Alternative Feedstocks for Olefin Production: What Role will Ethanol Play?

2010 Spring Symposium

 
Mark Stew­art
Research Sci­en­tist
Hydro­car­bons & Ener­gy and Alter­na­tive Feed­stocks
The Dow Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny


Abstract — Tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment and mar­ket forces are con­verg­ing to por­tend the unthink­able: viable options for olefin pro­duc­tion with­out a steam crack­er. The Alter­na­tive Feed­stock Pro­gram at Dow Chem­i­cal is imple­ment­ing routes to olefin deriv­a­tives that would have been unthink­able a decade ago. This talk will describe these efforts and, in par­tic­u­lar, high­light the emer­gence of bio-based poly­eth­yl­ene made by cat­alyt­ic dehy­dra­tion of ethanol to form eth­yl­ene. Next gen­er­a­tion bioethanol options are described. The extinc­tion of steam crack­ers is not immi­nent, but new tech­nolo­gies are find­ing their place. New alco­hol pro­duc­tion brings both vibran­cy and uncer­tain­ty to olefin pro­duc­tion.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Mark began his career with Dow in 1998 work­ing in the Dow’s Cen­tral Research lab­o­ra­to­ries in Reac­tion Engi­neer­ing on a vari­ety of pro­grams rang­ing from tra­di­tion­al semi-batch poly­ol reac­tors to mod­el­ing polyurethane reac­tions on straw in the pro­duc­tion of wheat par­ti­cle­board. In 2002 he moved to Hydro­car­bons Research for the sup­port of Styrene Plants, dur­ing which time he worked on sev­er­al projects receiv­ing Tech Cen­ter Awards val­ued in total over $60MM and inte­grat­ed the tech­ni­cal reac­tor mod­els into the com­mer­cial cost mod­els to opti­mize over­all pro­duc­tion. In 2006 Mark tran­si­tioned to olefins research where he is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the intro­duc­tion of new tech­nolo­gies into tra­di­tion­al steam crack­ers and the devel­op­ment of alter­na­tive feed­stocks for olefins pro­duc­tion. Dur­ing this time he worked close­ly in Dow’s effort in Brazil for the con­ver­sion of ethanol to poly­eth­yl­ene.

Mark earned his bachelor’s degree in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton in 1997, his Master’s in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Prac­tice from MIT in 1998, and his Master’s in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas in 2008.