2025 AIChE Annual Meeting

(425a) Study on the Process Routes and Economic Benefits of Crude Oil to Chemicals

Author

Yuan Zhou - Presenter, Beijing University of Chemical Technology
Due to the excess refining capacity and the shortage of chemicals such as low-carbon olefins, the transformation from refining to chemical production has been promoted to solve the problem of excess oil products and increase the supply of chemicals. Therefore, the maximum production of chemicals from crude oil has become a hot research topic in the petrochemical industry.

Catalytic pyrolysis is a key technology for producing olefins from crude oil, and significant research has been conducted on catalysts, reactors, and processes. However, with catalytic pyrolysis as the core technology, the process route comparisons and economic benefit analysis on a whole-plant scale are rarely reported.

In this study, with the mixed crude oil of Arab light and Arab heavy (mass ratio 1:1) as the processed crude oil and catalytic pyrolysis to low carbon olefins as the core technology, the process routes of crude oil to chemicals in a new refinery of 10 million tons/year was studied. The material balance and property transfer were realized by the whole-plant modeling method, and the product structure and economic benefit of the four process routes were compared.

The results show that the catalytic pyrolysis technology can flexibly adjust the product structure of ethylene and propylene; among the four process routes, the route of “atmospheric distillation unit + residual oil hydrodesulfurization + catalytic pyrolysis to ethylene” has the characteristics of large output of chemicals and ethylene cracking raw materials, good economic benefits and is more suitable for the goal of reducing oil and increasing chemicals.

Studying the process routes and economic benefits of crude oil to chemicals can provide reliable data for the process selection and process route planning of new refineries, and provide technical support for the technology upgrading, refining to chemical transformation, and efficiency enhancement of existing refineries.