《CATALYTIC PROCESSES FOR LIGHT OLEFIN》.pdf

Chapter 5 CATALYTIC PROCESSES FOR LIGHT OLEFIN PRODUCTION Wang Xieqing, Xie Chaogang, Li Zaiting, and Zhu Genquan Research Institute of Petroleum Processing, SINOPEC Beijing, China 1. INTRODUCTION Consumption of petroleum in the transportation fuel sector is expected to show only a modest rate of growth in the near future. Fuel specifications are becoming increasingly stringent due to new environmental regulations, and energy sources such as biofuel and especially fuel cells for vehicles are becoming increasingly attractive as environmentally friendly alternatives. In the petrochemical sector however, consumption of hydrocarbon raw materials is expected to grow more rapidly. The building blocks for the petrochemical industry are mainly light olefins, principally ethylene and propylene, and aromatics including benzene, toluene and xylenes (BTX). Steam cracking has been the major source of light olefins and aromatics for more than half a century. The proportions of different steam cracking feedstocks used worldwide are shown in Figure 1. Naphtha is currently the dominant feedstock, accounting for 50~55% of the total. It is expected that ethane, associate gas and condensates will gradually replace naphtha as the major feedstock because the former are easier to obtain, at a lower price, in the most productive oilfields. In North America and the Middle East, ethane and associate gas already make up 25~40% of the feedstock for steam cracking. This threatens to induce an imbalance in the ethylene to propylene ratio in the overall output from steam cracking because typical ethane pyrolysis gives 79% selectivity to ethylene and less than 1% selectivity to propylene at 70% conversion, whereas stea