The demand for the processes of natural, associated, refinery gases and their components (ethane, propane, butane) transformation into olefins grows very quickly. So the development of such processes is very important. Dehydrogenation of light alkanes (C2–C4) presents a significant problem associated with their low reactivity, the high temperature of the processes, and low selectivity. Oxidative dehydrogenation allows one to decrease the temperature of this process significantly.
The integration of selective permeable membranes into catalytic reactors makes it possible to overcome thermodynamic restrictions of the dehydrogenation process due to selective hydrogen removal, as well as to ensure the controlled introduction of the alkane and oxidizing agent into the reactor. This increases the efficiency of both nonoxidative and oxidative alkane dehydrogenation. The use of membrane reactors in the case of the oxidative dehydrogenation also enhances the safety of the process due to separate supply of the hydrocarbon and oxidant onto different sides of the membrane. Progress in membrane catalytic technologies in recent decades takes place due to the use of new high technologies, primarily nanotechnology approaches.
In the present paper, the application of these systems for production of light olefins from the corresponding paraffins is considered with the sample of oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane (EOD) and its mixtures with methane in different types of membrane reactors. It was shown that EOD realization in the membrane mode, with separated gas flows, allows one to use the gas mixtures with wide [ethane/O2] ratios. The per-pass conversion of ethane in [ethane + O2] mixtures can be increased up to 70 0n the case of the operation mode combining membrane and flow processes, with selectivity being about 95%. It was demonstrated also that at the ODE of the methane and ethane (14.5%) mixture the ethane transformation efficiency does not depend on the presence of methane.
