Emergency e-Naphtha Production from Carbon Dioxide and Low-Carbon Hydrogen: A Modular Naphtha-Window Process for Strategic Petrochemical Resilience

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Process engineers and CCUS researchers can examine the proposed gating concept for synthetic naphtha production that prioritizes modular engineering over perfect selectivity.

🏢実務担当者:Petrochemical companies can consider this concept for long-term resilience planning, though further techno-economic assessment is needed.

🏛政策担当者:Policymakers may use this to explore strategic options for reducing naphtha import dependence while promoting low-carbon hydrogen and CCUS.

This paper proposes an emergency e-naphtha production framework based on captured carbon dioxide and low-carbon hydrogen. The central objective is not ordinary fuel production or peacetime cost competition with petroleum-derived naphtha, but strategic petrochemical resilience under crude oil, naphtha, or maritime supply disruption. The proposed Naphtha-Window Process reconstructs carbon dioxide into synthetic naphtha-range hydrocarbons, approximately C5-C12, using low-carbon hydrogen as the reducing input. Rather than relying on fragile in-situ molecular membranes to selectively remove C5-C12 hydrocarbons from a high-temperature reactive environment, the framework uses staged reaction, rapid quench, distillation, light-fraction recycle, heavy-fraction hydrocracking, and modular process control. The paper emphasizes that synthetic e-naphtha is not an energy-amplifying technology. It is an energy conversion and carbon-feedstock continuity technology. Its value emerges when petroleum-derived naphtha becomes unavailable, geopolitically constrained, or insufficient for critical industries such as medical polymers, semiconductor materials, infrastructure repair, defense-related polymers, food packaging, synthetic rubber, coatings, adhesives, and other petrochemical supply chains. The work introduces a process-level gating concept in which light carbon fractions are grown, heavy carbon fractions are cracked back, and only the naphtha-window fraction is withdrawn as product. This shifts the design problem away from perfect one-pass selectivity and toward controlled recycle, modular engineering, downstream compatibility, and crisis-mode allocation. The framework is intended as a strategic resilience architecture rather than a commodity replacement pathway. It provides a conceptual and engineering basis for evaluating emergency e-naphtha capacity as a complement to strategic stockpiles, import diversification, low-carbon hydrogen infrastructure, and allied petrochemical supply networks.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20157286first seen 2026-05-17 05:42:07