Massive Production of Zeolite Catalyst for Phenol/Acetone Production

Massive Production of Zeolite Catalyst for Phenol/Acetone Production

On March 20, 2013 the Petrochemical Research Institute of Jilin Petrochemical Company (JPC) had for the first time successfully manufactured one m3of the MCM-49 zeolite, symbolizing its capability to produce in commercial scale the MCM-49 zeolite. This catalyst is expected to be applied on JPC’s 125 kt/a phenol/acetone unit, which can bring about an incremental economic benefit amounting to 15 million RMB a year.

Currently JPC adopts the zeolite Y to manufacture isopropanol on the phenol/acetone unit. Since high benzene/ olefin ratio and high temperature are required for conducting the isopropanol alkylation reaction, there are a lot of disadvantages such as large volume of circulating materials in the system, high energy consumption for product separation, low production efficiency, and excessive byproducts. The catalyst needs to be flushed periodically with hot benzene for regeneration, which would result in high safety hazards and extended non-productive duration.

Application of the MCM-49 zeolite can reduce the benzene/olefin ratio and reaction temperature during the alkylation reaction along with decreased raw materials and energy consumption. Furthermore, this catalyst does not need benzene flushing and can extend its service life to 3—6 years, thus avoiding safety hazards arising from flushing of zeolite by hot benzene, reducing catalyst replacement frequency, and extending production cycle to raise the techno-economic level of cumene production to a higher rung.

It is told that this research institute has performed optimization tests in commercial scale at the side cut of production unit after implementing two 1500-hour stability tests running at a temperature of 130 ℃, a propylene space velocity of 1.0 h-1, a benzene/olefin ratio of 6, and a recycle ratio of 8 and 6, respectively. This unit has been operating for 5000 h to achieve a propylene conversion of 100%. Upon using a composite catalyst consisting of mainly the HMCM-49 zeolite for transalkylation of polyisopropylbenzenes with benzene at a temperature of 190 ℃ the conversion of di-isopropylbenzene and tri-isopropylabenzene reached 58.3% and 50.3%, respectively, which would command a domestic leading position with all indicators reaching or exceeding those of imported catalysts.