【Ten Years of Rapid Development in Chemical Equipment】Conversion rate reaches over 50% from 2023 to 2025! The first industrial test setup for the lightweighting of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons has completed its technical calibration

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Let’s give praise and encouragement to the achievements made in China’s chemical engineering technology and equipment; your participation in discussions is the greatest encouragement. **********************【Ten Years of Progress in Chemical Engineering Equipment】Regular updates and summaries are available; feel free to join the discussions: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3576046-1-1.html ***************** On May 14, 2025, China’s first industrial testing facility for the lightweight processing of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons completed its technical calibration. The conversion rate of these hydrocarbons exceeded 50%, while the selectivity of the target products reached 85%, surpassing the project’s initial targets. This marks another achievement for Sinopec in the field of advanced refining and chemical processing technologies, providing an effective solution to the problem of dealing with \"low-quality aromatics\" in the aromatic compounds industry chain. In recent years, the production capacity of paraxylene (PX) in China has seen explosive growth, while industry profit margins have continued to decline; the traditional aromatic hydrocarbons industry is facing the dilemma of increased production without corresponding increases in efficiency. Faced with the industry challenge that over a million tons of carbon 11 and heavy aromatics are available each year but can only be used as low-cost fuel oil, the Liaoyang Petrochemical Research Institute, after four years of research, developed a set of technologies for the high-value conversion of the entire carbon chain in aromatics. Among them, the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon conversion technique achieves alkylation by introducing toluene, allowing carbon 11 and heavy aromatics to undergo molecular restructuring under the action of a catalyst. Liaoyang Petrochemical has innovatively developed a multi-level pore system based on composite molecular sieves, endowing the LYPAT-1 catalyst with the capabilities of alkylation transfer, hydrocracking, and anti-coking. It is as if a \"three-dimensional traffic network\" has been created at the molecular level, allowing aromatic molecules with different carbon numbers to move along their respective paths. “Traditional catalysts are like ‘picky eaters’; they can only handle specific components. ” On March 11, 2025, the test facility entered the instrument calibration phase. Faced with challenges such as limited experience in developing the first industrial-scale testing setup, high uncertainty, numerous adjustments required, and significant safety risks, the R&D team at Liaoyang Petrochemical Research Institute overcame more than 20 technical difficulties, including issues related to the stable operation of the vacuum tower, large fluctuations in the purity of recycled hydrogen, rising temperatures in the second bed layer, and difficulties in analyzing heavy components. Especially during the plant commissioning phase, in the face of various challenges such as frequent deviations of the vacuum distillation column parameters from their design values and volatile temperature curves similar to those on a roller coaster, the R&D team creatively introduced a heavy aromatic hydrocarbon bottom stream buffer column. By adjusting the feed and reflux ratios of the vacuum distillation column in real time, they were able to precisely control the mass ratio of toluene to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons at 4 to 6. A total of 128 pilot tests, over 300 analyses and tests, and 500 hours of long-term evaluation were carried out, and successful commissioning was achieved on April 16th. Meanwhile, Liaoyang Petrochemical also identified more than 30 optimization measures, including the design of the height-to-diameter ratio of the vacuum tower, the placement of reactor distributors, the location of hydrogen makeup lines, and the setting of instrument interlock values, providing data support for the development of the 500,000 tons per year polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons process package. This technology has been included in Liaoyang Petrochemical’s 15th Five-Year Plan for scientific and technological development. Based on a plant capacity of 30 tons per hour, it is possible to generate an income of 70 million yuan over an annual operating time of 8,000 hours. According to the company, Liaoyang Petrochemical will continue to follow the roadmap based on \"technical iteration and sequential breakthroughs\" in order to advance the development of a complete set of processes for the flexible conversion of the entire aromatic carbon chain. It will also focus on developing new generations of isomerization technologies to achieve sequential improvements and enable flexible conversion within these technological systems.