On Nov. 30, the technology of DTMPX, developed jointly by Yanchang Petroleum Group and Dalian Institute of Chemicals, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has passed the result appraisal organized by China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation in Beijing.
Li Yongwu, Vice Minister of the former Ministry of Chemical Industry and former president of the Petrochemical Federation, attended the appraisal meeting. The appraisal committee is composed of 11 experts, including Jin Yong, Wang Xiqing and Yang Qiye, academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Jin Yong is the director of the appraisal committee, Wang Xiqing and Yang Qiye are the deputy directors. After reviewing, questioning and discussing, experts of the appraisal committee agreed that this achievement has independent intellectual property rights, is innovative, is in the leading level of the same kind of technology in the world as a whole, and has broad application prospects. It is suggested that the popularization progress should be accelerated on the basis of improving and optimizing the process, and large-scale industrialized installations should be built as soon as possible.
P-xylene is an important organic chemical raw material. Li Jun, deputy secretary and general manager of the CPC Committee of Yanchang Petroleum Refining and Chemical Company, said that in 2017, China consumed 24 million tons of p-xylene and imported 14 million tons, with an external dependence of more than 58%. The traditional production of p-xylene is mainly based on straight-run, hydrocracking naphtha or ethylene cracking gasoline, which is extracted by aromatics combined unit matched with refining unit. In order to open up a new technological route for toluene alkylation to produce p-xylene, and to extend the joint efforts of Petroleum and Dahua Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences for five years, the first set of 10,000 tons/year toluene methanol-to-p-xylene co-production low-carbon olefins industrial plant has been built in Yan'an Petrochemical Plant of Yanchang Petroleum Group.
According to reports, the 10,000-ton industrial test device was put into operation in April this year, and completed 72 hours of industrial test assessment in September. The results show that the one-way conversion of toluene is 26.42%, the one-way conversion of methanol is 93.27%, and the technical indexes have reached the international leading level.
According to Xu Lei, head of related technology of Dahua Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences, this technological achievement innovatively adopts new zeolite catalyst and mobile bed technology, realizes the integration of petrochemical industry and coal chemical industry to produce p-xylene, and also uses coal and natural gas resources to produce p-xylene and low-carbon olefins, which opens up a new way to produce p-xylene and low-carbon olefins. The approach provides technical support for the later planning and construction of domestic integrated production bases of p-xylene-mdash, terephthalic acid-mdash and polyester industry, which has good demonstration leading effect and broad industrial development prospects.