North Haven, CT (February 26th, 2018) – Precision Combustion, Inc. (PCI) announced today that it has won a Department of Energy (DOE) SBIR Phase I grant to develop novel materials and processes for separating and purifying ethylene, an important commodity chemical and principal feedstock for manufacturing a wide range of industrial and consumer products.
PCI’s approach will be economically beneficial to both large to small scale ethylene producers. Ethylene is used extensively as a building block in chemical and petrochemical industry and can be converted industrially into a variety of intermediate and end products, with polyethylene production a primary consumer. PCI’s will demonstrate the ability to selectively separate ethylene from the impurities inherently formed during synthesis processes as well as unreacted feedstocks, replacing current high cost and process-intensive cryogenic distillation with a low-impact and low energy sorption-based process.
PCI’s technology can be deployed in a modular fashion, meeting the needs to both large scale producers as well as those using upcoming smaller scale ethylene production methods. About 50% of the cost and energy associated with ethylene production is due to the extensive separations required to reach ethylene purity feedstock requirements; PCI’s approach has the potential to reduce this by 80% while maintaining required quality. This will result in significant US energy savings and reduced costs throughout the ethylene value chain.
Dr. Jeffrey Weisman, PCI’s principle investigator for the project, states “Success in this Phase I will demonstrate that our approach to selectively tuning sorbents for ethylene will not only be a sought-after substitute for current costly cryogenic distillation, and can be extended to other light olefinic hydrocarbons. This would open up a range of spinoff applications that offer additional energy saving potential.”
“With global production of ethylene in excess of 140 million metric tons per year, the potential benefit is substantial for petrochemicals and feedstocks of many petrochemical products,” PCI’s Director of Business Development Tony Anderson comments. “With proof of our concept in Phase I we would next aim to collaborate with industry leaders which could benefit from lower energy costs across both large scale and smaller scale ethylene production.”
Precision Combustion, Inc. is a clean energy technology development company directed to energy sector applications. To learn more, visit www.Precision-Combustion.com
For more information, please contact:
Tony Anderson
Director, Marketing and Business Development
203-287-3700 ext. 290
