The Methanol-to-Olefin (MTO) process — converting methanol derived from coal or natural gas to ethylene and propylene, the primary feedstocks of India's polyolefin and specialty chemical industries — has emerged as a strategically significant route for India to reduce its dependence on naphtha-based steam cracking, which consumes imported crude derivatives whose prices are subject to geopolitical volatility. India's current ethylene production capacity of approximately 8 Mt/yr, concentrated in integrated petrochemical complexes at Jamnagar, Dahej, Panipat, and Haldia, is projected to fall short of domestic polyethylene demand by 2028 unless capacity expansion proceeds at an accelerated pace that the MTO route could supplement at distributed scale close to methanol production centres in Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh's coal belt. This paper addresses the reactor engineering, thermodynamic analysis, and process economics of a 50 kt/yr ethylene-equivalent MTO facility using SAPO-34 silicoaluminophosphate molecular sieve catalyst. Reactor selection and sizing compares Plug Flow Reactor (PFR), Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR), and recycle PFR configurations for the MTO reaction network using Langmuir-Hinshelwood-Hougen-Watson (LHHW) kinetics incorporating coke-induced catalyst deactivation. Distillation train design uses McCabe-Thiele graphical method and Aspen HYSYS rigorous column simulation for the methanol-dimethylether-water-ethylene-propylene separation sequence. CSTR multiplicity analysis identifies and avoids the high-temperature runaway steady state that poses a process safety risk in the exothermic MTO reaction. Economic analysis uses an ASPEN Economic Analyser-based CAPEX/OPEX model with Monte Carlo NPV simulation across methanol price scenarios.
Sneha Desai Girish Kulkarni (Fri,) studied this question.