Issue 17/2015 - Proprietary technology doubles the lifetime of aromatic catalysts

By the end of April, the TCDTO-1 catalyst independently developed by CNOOC Tianjin Chemical Research Institute has been successfully applied in four petrochemical enterprises including Huizhou Refining and Chemical Industry for 4 years, with a one-way service life of 400 days, which is twice the longest life of the most advanced international Olgone high-performance aromatic hydrocarbon treatment catalyst and more than 10 times that of the aromatic hydrocarbon refining industrial clay catalyst.
The overall life span after regeneration can reach more than
2 years.
This independent catalyst technology has aroused strong interest from international oil giants, and Shell, BP, Chevron and others are currently having in-depth exchanges with CNOOC Tianjin Chemical Research Institute to discuss the use of
TCDTO-1.

Experts said that the overall performance of TCDTO-1 catalyst ranks at the international leading level
.
Its successful industrial application breaks the characteristic boundary of traditional hydrogenation catalysts and non-hydrogenation catalysts, and achieves a long cycle life close to the hydrogenation process under limited equipment conditions, which not only significantly improves the intrinsic safety factor of the refinery, but also solves the disposal problem of waste clay, and its deep refining performance of aromatic hydrocarbons will also provide technical support
for the upgrading of aromatic hydrocarbons industry in China.

At present, the global aromatic hydrocarbon refining process mostly adopts clay refining technology, and most of the aromatic hydrocarbon combined devices of China's petroleum refining enterprises also use clay refining process
.
The clay refining process has poor treatment effect and short operating cycle, generally needs to be replaced once after 20~35 days, and the frequent replacement of clay is easy to bring hidden dangers
to the safety production of the device.

In order to overcome the many shortcomings of the clay refining process, ExxonMobil developed the Olgone high-performance aromatic hydrocarbon treatment process using molecular sieve non-hydrogenation technology, which has been successfully industrialized in
eight aromatic co-production plants.
The results of industrial tests show that the one-way life of the catalyst used in the Olgone process is 4~6 times longer than that of clay, the catalyst can be regenerated once, and the treatment effect after regeneration can be maintained at 70%
of the freshness.
In contrast, the one-way life of the autonomous TCDTO-1 catalyst is twice that of the catalyst, and the overall life after regeneration is up to 2 years
.

Another highlight of TCDTO-1 is its low
dosage.
The same set of equipment can be filled 25%
less at one time than white clay.
If the operation cycle is 2 years, the TCDTO-1 only needs to be replaced once, while with clay it needs to be replaced 25 times, and with Olgone 13 times; If the clay is replaced by TCDTO-1%, it can reduce the discharge of waste clay by at
least 90%.
(yuan)