phthalic anhydride) have increased
131% since 2014,22 which could be indicative of a tightening
supply picture. Demand for phthalic anhydride is for plasticizer
and polyester production, which occurs at 68 units. Many of
the plasticizer units have zero production in the baseline
solution because of the lack of phthalic anhydride availability
(for this objective function, phthalic anhydride is used for
polyester production over plasticizer).
To validate the baseline solution, the gross production of
chemicals in the model is compared to 2017 statistic
production in the ICIS Supply and Demand Database,14
which includes calculated statistic production for 82 chemicals
that are in the model. Statistic production indicates that ICIS
calculated the country-level production based on supply/
demand balances. Comparison of published statistic produc-
tion to modeled gross production is shown in Figure 7, which
indicates a similar order of magnitude trend between the
modeled gross production and ICIS statistic production.
Modeled gross production is greater than the ICIS data
(below the dotted line in the figure) for 73 of the 82 chemicals
for which the validation was conducted. The chemicals with
the largest percent difference between the ICIS statistic
Figure 7. Model validation comparing 2017 ICIS statistic production
to modeled gross production for 82 chemicals available in the ICIS
Supply and Demand Database. The dotted line shows the linear
relationship that would be expected of modeled gross production that
exactly matched statistic production values.
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production and the modeled gross production are o-xylene,
SAN resin, caprolactam, plasticizer, polyester polymer, and
linear olefins. Each of these chemicals is complicated to model,
so deviation from the ICIS calculation is expected. For
example, assumptions were made about mixed xylene
composition and the stoichiometry of xylene fractionation
and crystallization units; the exact type of plasticizer produced
at each unit node was not specified in the ICIS data, so a
generic stoichiometry was used for all units, and the exact
composition of linear olefins was approximated.
3.2. Primary Raw Material Disruption. The primary raw
materials in the model are methane, ethane, propane, butanes,
n-pentane, n-hexane, and crude oil. Two primary raw material
disruptions are run: a 25% reduction in mass from the baseline
and a 50% reduction in mass from the baseline available.
Figure 8 shows the total production of basis chemicals from all
units in the model, grouped by chemical type for the two
primary raw material disruption scenarios.
Figure 8. Total unit production by type for the baseline 2017
simulation and the 25% and 50% primary raw material disruption
scenarios.
Fifty-seven chemicals show a change in gross production
between the baseline and either the 25% scenario and/or the
50% scenario. The chemicals with the largest magnitude
change are refinery products, ethylene, propylene, and
propane. Polymers such as polypropylene, HDPE, LLDPE,
and LDPE also show significant changes in gross production.
The materials with the largest percent decrease in gross
production as primary raw material availability decreases are
bimodal HDPE, EPDM rubber, ethylene-propylene copolymer,
linear olefins, LDPE, HDPE, PP, and LLDPE, then followed by
a number of intermediates and then refinery products. All of
the polymers are produced from cracker products (which rely
solely on C2−C4sthe disrupted materials) and refinery
products will have a direct relationship to crude availability
because there is no other option for producing waxes, lubes,
etc.
One hundred thirty facilities do not show any change in the
25% disruption but do show a change in the 50% disruption
scenario. There does not appear to be a unifying characteristic
for these 130 facilities; they include 27 refineries, 20 ethylene
crackers, 20 polypropylene units, 27 LDPE/LLDPE, 7 other
polymer units, and 9 other intermediate units in Texas,
Louisiana, Utah, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi,
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Pennsylvania, Alabama, Kansas, and Michigan. All but two of
these plants are at 100% utilization in the baseline, and their
shadow prices range from zero (for the plants not at 100%
utilization) to 1.94 (ethylene cracker). Ethylene crackers have
the highest shadow price because they are an important
intermediate supply for many downstream plants, providing
more benefit to the objective function than other ethane/
propane-consuming plants.
Mass flux impacts of the 50% disruption scenario are shown
in Figure 9. Only decreases are seen as no process can make up
for the lack of primary raw materials. The largest decreases are
seen for the polymers in the center of the figure. Large changes
are also seen for benzene, toluene, and styrene production.
To evaluate the effect that the shipment cost term in eq 10
has on the structure of the network solution, the primary raw
material disruption is repeated with a value of ω = 0 (so the
objective function only reflects maximizing production with no
impact from shipping cost). In the 50% primary raw material
disruption with ω = 0, 64% (692 of 1075) of the units show
identical behavior to the 50% primary raw material disruption
with ω = 10−4 (original value in the results above).
Furthermore, if production levels are aggregated by technol-
ogy, the similarity between the solutions with the two different
values of omega is even more pronounced. Seventy-five
percent (117 of 155) of technologies show identical
production behavior between the two different omega
solutions. Of the 38 technologies that did change, 29 of
them had a change that was less than 20%, with the median
change being 1.7%. With different values of omega, most plants
remained at the same operation level during the disruption,
suggesting that production level is being driven primarily by
raw material availability and not shipment cost, which is the
desired behavior because the model does not represent a
detailed transportation network.
3.3. Modeled Effects of Reported Ethylene Capacity
Disruptions. A time-resolved disruption scenario of reduc-
tions in ethylene production capacity along the Texas Gulf
Coast during Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath was primarily
developed using reports by PetroChem Wire.3,4 At the peak,
93% of ethylene capacity in Texas was offline during the
storm’s second landfall on August 30 (Figure 10); most
shutdowns were voluntary, and 65%−70% of the Texas
ethylene capacity was restored by September 18.3,4 For this
retrospective case study of the storm’s impacts, an exogenous
reduction in production capacity is implemented for 28 of the
31 Texas ethylene cracker units affected by the storm; no other
units have their capacity exogenously reduced.
Throughout the disruption, 220 units show a change in
production level compared to the baseline. These 220 units
produce 29 different main products and export 6 different
chemicals located in 14 states (Texas, Louisiana, California,
Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and
Tennessee) (Figures 11 and 12).
Mass flux impacts for 1 day of the ethylene disruption
scenario are shown in Figure 13. As the disruption unfolds, the
first major reduction in flux is ethylene to LDPE. Concurrently,
propane starts to decrease flux to almost all downstream
chemicals, but only a very small magnitude of change. Ethylene
to ethylene dichloride and to ethylene-propylene copolymer
are the next two supply chains with significant impacts
(occurring on August 26). At the same time, heavy aromatics
from mixed xylene increase in production because a facility near
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Figure 9. Changes in chemical supply chain flux in the 50% primary raw material disruption. The color of the edges shows the ratio of mass flux in
the 50% primary raw material disruption compared to the baseline. The width of the edge represents the baseline flux.
Figure 10. Exogenous disruption profile for Texas ethylene crackers
used in the disruption scenario based on data from PetroChem
Wire.3,4
the disrupted ethylene crackers that has low utilization in the
baseline is utilized at a higher rate because it is closer to the
disrupted area than other similar plants. On August 27, small
changes start to occur in many other supply chains, and on
August 28, large decreases are seen for acetaldehyde/ethyl
acetate/vinyl acetate supply chain, ethylene oxide, ethylene
glycol, and many exports. Many chemicals do not see any
change in gross production (chlorine and acetylene, for
example). As the ethylene capacity increases back toward
normal levels from around September 10 onward, all the
supply chains start to return to normal, with ethylene to LDPE
having the only prolonged, significant decrease in flux,
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Figure 11. Production level for the 220 units with production changes
for the ethylene cracker disruption scenario (ethylene cracker
production is not shown).
primarily due to five LDPE units in Louisiana (propane to
downstream materials has a much smaller decrease in flux over
these remaining days of the disruption). Despite ethylene
availability in Louisiana, the LDPE units still rely heavily on
ethylene from Texas (Port Arthur and Beaumont) in the
baseline, which explains the prolonged impact.
3.4. Modeled Effects of Assumed Capacity Disrup-
tions by Geographic Storm Track. The model framework
developed in this work could be applied prospectively to
anticipate potential impacts of extreme storm events such as
those of Hurricane Harvey. With this perspective, this case
study simulates county-level outages following the storm path.2
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Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research Article

