UOP Technology Selected for New Aromatics Complex at Mangalore

---

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--ONGC Mangalore and Petrochemicals Limited (OMPL) (Mumbai, Maharashtra) is setting up an aromatic unit at the Mangalore Special Economic Zone (MSEZ). OMPL is promoted by India's largest crude oil and natural gas producer, Oil and Natural Gas Commission Limited (ONGC) (Dehradun, Uttarakhand) and its subsidiary, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL) (Mangalore, Karnataka). MSEZ is also the site of MRPL's refinery unit.

ONGC and MRPL will hold 49% equity in OMPL, and the remaining 51% will be offered to public and other strategic partners. ONGC is expected to invest close to $4 billion in the project. MRPL's refinery has the capacity to refine 12.5 million metric tons per year (about 268,000 barrels per day) of crude oil. Its products include aviation turbine fuel, bitumen, diesel, fuel oil, naphtha and petrol.

The refinery and aromatic units will be integrated and the refinery's naphtha and aromatic-rich stream will be used as feedstock for the aromatic unit. The aromatic complex is being designed to produce 900,000 metric tons per year of para-xylene and 275,000 metric tons per year of benzene. The plant is scheduled to go on-stream by the end of 2010. The OMPL complex will be the largest petrochemical complex in South India.

OMPL has selected UOP LLC (Des Plaines, Illinois) to supply technology, equipment and basic engineering services for the new plant. Several UOP technologies will be used in the aromatic complex, including the UOP Continuous Catalyst Regeneration (CCR) Platforming™ Process, the UOP Isomar™ Process, the UOP Parex™ Process, the UOP Tatoray™ Process, and the Shell Sulfolane™ Process.

The CCR Platforming™ process is used to efficiently produce aromatics from naphthenes and paraffins with the least possible ring opening or cracking. Aged catalyst is continuously replaced with freshly generated catalyst from an external regenerator. Use of current catalyst technology and reduction of reaction pressure greatly reduce the actual-to-theoretical yield gap.

The Isomar™ process is a catalytic process, in which ethyl benzene (EB) isomerization catalysts are used to transform EB into xylenes, and EB dealkylation catalysts are used to generate a valuable benzene co-product from EB. UOP offers I-300™ EB dealkylation catalyst and I-400™ EB isomerization catalyst. Both catalysts show very high aromatic ring retention, resulting in high yields of xylenes and benzene at very low hydrogen consumption.

The UOP Parex™ process is used to recover para-xylene from a mixture of C8 aromatic isomers by using a solid zeolite adsorbent that is selective for para-xylene, ensuring efficient purification and recovery.

The UOP Tatoray™ process selectively converts toluene, C9 aromatics (A9) and C10 aromatics (A10) into xylenes and benzene. Disproportionation -- the conversion of toluene into benzene and xylenes, and transalklyation -- the conversion of a mixture of toluene and A9/A10 into xylenes and benzene, are the two major reactions involved in the Tatoray™ process. A Tatoray™ unit in an aromatics complex can more than double the yield of para-xylene from a given naphtha feedstock. The reactions are carried out in a hydrogen atmosphere to lessen coke formation on the catalyst and ensure nearly zero ring destruction in the process.

In the Shell SulfolaneTM process, extractive distillation is combined with liquid-liquid extraction to recover high purity aromatics from mixtures of hydrocarbons. The combined process allows Sulfolane™ units to process hydrocarbons of a much wider boiling range than either technique would allow when used alone. A single unit can simultaneously recover high purity C6-C9 aromatics, which can be individually recovered later by simple fractionation. The solvent tetrahydrothiophene 1, 1-dioxide, or sulfolane, developed by Shell Oil Company (Houston, Texas) in the 1960s, lends the process its name. It is still the most efficient solvent available to recover aromatics.

View Project Report - 89000881 89000918 89000920 89000923 89001183 89001185 89001198

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is a marketing information service specializing in industrial process, energy and financial related markets with products and services ranging from industry news, analytics, forecasting, plant and project databases, as well as multimedia services.