Design of Plant for Industrial Production of Ethylene in Kazakhstan

Abstract

Ethylene is a fundamental petrochemical building block, yet no dedicated production facility currently operates in Kazakhstan despite abundant local ethane resources. This capstone project presents the complete front-end engineering design of a 300,000 metric tonnes per year polymer-grade ethylene plant to be located in the Atyrau region, utilizing ethane steam cracking as the production route. The process design was developed through rigorous Aspen Plus V14 simulation, employing the RK-SOAVE equation of state to model the cracking furnace, quench system, three-stage cracked-gas compression train, cryogenic fractionation sequence (demethanizer, depropanizer, deethanizer), acetylene hydrogenation unit, and C2 splitter for ethylene-ethane separation. Key equipment including the cracking furnace (77 tubular reactors, HP40-Nb alloy), shell-and-tube heat exchangers, distillation columns (demethanizer with 84 actual stages, C2 splitter with 63 trays), and two-stage adiabatic packed-bed hydrogenation reactors (Pd-Ag/Al₂O₃ catalyst) were sized using Fenske-Underwood-Gilliland methods, Ergun pressure drop correlations, and LHHW kinetics. Material and energy balances were closed at 39,000 kg/h ethane feed, producing 35,941 kg/h of 99.95 mol% ethylene. The plant layout was designed for the SEZ "National Industrial Petrochemical Technopark" near Atyrau, incorporating API 752 separation distances, NFPA 30 requirements, and a six-node HAZOP analysis identifying two SIL-2 safety functions. Economic evaluation at 2025 price levels gave a total fixed capital investment of USD 502 million, annual operating costs of USD 139 million, base-year revenue of USD 287 million, net present value of USD 347 million, internal rate of return of 34.6%, and a payback period of 4.2 years from construction start. The design demonstrates technical feasibility and commercial viability for ethylene production in Kazakhstan, leveraging local feedstock, existing infrastructure, and special economic zone incentives.