Optimal Economic Decision Making for Gas-to-Liquid Product Selection Considering Competition in Market Dynamics

Abstract

For a chemical process industry, an invested capital cost is too large and when a decision making that which product should be produced is once determined, it is almost impossible to be modified or repeated. Also, since the huge uncertainty exists in the whole market such as recession today, it is so important to judge an economic decision making for selection of which target product would be the most profitable in the future. For the sake of a robust decision, we need to compare several points of view including profitability, reliability, risk, and so on. In this paper, we will try to get an optimal economic decision making for Gas-to-Liquid product selection considering market dynamics. The targets are three GTL products; FT-diesel, DME, and Methanol. At first we could design the three GTL processes using a process simulator. Then, through the constructed models, comparative economic analysis among them was conducted using an economic index. For a robust analysis we can apply the market dynamics related with demand expansion and shrinkage as well as a competition within players. Finally, we can get an optimal solution for selecting GTL product considering market variation and compare the robustness for the decision. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.