California, US-based Siluria Technologies has held an official opening ceremony to mark the successful start-up of its methane-to-ethylene demonstration plant. The plant, co-located at a facility operated by Braskem America in La Porte, Texas, is the world's first large-scale production of ethylene directly from natural gas based on the oxidative coupling of methane (OCM).

The demonstration unit is the final scale-up of its OCM process technology and paves the way for Siluria to build commercial-scale plants in 2017-2018. Ed Dineen, Siluria's CEO, commented: "This revolutionary breakthrough has the potential to shift the foundation of the hydrocarbon economy by using abundant natural gas to produce high-value chemicals and fuels. We are well positioned with our commercial and engineering partners to now move quickly to full commercialization of our proprietary technologies."

Siluria has partnered with engineering firms to validate and commercialize the technology in specific projects within the ethylene, gas processing and oil refining sectors. It has previously announced a partnership with Germany's Linde Group to offer licenses to the global ethylene industry.

A second process technology has also been developed to convert ethylene to liquids (ETL) to produce tailored products such as gasoline and other high-value hydrocarbon liquids. Siluria has been using ETL technology to produce gasoline at a pilot facility in Hayward, California, since November 2013.

The company said the combination of its OCM and ETL technologies provide an entirely new platform for energy companies to add significant value uplift to their lowest value products, such as methane and ethane.