Figure 12. Unit production during the ethylene disruption scenario

by product category, only for units that showed a change in
production from the baseline. Figure 14. Chemical units with assumed, exogenous capacity
disruptions in the geographic storm track scenario.

Thirty-two counties along the Gulf Coast are identified as
being affected by the storm between August 24 and 30. In
total, 392 unit nodes located in those counties have their
capacity exogenously reduced to zero for 9 days (the median
duration of ethylene cracker downtime),4 followed by a steady
ramp up to normal production capacity over 14 days. All plants
return to normal capacity by September 20. The impacted
units are shown in Figure 14, and the total disruption profile
for the affected facilities is shown in Figure 15.
For the 29-day disruption scenario, 392 units are
exogenously disrupted and an additional 170 units experience
a disruption as a result of these outages, including 16 different
chemical exports. The total industry production during the
disruption period is shown in Figure 16. These secondary
impacts of the disruption occur in 26 states (including Texas)
(Figure 17) and impact production of 16 exported chemicals
and 39 other primary chemicals (Table S4). Some states had
both positive and negative changes in chemical production;

Figure 13. Changes in chemical supply chain flux on August 30 in the ethylene disruption (93% of baseline Texas ethylene capacity is offline). The
color of the edges shows the ratio of mass flux in the ethylene disruption compared to the baseline. The width of the edge represents the baseline
flux.

