New breakthrough achieved in scaling up domestic ethylene cracker units at Sinopec
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Forwarded from online news: At the beginning of the new year, there have been successive good news items regarding Sinopec’s ethylene technology, with new breakthroughs achieved in the enlargement of CBL cracking furnaces. On January 13, the first feeding of a new 200,000-ton/year liquid feedstock cracking unit was successfully completed as part of the Zhongsha Tianjin Petrochemical’s 1.3 million tons/year ethylene upgrade project ； On January 15, the world’s largest ethylene cracking unit with a capacity of 300,000 tons per year for cracking gaseous feedstocks, was successfully commissioned for the first time at Sinopec Refining ； On January 18, the 200,000-ton/year heavy liquid feedstock cracking furnace for the China-South Korea (Wuhan) Petrochemical 1.1 million tons/year ethylene capacity expansion project was completed to high standards.
Ethylene production capacity is an indicator of the development level of the **petrochemical industry, and cracking technology is an important component of the ethylene production system. The pyrolysis reaction process is extremely complex, involving tens of thousands of reactions, with reaction temperatures exceeding 800 degrees Celsius and a reaction residence time of around 0.2 seconds, which is almost the time it takes for an ordinary person to blink. Compared with foreign countries, the feedstocks for ethylene cracking in China are more complex. Abroad, the main feedstocks for ethylene cracking are light hydrocarbons and naphtha, whereas China lacks light hydrocarbon resources; therefore, heavy feedstocks such as hydrogenated tail oil and diesel must be used as supplements, which imposes higher requirements on the adaptability of cracking technology to various feedstocks.
Sinopec has been focusing on ethylene technology for over 30 years; it has now developed a complete set of technologies for producing ethylene from complex feedstocks, with key performance indicators reaching international leading levels. The company is one of the few in the world to hold patents for such ethylene production technologies. Sinopec’s CBL pyrolysis technology exhibits strong adaptability to various feedstocks; it can efficiently pyrolyze light materials such as ethane, light hydrocarbons, and naphtha, as well as heavy materials like diesel and hydrogenation tail oil, as well as unconventional feedstocks with high olefin content. Continuous improvements in scale production have played a key role in driving the development of the ethylene industry and related sectors. By the end of 2020, China’s ethylene production capacity was 35.18 million tons per year, ranking it second in the world. Among them, Sinopec has an ethylene production capacity of 12.55 million tons per year, making it the fourth-largest ethylene producer in the world.
The CBL-R type cracking furnace put into operation by Sinopec Refining and Chemicals is China’s first 300,000-ton-class CBL gas feedstock cracking furnace built using proprietary patented technology. This cracking furnace uses ethane, LPG (liquefied petroleum gas), and naphtha as raw materials; its maximum production capacity for cracking ethane is 300,000 tons per year, while the capacities for cracking LPG and naphtha are 250,000 tons per year and 200,000 tons per year, respectively. The CBL-IX type cracking furnace put into operation at Sino-Saudi Tianjin Petrochemical uses naphtha as raw material. It is China’s first 200,000-ton capacity CBL liquid feedstock cracking furnace built using proprietary patented technology, and represents the industrial application of the results achieved under the **Science and Technology Support Program for ‘200,000 tons per year large-scale cracking furnaces’ as well as Sinopec’s project on ‘Development and industrial application of 200,000 tons per year liquid feedstock cracking furnaces’.
Similar to Sino-Saudi Tianjin Petrochemical, the 200,000-ton/year pyrolyzer at Sino-Korean (Wuhan) Petrochemical was designed using Sinopec’s patented technologies and a number of innovative techniques; the difference lies in the fact that it uses naphtha, hydrogenation tail oil, and diesel as raw materials, making it a pyrolyzer for cracking heavy liquid feedstocks. The process packages for all 3 pyrolysis furnaces were developed jointly by the engineering construction company, Beijing Research Institute of Chemical Technology, and Tianhua Nanjing Industrial Furnace Research Institute. The engineering construction company is responsible for the design; it adopts a dual-furnace, single-convection-section structure with full-bottom heating. The special-shaped furnace tubes equipped with large bottom bends are coupled with dumbbell-shaped quenching heat exchangers, enabling split-furnace pyrolysis and split-furnace coking operations. This setup features flexible operation, high availability, and low nitrogen oxide emissions. The quenching heat exchangers and burners for the pyrolysis furnace are all manufactured in China using independently developed technologies, resulting in a high degree of domestic equipment utilization, with overall technical and economic indicators that are at the international leading level.
The commissioning of these large-scale pyrolysis units represents a new breakthrough for Sinopec’s CBL pyrolysis technology in terms of larger scale, series production, and environmental sustainability. It is also a successful example of modular and standardized design by engineering construction companies. Such advancements lay the foundation for building ethylene plants with a capacity of 1.5 million tons per year or more, providing strong support for the advancement of Sinopec’s ethylene technology on the global stage. (China Petrochemical News, Fu Hui)
Under the scientific management of Sinopec Engineering Construction Company, the meticulous coordination of Shijian Company, and the close cooperation of Qiyun Company, through the hard work of nearly 200 workers over a period of 6 months, by the end of June the main structures of the six steam cracking units in the Keko Refining and Chemical Project, with an annual capacity of 800,000 tons, which were of interest to all parties involved, had been installed. The steam cracking unit is equipped with seven cracking furnaces in total; furnaces 1 to 6 are of similar volume and have a crude oil processing capacity of 100,000 tons per year each ； Boiler No. 7 has a significantly different volume configuration; its crude oil processing capacity is 200,000 tons per year, and the delivery of its boiler body was also slightly later than that of the other six boilers. Of the 6 boilers, aside from the radiation section furnace chamber of Boiler No. 6 and the two sets of convective section tube banks, which were transported to the site as Sinopec’s first \"factory-prepared modular units\" for overall installation, the steel structures for the radiation section furnace walls, the furnace tubes, and the convective section modules were all delivered to the site in separate pieces, groups, or tube bank modules for lifting and assembly. In total, there were 210 furnace wall panels in the radiation section, with a combined weight of 1,050 tons ； There are a total of 90 sets of radiant section furnace tubes, with a total weight of 500 tons ； There are 46 sets of convective section pipe tray modules, with a total weight of 3,666 tons.