China has successfully developed a new generation of ultra-low-pressure continuous reforming technology

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China has successfully developed a new generation of ultra-low pressure continuous reforming technology. Recently, the new type of regeneration and related technologies for continuous reforming, developed jointly by Sinopec Luoyang Engineering Co., Ltd. and its partner organizations, passed expert evaluation. The 2.8 million tons per year ultra-low pressure continuous reforming technology package developed as part of this project also succeeded in passing Sinopec’s technical review, marking the successful development of China’s own new generation of ultra-low pressure continuous reforming technology with independent intellectual property rights, and thus maintaining China’s leading position in this field both domestically and internationally. 　　Continuous reforming technology is an important method for producing high-quality gasoline and aromatics using naphtha as raw material, and it is also a core process technology for deep petroleum processing that is widely adopted by refineries today. At the beginning of 2010, the “SLCR Project – Development and Application of a Complete Set of Technologies for Naphtha Catalytic Reforming”, developed jointly by this company with institutions such as the Sinopec Research Institute of Petrochemical Technology, won the **First Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress**. Continuing to pursue innovation and never settling for what has been achieved, the company addressed issues identified through comparisons with foreign technologies, such as insufficient operational flexibility of the regenerators, easy damage to the internal components of these regenerators, chlorine-induced corrosion in the regeneration system, and environmental pollution caused by waste alkaline solutions. Taking into account the increasing scale of such facilities, the company embarked on research to develop a new generation of ultra-low pressure continuous reforming technology. Not only was a new green and environmentally friendly process for adsorption-based dechlorination through recycling developed, addressing issues such as equipment corrosion and the discharge of waste alkaline solutions, but new internal components for the coking zone of the regenerator were also created; a total of **6 patents have been granted. At the same time, the company also completed the development of process packages for capacities of 2 million tons and 2.8 million tons, providing strong technical support to enhance the competitiveness of China’s continuous reforming technology in the market. 　　In June 2014, an industrial plant with an annual capacity of 1.5 million tons, built using this technology, was first put into operation at Yangzi Petrochemical. To date, ultra-low pressure continuous reforming technology has been adopted by more than 10 petrochemical enterprises, enabling the production of 6.5 million tons of high-octane gasoline per year and generating an additional economic benefit of 4.2 billion yuan. Compared to the adoption of imported technologies, it has resulted in cumulative savings of over 30 million US dollars in foreign exchange, providing domestic petrochemical companies with a new technical option for upgrading the quality of petroleum products and achieving the production of cleaner fuels.