What the Shell cracker plant looks like: The visible and invisible

[yortsed snacilbuper]

How residents of Beaver County will experience the new Shell petrochemical complex in Potter Township depends on a lot of things. The time of day. The particular equipment that’s churning or not churning inside the fenceline of the sprawling industrial site that spans nearly 400 acres on the Ohio River. Whether the trains that will carry plastic pellets to customers are running.

Shell, a Dutch energy and petrochemicals giant, built the complex in Beaver County because it sits on top of one of the largest reserves of natural gas in the world, the Marcellus and Utica shales.

That gas, in some areas, is rich with natural gas liquids. One of them, ethane, will be piped to the plant and then cracked in furnaces where it will emerge as ethylene. Three other units on the site will process that ethylene into polyethylene pellets, which will be sent to Shell’s customers to be fashioned into anything from car parts to diapers.

As the facility continues to ramp up to begin commercial operations, researchers are ramping up surveillance of health, air and water around the plant

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