Techno-Economic Analysis of Flare Gas to Gasoline (FGTG) Process through Dimethyl Ether Production

It is well known that burning flare gases and releasing them into the atmosphere has become one of the problems of the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries. If these industries can produce energy or valuable materials from flare gases, it will be very profitable and less harmful to the environment. The purpose of this investigation is to design, simulation and economic evaluation the process of converting flare gas to dimethyl ether (DME) for the production of gasoline, Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and hydrogen by Aspen HYSYS v.11 software. The flare gas to gasoline (FGTG) process can be indirect or direct DME production (two scenarios). In the economic comparison of these scenarios, the total product sales, operating profit, total capital cost, desired rate of return (ROR), and payoff period (POP) will be calculated. The economic evaluation results show that using the FGTG process with direct DME production (second scenario) instead of the FGTG process with indirect DME production (first scenario), increases the product sales and operating profit by about 55% and 65%, and also the total capital cost and utility cost is decreased by about 30% and 50%, respectively. Finally, the desired ROR in the FGTG process with direct DME production and indirect DME production is 52 percent/year and 33 percent/year, and the POP for the second scenario is approximately 1.1 years earlier than the first scenario.