EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IN THE PETROCHEMICAL REFINERY

摘要

Feedstock cost is an essential element in establishing the competitive position of a petrochemical venture. At the same time, production of petrochemicals does not consume a sufficient percentage of the world's hydrocarbons to significantly impact prices in the petroleum or natural gas markets. As a result, the petrochemical producer has typically existed at the margin, depending upon low valued streams derived from the refinery or the natural gas plant The ever-increasing range of technology options offers the petrochemical producer a number of opportunities to achieve a level of independence coupled with an ability to possibly integrate back to the point of raw material production. Cases I and 2 above illustrate how a petrochemical producer can divorce itself from the transportation fuels market while still consuming crude oil. This option offers the opportunity to integrate with a crude producer and possibly to participate in the benefits of crude acquisition at production cost rather than be subject to market clearing prices for derivative hydrocarbons. This could provide valuable insulation from the effects of the inevitable petrochemical market cycles. This might mean sharing the thrill of the upswing with the crude producer, but the cushion on the downside may be well worth the trade-off. On the other hand, as is illustrated by Cases 3 and 4, this same range of technology options offers the refiner or even the power producer the opportunity to participate in the petrochemical market on a basis that permits modifications in emphasis in response to these same cyclical impacts. In these cases the refiner/power producer and the petrochemical producer will have thrown in their lot together and will gain the benefit of the capability to swing the processing emphasis in order to capitalize on any counter-cyclical aspect of these three markets - power, fuels and petrochemicals. Before closing, a word is in order on the remarkable capability of this industry to catalyze innovation. It is apparent that starting with World War II, the hydrocarbon processing industry embarked on what must be seen as a very remarkable half century of technology development. These developments encompass reaction systems such as fluid solids, continuous reforming, high-pressure technologies, cryogenics and pyrolysis, - all supported by an extraordinary range of catalyst developments. During the war the US and Britain developed in very short order several technologies - catalytic cracking, alkylation and synthetic rubber among them. On the other side Germany made remarkable progress in developing Fischer-Tropsch and Bergius chemistry based technologies for conversion of coal to fuels. Much of what we process today was built upon those foundations. We believe we can rest assured that in the future, as in the past, technology will be made available to meet the energy and petrochemical challenges of the day.