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Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research
Figure 15. Exogenous disruption profile for the 392 facilities located
in the 32 counties in the geographic storm track scenario. This
represents the aggregate capacity of all facilities in the area while each
facility has its own disruption profile based on its specific location.
Figure 16. Industry production of basis chemicals during the 29-day
assumed capacity disruption by geographic storm track scenario.
details of which chemicals were impacted are available in the
Supporting Information. The secondary impacts are most
Figure 17. Net change in chemical production in the assumed capacity disruption by geographic storm track scenario. Note that Iowa and North
Carolina have production gains and losses that lead to a net change of zero. Details for each of the changes by state is provided in the Supporting
Information.
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pronounced for refineries, followed by plants that produce
polystyrene, p-xylene exports, then LDPE.
A more holistic picture of the impact moves beyond just the
basis chemical at each unit and looks at gross production of all
173 chemicals in the model. The total industry gross
production for all 173 chemicals is shown in Figure 18. The
Figure 18. Total gross production for all 173 chemicals in the model
plus 49 exported chemicals during the 29-day assumed capacity
disruption by geographic storm track scenario.
systemic impact23 (i.e., lost productionthe area between
baseline system performance and actual system performance)
for the 29-day disruption is 19.3 million tonnes of gross
chemical production (including 137 thousand tonnes of
exports). The market value of the 19.3 million tonnes of lost
chemical production during the disruption is estimated to be
on the order of $20 billion. This is a very coarse approximation
based on representative 2012 market prices from the DeRosa
and Allen 201512 model (which is based on the 2012 IHS
Process Economics Program Yearbook) and includes order of
magnitude prices for species that have no historical price data.
This estimate assumes every disrupted chemical would be sold
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Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research Article

Figure 19. Changes in chemical supply chain flux for August 30 in the assumed capacity disruption by geographic storm track scenario. The color
of the edges shows the ratio of mass flux in the storm disruption compared to the baseline. The width of the edge represents the baseline flux.

Figure 20. Shipments from each PADD to all other PADDs for each day of the assumed capacity disruption by geographic storm track scenario.
Note the vertical axes for each panel have different scales.

