【Frontiers in HaiChuan Chemical Technology】Shanghai Research Institute of Petrochemicals makes efficient use of dilute ethylene to advance green chemistry

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Technical Profile 【Name】 High-efficiency catalyst and integrated technology for the value-added conversion of dilute ethylene 【Research Institution】 Shanghai Research Institute of Petrochemical Technology 【Purpose】 For a long time, most enterprises have used large amounts of dilute ethylene resources as low-grade fuel gas, resulting in waste of these resources. This technology enables the production of various high-value products such as ethylbenzene, methylethylbenzene, and methylisopropylbenzene using inexpensive dilute ethylene as a raw material, thereby helping the petroleum refining and chemical industry to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and achieve sustainable development. 【Results】 This catalyst has been successfully applied in 18 enterprises ； A set of technical licenses for 11 units was provided, enabling the construction of the world’s largest ethylbenzene production facility using dilute ethylene. To date, this technology has been used to convert 20 million tons of low-grade ethylene in total, and it has become the key technology for the efficient utilization of scarce ethylene in independent refineries in China. It provides solid technical support for Chinese refining enterprises to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and achieve sustainable development. For a long time, the Shanghai Research Institute of Petrochemical Technology has focused on **major strategic needs, striving to develop core green chemical technologies with independent intellectual property rights. It continues to work to expand, strengthen, and refine the green chemical industry, contributing to the innovation, upgrading, and green transformation of China’s petroleum and chemical industry. Resource and environmental issues represent major challenges facing global socioeconomic development today, and the efficient use of resources has become a hot topic of research worldwide. Our country is the world’s largest oil importer, with a high degree of dependence on foreign oil resources; however, many oil by-products remain underutilized. Among them, dilute ethylene derived from the exhaust gases of refining units is a low-quality resource; it has a low concentration of ethylene, numerous and complex impurity components, making it difficult to convert. For a long time, most companies have used large amounts of rare ethylene resources as low-grade fuel gas, resulting in waste of these resources. Developing value-added conversion technologies for dilute ethylene can help the refining and petrochemical industry achieve cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and sustainable development. Ethylbenzene is an important organic chemical, primarily used in the production of styrene, which is then used to manufacture engineering plastics, synthetic resins, and synthetic rubbers; it has a wide range of applications and high demand. It is highly economical to produce ethylbenzene with high added value using inexpensive dilute ethylene as a raw material. In existing technologies, foreign companies carry out deep cryogenic purification of dilute ethylene before catalytic conversion to produce ethylbenzene, thereby avoiding the problem of low catalyst activity and stability. Although this approach improves the efficiency of catalytic conversion, it is a energy-intensive process with poor economic viability, which is why it has not been widely adopted. Similar domestic technologies carry out catalytic conversion directly without cryogenic separation, but it is difficult to overcome the impact of impurities in the raw materials on catalyst activity, stability, and product quality; as a result, the utilization rate of dilute ethylene is low, resulting in an inefficient conversion process. Through more than a decade of continuous innovation, the research team at the Shanghai Institute has, with the goal of improving the utilization rate and value of rare ethylene resources, overcome key challenges such as high-performance catalyst materials resistant to impurities and corresponding reaction processes, efficient and energy-saving preprocessing and separation methods, as well as engineering techniques for scaling up complete sets of technologies and equipment. As a result, they have successfully developed highly effective catalysts for the value-added transformation of rare ethylene, along with complete sets of related technologies. Compared with similar catalysts, this catalyst offers advantages such as high activity, strong selectivity, good stability, and a long regeneration cycle; the ethylbenzene produced using this catalyst has high purity and a low content of the key impurity xylene. This set of technologies features strong adaptability to raw materials; it can handle dilute ethylene feedstocks from units such as fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC), deep catalytic cracking (DCC), reactive thermal cracking (RTC), ethane cracking, and coal chemical processes. It is capable of producing a variety of high-value products such as ethylbenzene, methylethylbenzene, and methylisopropylbenzene. It is reported that the high-efficiency catalysts for the value-added conversion of rare ethylene, along with the related technical systems, have been granted 72 invention patents by the **Intellectual Property Office, as well as 5 foreign invention patents ； It has won various scientific and technological awards, including the Second Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress, the China Patent Gold Award, the First Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress in Shanghai, the First Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress of Sinopec, and the Special Recognition Gold Award from the jury at the Geneva International Invention Exhibition. To date, this catalyst has been successfully applied in 18 enterprises, and the complete set of technology has been licensed for 11 plants, enabling the construction of the world’s largest ethylbenzene production facilities with a capacity of 420,000 tons per year at Maoming Petrochemical and Anqing Petrochemical. To date, this technology has been used to convert a total of 20 million tons of low-grade ethylene, and it has become the key technology for the efficient utilization of such ethylene in independent refineries in China. It provides important technical support for oil refining and chemical enterprises in China to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and achieve sustainable development through resource conservation.