Commercial Application of the PS-VI Catalyst in the Revamped 0.8 Mt/a Catalytic Reforming Unit

1 Introduction The CCR unit at Tianjin Petrochemical Company (TPC), which operates on naphtha to make aromatics with hydrogen as the by-product, is a leading unit of the 0.2 Mt/a polyester project. This CCR technology was licensed by UOP, and the SINOPEC Beijing Design Institute (BDI)— — the major contractor - made the engineering design. The original capacity of this CCR unit was rated at 600 kt/a and the unit worked on refined virgin naphtha and hydrocracked heavy naphtha. The…

Commercial Application of the PS-VI Catalyst in the Revamped 0.8 Mt/a Catalytic Reforming Unit

This article makes an analysis on the major technical difficulties encountered in the process of revamping and expanding the capacity of the continuous catalytic reforming (CCR) unit from 600 kt/a to 800 kt/a at Tianjin Petrochemical Company. The requirements for expanding the CCR unit capacity to 800 kt/a have been met through adopting the low carbon-make PS-VI catalyst, properly lowering the RONC of the reformate, and appropriately retrofitting the towers and furnaces while keeping the reaction system, the catalyst regeneration system and the recycle hydrogen compressor intact. The calibration results have revealed that the liquid yield of reformate products, the octane rating of reformate, the pure hydrogen yield, the aromatics yield and the overall conversion rate all have met the revamp design targets.