Successful Commercial Application of Selective Polymerization Technology Developed by SINOPEC's RIPP

On July 2, 2018 the commercial test unit for selective polymerization of C4olefins jointly developed by the SINOPEC Research Institute of Petroleum Processing(RIPP) and the SINOPEC Shijiazhuang Refining and Chemical Branch Company in collaboration with other institutions had been successfully put on stream to deliver qualified product, symbolizing that SINOPEC’s commercial test unit for selective polymerization of C4olefins with independent intellectual property rights has entered the commercial test phase following the successful startup of the commercial test unit.

In September 2017 China’s 15 ministerial organizations,including the State Development and Reform Commission, the State Energy Agency, and the Ministry of Finance, issued a directive on “The implementation scheme for increasing the production of bio-ethanol fuel and disseminating the use of automotive ethanol gasoline”, stipulating that the full coverage for application of ethanol gasoline will be basically realized by 2020 while any other oxygenates should not be added manually into automotive ethanol gasoline. This directive has meant that the currently used oxygenate additive methyl tertiarybutyl ether (MTBE) should be banned.

After the issuance of the scheme for comprehensively disseminating the use of automotive ethanol gasoline,RIPP in October 2017 set up a joint technical team composed of 50 people, who based on many years of research on polymerization technology have developed and upgraded the C4olefins polymerization technology.Till now, RIPP has been providing the engineering design projects for retrofitting around 30 MTBE units at a range of domestic refineries. The successful commercial application of this technology has further verified the reliability of C4olefins polymerization process, which can provide a new route for the deepened processing of C4olefins.