OCC catalytic cracking to produce olefins

Zhongyuan Petrochemical’s 60,000-ton/year tetraolefin OCC plant was successfully commissioned in 2009; it was the first industrial facility in the world to use fully crystalline multi-porous catalysts, with its overall technical specifications reaching international leading levels. Since the early stages of construction of Sinopec’s first coal chemical demonstration project, an MTO plant with a capacity of 600,000 tons per year, Zhongyuan Petrochemical has been working on ways to combine the two technologies in order to achieve greater benefits. In response to the changes in feedstocks that occur after the commissioning of MTO, the OCC unit uses tetrahydrocarbon products containing 5%–10% pentanes from the MTO unit as feedstock, gradually shifting from the previous pattern of using refinery tetrahydrocarbons along with 2-butene to a pattern that utilizes MTO tetrahydrocarbons along with 2-butene.

At 15:00 on October 16, the 100,000-ton/year olefin catalytic cracking (OCC) unit for the comprehensive utilization of by-product C4 and C5 compounds, designed by Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company for Lianhong New Materials Technology Co., Ltd., completed its entire production process and produced qualified products, marking a complete success in its first operation. China’s first olefin cracking unit utilizing OCC Generation 2 technology has achieved full operational capability. The Lianhong OCC unit employs the OCC Generation 2 olefin cracking technology developed by Sinopec’s Shanghai Research Institute of Petrochemical Technology; it is the first olefin cracking unit in China to use this technology. It uses C4 and C5 olefins, which are by-products of methanol-to-olefins (MTO) processes, as raw materials for catalytic cracking to produce ethylene and propylene. The design of high-temperature, large-diameter pipes in the project has become a highlight of the entire installation’s design. The yield of propylene and ethylene exceeds 80%.