The First in China Butadiene Tailgas Hydrotreating Unit Runs Smoothly

By the end of November 2015 the first in China 40 kt/a butadiene tailgas hydotreating unit has been operating smoothly for 4.5 months at the Maoming Petrochemical Company, while successfully delivering more than ten thousand metric tons of high-added value product – normal butane.

This unit adopts the package technology for hydrotreating mixed C4hydrocarbons developed independently by the SINOPEC Beijing Research Institute of Chemical Industry aiming to recover the tailgas from two butadiene units, heavy C4fraction, and alkynes, diolefins and monoolefi ns in C4fractions after etheri fi cation from MTBE unit, so that these fractions can be hydrotreated to C4alkanes with the olefin content being less than 5% according to the design target. These C4alkanes can serve as the steam cracking feedstock in place of naphtha in a bid to obtain an incremental value of C4hydrocarbons, broaden the steam cracker feed to not only make up the de fi cit in feedstock supply, but also increase ethylene output and reduce the ethylene production cost.