Fouling mitigation strategies for process gas compressors in olefins plants

摘要

Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals' olefins plant in Port Harcourt, Nigeria is designed to produce 300,000 tpy of polymer-grade ethylene and 126,000 tpy of polymer-grade propylene through the pyrolysis or thermal cracking of natural gas liquids (NGL). The NGL is first fractionated in a column where C_2-C_4 hydrocarbons are recovered at the column overheads and sent for cracking in the pyrolysis furnaces, while C_5+ hydrocarbons are the column bottom product, sent to offsite facilities for storage. However, due to NGL feedstock supply constraints that adversely affected capacity utilization, the olefins plant was modified in 2009 to handle liquid cracking of C_5 obtained from the NGL fractionation column.