Simulation and Economic Comparison of Direct and Indirect Conversion of Flare Gas to DME for Production Gasoline, LPG and Hydrogen

The rapid decline of fossil fuel resources has made the economic and environmental issues of researchers shifting to producing synthetic fuels from materials such as fare gases or biomass. The emission of fossil fuel combustion materials, such as NOx, SOx and etc., has a very undesirable effect. Given this fact, fuels should be synthesized that have the lowest emission than conventional fossil fuels. In recent years, research into clean fuel production has increased significantly. Converting flare to gasoline through the direct and indirect Synthesis of Dimethyl Ether (DME) is one of the options that has the highest likelihood of replacing fossil fuels. Therefore, in this study, we designed and simulated the process of direct and indirect conversion of flare gas to DME to produce Gasoline, LPG and Hydrogen in Aspen HYSYS v. 11 software. The purpose of this simulation is to compare economically and obtain capital cost, operating profit and desired rate of return on direct and indirect production of DME from flare gas in order to produce gasoline, LPG and hydrogen. The results of the economic evaluation showed that product sales, operating profit, capital cost in a process that converts direct flare gas to DME were 55.5%, 55%, 27% higher than the process in which indirect flare gas is converted to DME, respectively. The desired rate of return in a process that converts direct flare to DME is 18% earlier than the indirect conversion process of flare gas into DME.

Keywords:

Flare gas , DME , Gasoline , Hydrogen , Asaluyeh , FGTG