Looking toward 21 century, smaller, cleaner and more energy-efficient technology will be an important trend in the development of chemical industry. In light of the new process requirements,a number of technology breakthroughs have occurred. One of these discoveries, the magnetically stabilized bed (MSB), has been proven a powerful process for intensification. Since its initial research in the late 1980's at Research Institute of Petroleum Processing (RIPP), the MSB technology and related catalytic material have matured rapidly through an intensive research and engineering program, primarily focused on its scaling-up.In this paper, we report the discovery of a novel skeletal amorphous nickel-based alloy and its use in magnetically stabilized bed (MSB). Amorphous alloys are new kinds of catalytic materials with short-range order but long-range disorder structure. In comparison with Raney Ni, the skeletal amorphous nickel-based alloy has an increasingly higher activity in the hydrogenation of reactive groups and compounds including nitro, nitrile, olefin, acetylene, aromatics, etc. Up to now, the amorphous nickel based alloy catalysts, SRNA series catalyst, one with high Ni ratio have been commercially manufactured more than four year. The new SRNA catalyst has been successfully implemented for hydrogenation applications in slurry reactor at Balin Petrochemical, SINOPEC.SRNA catalyst with further improvement in catalytic activity and stability raise its relative stability to 2～4 times of that of conventional catalyst. In the course of the long-cycle operation of SRNA-4 the excellent catalyst activity and stability can bring about such advantage as low reaction temperature, good selectivity and low catalyst resumption.Magnetically stabilized bed (MSB), a fluidized bed of magnetizable particles by applying a spatially uniform and time-invariant magnetic field oriented axially relative to the fluidizing fluid flow, had many advantages such as the low pressure drop and the high mass transfer efficiency.Combining the amorphous alloy catalyst, a novel magnetically stabilized bed demonstration unit was developed in process of purification of caprolactam at Balin Petrochemical in 2000. Compared with slurry reactor, reactor volume is reduced by 50%. The utilization experiences for more than three year show that the process is successful with decreasing energy consumption and increasing economical benefits. During three years, catalyst consumption was reduced by 60% and hydrogenation efficiency increased by a factor of 8～10 times.Based on the above studies, a commercial set with the capacity of purifying caprolactam of 35kt/a has been built up at Shijiazhuang Chemical Fibre Corporation Limited, SINOPEC. An additional commercial plant is under construction and is scheduled to start up in late 2004.
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