The First Industrial Application of China's Crude Oil Steam Cracking Technology Is Successful!

On November 17, Sinopec announced that its key research project "Technology Development and Industrial Application of Light Crude Oil Cracking to Ethylene" was successfully tested in Tianjin Petrochemical Industry, which can directly convert crude oil into ethylene, propylene and other chemicals, realizing crude oil steam cracking technology. The first industrial application in China.

The technology has been developed and engineered by the Beijing Research Institute of Chemical Industry and Engineering Construction Company organized by Sinopec. Industrial trials have been carried out at Tianjin Petrochemical Corporation. 45 national invention patents and 1 international invention patent have been applied for.

It is understood that at present, only ExxonMobil and Sinopec in the world have successfully realized the industrialized application of this technology.

It is estimated that for every 1 million tons of crude oil processed by this technology, nearly 500,000 tons of chemicals can be produced, including nearly 400,000 tons of high-value products such as ethylene, propylene, light aromatics, and hydrogen. The overall technology has reached the international advanced level and has economic value. 

Sinopec attaches great importance to the R&D and application of "oil conversion" technology. In April 2021, the catalytic cracking technology of crude oil independently developed by the Research Institute of Petrochemical Industry-another "oil conversion" technology route, realized the world's first industrial application in Yangzhou, and the output of its chemicals was about 50%. my country has become the leader of the world's crude oil catalytic cracking technology route.

Sinopec said that the combination of the above two technologies is expected to increase the total amount of chemicals produced by crude oil to more than 70%, which will become an economically feasible technical route for "oil conversion" in the future.

In the next step, Sinopec plans to carry out the development and engineering design of a complete set of technology for the production of ethylene by steam cracking of one million tons of crude oil at Tahe Refining and Chemical, and to build an industrial demonstration device for the production of chemicals directly from crude oil.