The rising global warming concerns have prompted research in the direction of greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation technologies. Amongst all of the GHGs, methane (CH4) is the second most abundant gas after carbon dioxide (CO2) and its conversion to valuable chemicals holds significant value. The discovery of shale gas reserves has further encouraged the development of direct methods for methane conversion into valuable chemicals, offering an alternative to indirect approaches that involve an energy-intensive and intermittent syngas production step, leading to high CO₂ emissions. Amongst the direct methods, the oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) is a potential pathway to reduce CO2 emissions and can produce commodity chemicals such as ethylene, a chemical regarded as central to the petrochemical industry. Even though OCM has been studied for over four decades, the technology still has not found commercial applications. Though there are many challenges regarding industrial deployment of OCM, the most significant one is the requirement of a high ethylene yield of 30% which is currently reported to be around 20%. Moreover, the highly exothermic nature of the process and controlling the carbon selectivity over oxides of carbon (COx) is the heart of the problem. The current presentation includes a multiscale, packed bed reactor, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model with integrated reaction kinetics using Na-dopped perovskite type LaMnO3 catalyst. The model is calibrated against experimental data in terms of C2 yield, selectivity and CH4 conversion rate. Moreover, results from a parametric study conducted on reactor temperature, feed rate and reactor geometry are presented. A system-level analysis of the OCM plant will be conducted to analyze the cost and emissions of the technology. Finally, a life cycle assessment (LCA) will be conducted to evaluate the cradle-to-grave environmental impact of the proposed technology.