at the representative market price. Refinery products have the
highest magnitudes of lost market value; ethylene and
propylene are the nonrefinery species with the highest
magnitudes of lost value, and polypropylene is the nonrefinery
end product with the highest magnitude of lost value.
Mass flux impacts of the storm disruption scenario are
shown in Figure 19. As the storm unfolds, minor changes in
flux are seen throughout many chemical supply chains with a
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very large decrease across almost all of the industry starting on
August 27. While most exports see a large decrease, phthalic
anhydride and terephthalic acid exports increase throughout
the disruption compared to the baseline. About 4% of the
domestic consumption for phthalic anhydride and terephthalic
acid occurs at plants that are disrupted in this scenario. All
remaining, nondisrupted domestic demand is satisfied with
nondisrupted production, so excess production enables exports
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Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research
to increase during the disruption. Starting on September 2, an
increase in mixed xylene fractionation in Corpus Christi begins
as the storm moves north along the coast, enabling Corpus
Christi plants to return online. Toward the end of the
disruption, the bulk of xylene fractionation occurs at two
facilities near Houston and the Corpus Christi facility returns
to a smaller utilization.
3.4.1. Chemical Shipments. Because the model optimizes
every day of the disruption independently and assumes all
producers have perfect knowledge of the production system,
this is an approximation of shipments between plants. The
optimization does not incorporate inventory or transport mode
restrictions, but the term “shipment” is used here in a general
sense to describe supply chain flows. The results show that,
during most days of the disruption, shipments decrease in
magnitude between units, but there are also time periods
where shipments increase between units as the nondisrupted
units make up for lost production at disrupted units. A
summary of PADD-to-PADD shipments is shown in Figure 20.
Shipments from PADD 3 follow the linear ramp up that is in
the exogenous disruption profile from September 4 to 18,
while shipments for other PADDs do not directly follow the
exogenous disruption profile. For example, shipments from
PADD 5 increase to near baseline levels on September 9 but
then decrease for a few days before returning to baseline levels
at the end of the disruption (note that the magnitude of PADD
5 shipments is significantly smaller than PADD 3 shipments).
In the baseline, PADD 2’s ethylene demand is supplied
locally and by PADD 4, but by August 29, PADDs 2 and 4
increase shipments of ethylene from refineries in PADD 2 and
4 toward the Gulf Coast. Chlorine production is distributed
throughout the eastern United States. In the baseline, this
chlorine is shipped to the Gulf Coast, but on August 29 there
are no shipments to the Gulf Coast. Chlorine shipments start
to increase again on September 12. Phthalic anhydride does
not show significant changes throughout the disruption
scenario, because only 11% of consumption occurs at disrupted
plants (most plasticizer and polyester plants are located outside
of the Gulf Coast). A summary of styrene shipments during the
disruption is shown in Figure 21. There are no changes from
the day before the storm until August 27.
Figure 21. Styrene shipments from PADD 3 to other PADDs during
the assumed capacity disruption by geographic storm track scenario.
Styrene is produced only in PADD 3 in the model.
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4. IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
It should be recognized that alternatives to this approach or
altogether different model formulations are possible. For
example, preliminary studies indicated that when a utilization
rate is used as an alternative to the magnitude of primary
chemical production in the formulation for the objective
function, model behavior is similar but not identical. During
the assumed capacity disruption based on geographic storm
track, the same types of supply chains are impacted when
utilization rate is used in the objective function, but the relative
timing among plant impacts within the supply chains is not
necessarily the same. While we chose here to use a traditional
deterministic optimization-based approach, an agent-based
modeling approach, which is designed to capture the decision-
making behavior of individual firms, is recognized as an
interesting alternative. The agent-based approach has been
successfully applied to a segment of the chemical industry by
DeRosa et al.24 and to the full U.S. chemical network for
resilience and disruption analysis applications.25−28 Agent-
based approaches may show slightly different industry behavior
due to considerations of inventory, production scheduling,
transportation, and the potential for subnetwork optimization.
Essential to all modeling approaches are data resources for
network construction, behavior definitions, and validation of
model performance. Data types include not only locations,
capacities, and plant technologies but also transportation
network connections and contract relationships between plants
that might dictate components of industry performance. An
ideal validation tool would be a pre-existing, comprehensive,
and centralized tracking of impacts during events to build
databases for planning and response. Industry news sources,
such as PetroChem Wire used in this work, provide significant
value for situational awareness during an event. A compre-
hensive approach to tracking industry outages across
subsectors, while recognizing the need for proprietary
information protection, would enable additional validation
activities.
In this work, a geographically distributed network model of
the 2017 U.S. petrochemical industry is developed to simulate
the behavior of chemical supply chains and plant utilizations to
reported and assumed disruptions associated with Hurricane
Harvey. The model uses a linear program that determines
optimal chemical flows between units with constraints. In this
formulation, the objective function maximizes total production
across the network in order to establish a foundation for
evaluating the effectiveness of strategies to optimize systemic
resiliency in the future. The linear programming approach is
relatively computationally inexpensive and could respond to
the needs for rapid prospective disruption analyses associated
with extreme events, such as hurricanes and flooding. For
example, the calculated systemic impact for assumed capacity
disruption by the geographic storm track for Hurricane Harvey
is estimated to be 19.3 million tonnes of gross chemical
production (including 137 thousand tonnes of exports) which
represents lost market value on the order of $20 billion. The
model is adaptable such that the resilience implications of
future development, including capacity additions and new
manufacturing configurations or technologies, could be
evaluated.
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■
*
ASSOCIATED CONTENT
S Supporting Information
The Supporting Information is available free of charge on the
ACS Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.iecr.9b01035.
Details of the chemicals included in the model, a
discussion of the impact of weighting between shipping
cost and mass production in the benefit function, and
expanded results for the assumed capacity disruption by
geographic storm track disruption scenario (PDF)
■
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail: sean.derosa@utexas.edu.
ORCID
Sean E. DeRosa: 0000-0001-6734-0673
David T. Allen: 0000-0001-6646-8755
Author Contributions
‡ (12) DeRosa, S. E.; Allen, D. T. Impact of Natural Gas and Natural
S.E.D. and Y.K. contributed equally.
Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
■ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory
managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering
Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of
Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of
Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under
contract DE-NA0003525. This paper describes objective
technical results and analysis. Any subjective views of opinions
that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily
represent the views of the U.S. Department of Energy or the
United States Government. This paper is based upon work
supported primarily by the National Science Foundation under
Grant No. 1760459. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
National Science Foundation.
■
ABBREVIATIONS
EIA = U.S. Energy Information Administration
EPDM = ethylene propylene diene monomer
HDPE = high-density polyethylene
HS = Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding
System
LDPE = low-density polyethylene
LLDPE = linear low-density polyethylene
LP = linear program
MTBE = methyl tertiary-butyl ether
PADD = petroleum administration for defense district
PP = polypropylene
SAN = styrene-acrylonitrile
■
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