Olefins by Catalytic Cracking - New Process

A new process for the manufacture of Ethylene and Propylene, the two main building blocks for petrochemicals, called Advanced Catalytic Olefins (ACO) Technology, is getting ready to go into commercial operation in the last quarter of this year.
The main advantages of this new catalytic route over the well established thermal route (steam cracking) are:
• 15-25 % increase in olefins yield
• Better Propylene to Ethylene ratio of 1:1 compared to 0.5:1 for steam cracking
• Lower operating temperature of 650 degs C compared to 850 degs C for steam cracking
Licensed by KBR, the plant is being built for SK Energy at Ulsan, South Korea.

Chemical industry will be anxiously watching the start-up of this breakthrough technology, as it will have far reaching consequences for the petrochemical sector.

More details of the process at
http://www.kbr.com/Newsroom/Publications/technical-papers/A-Catalytic-Cracking-Process-for-Ethylene-and-Propylene-from-Paraffin-Streams.pdf

CP 50

50 Chemical Processing companies worth watching and learning from :

http://www.chemicalprocessing.com/cp50/index.html

Growing Chemicals on Trees

Plants could be genetically engineered to produce specific chemicals. Will Chemical Engineers turn into Genetic Engineers?
Further Reading : http://pubs.acs.org/cen/business/88/8823bus2.html?featured=1

Answers to Quiz on Chemical Industry Pioneers

1) Herbert Henry Dow's first patent was for extraction of BROMINE
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/dow.html

2) EUGENE JOULES HOUDRY developed the Catalytic Cracking process.
http://acswebcontent.acs.org/landmarks/landmarks/hdr/

3) FISCHER-TROPSCH Synthesis (Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch) converts coal into petroleum
http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/

4) BASF built world's first Ammonia plant
http://www.basf.com/group/corporate/en/about-basf/history/1902-1924/index

5) Carothers invented NYLON
http://www.chemheritage.org/classroom/chemach/plastics/carothers.html

QUIZ : PIONEERS OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

This Quiz should be easy for Chemical Engineers and interesting for others.


1) Employing more than 50000 people The Dow Chemical Company manufactured more than 5000 products at 214 locations in 37 countries for sales of US$ 45 billion in 2009. It is the largest chemical company in US and the 2nd largest in the world. The company was founded in 1895 by Herbert Henry Dow. For the extraction of which chemical did Dow obtain his first patent in 1889?


2) An event of far reaching consequence took place at Sun Oil Company’s Marcus Hook Refinery, Pennsylvania in 1937 when the first commercial scale Catalytic Cracking plant went on stream. This process more than doubled the output of petrol from crude petroleum and also considerably improved the quality of petrol. The man behind this revolutionary chemical process was strangely enough, a French mechanical engineer. What is his name?


3) In the 1920’s two chemists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute developed a trailblazing process to convert coal into petroleum. During World War II, coal rich Germany relied heavily on this synthetic petroleum to power its war machines. After the discovery of oil in Middle East, this synthetic route went into near oblivion. But there has been renewed interest in this process in recent times of energy crunch. What is the name of this process?


4) Feeding the world’s population would be unthinkable without the use of Ammonia based fertilizers. Which company built world’s first Ammonia plant in 1913 based on the process developed by Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch? Today it is the world’s largest chemical company.


5) The world's first synthetic fibre was not presented to the scientific society but to three thousand women's club members gathered at the site of the 1939 New York World's Fair.
What was this fibre invented by Wallace Hume Carothers and his team in the laboratories of the DuPont company? Tragically Carothers killed himself in 1937 before the true magnitude of his invention could become evident.