【Ten Years of Rapid Development in Chemical Equipment】From 2004 to 2025: Evolution and upgrading of fluidized-bed hydrogen peroxide technology in China’s petrochemical industry, breaking through foreign technological blockades

Thread Content

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】Continuous updates and summaries available – feel free to join the discussions: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3576046-1-1.html ***************** Sinopec’s fluidized-bed hydrogen peroxide production technology has seen further advancements. June 30, 2025: On June 24, news came from Sinopec’s Technology Development Company stating that the fluidized-bed hydrogen peroxide production technology developed by Sinopec itself has broken through foreign technological restrictions, thereby facilitating the advancement of hydrogen peroxide production technology in China. Currently, this technology has been licensed to foreign companies, with Europe’s largest engineering company acting as the agent for technology licensing in Europe and the United States. 　　Hydrogen peroxide is one of the basic chemicals with the most complex production processes and the highest safety requirements. In 2022, China’s share of the global hydrogen peroxide market exceeded 50%, with an annual production capacity of 24 million tons. However, the production process primarily relies on relatively outdated fixed-bed technology; the capacity and efficiency of individual units are less than 1/4 of those achieved by foreign fluidized-bed technologies, and breakthroughs in key core technologies are urgently needed. 　　The hydrogen peroxide R&D team, led by the Sinopec Research Institute of Petroleum Sciences and involving organizations such as Hunan Petrochemical, has spent 15 years developing a new set of green production technologies for hydrogen peroxide using fluidized bed technology. To date, it has been granted 72 Chinese invention patents and 1 PCT international patent. This technology integrates multiple innovations, including 3 types of catalysts, 3 process intensification techniques, and 2 new reactions, thereby achieving technological advancements across the entire production process. It significantly improves production efficiency. Moreover, the fluidized bed process facilitates the scaling up of facilities, making it suitable for meeting the needs of production projects such as those for caprolactam and propylene oxide. 　　In 2018, Hunan Petrochemical adopted Sinopec’s proprietary fluidized-bed hydrogen peroxide production technology to build China’s first industrial production facility with an annual capacity of 72,000 tons. Since its commissioning, the facility has operated steadily, with various performance indicators far exceeding those of domestic technologies. In 2021, the expansion and upgrade project for Hunan Petrochemical’s plant, with an annual production capacity of 600,000 tons of caprolactam, began construction; hydrogen peroxide is an important reaction material for the new caprolactam production unit in this project. The project continues to use the fluidized-bed hydrogen peroxide production technology to build two large-scale hydrogen peroxide production units. On December 27, 2023, at the meeting organized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to discuss the relocation and transformation of hazardous chemical manufacturing enterprises in urban areas with high population densities, as well as the relocation, transformation, and closure of chemical enterprises in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, experts present agreed that the hydrogen peroxide production technology developed by Sinopec could effectively address the fundamental safety issues associated with hydrogen peroxide production, making it worthy of adoption across the industry. 　　Since last year, with the support and guidance of institutions such as the Institute of Petrochemistry, the caprolactam department of Hunan Petrochemical has continued to optimize the operation of the hydrogen peroxide production plant, organized teams to focus on solving key challenges, and improved the economic and technical performance of the plant as a whole. In 2024, the two hydrogen peroxide production units of this company manufactured a total of 585,000 tons of hydrogen peroxide, and the calibration results showed that all economic and technical indicators met the design values. From January to May this year, the plant produced a total of 345,000 tons of hydrogen peroxide. Its overall energy consumption was 114.09 kilograms of standard oil per ton, a decrease of 2.43 kilograms of standard oil per ton compared to the previous year; hydrogen consumption was 231.37 standard cubic meters per ton, also a decrease of 2.647 standard cubic meters per ton.