MTBE plants

The use of MTBE occurred quickly after the first MTBE plant was built in Italy in 1973. Its use then spread through Europe and by 1980, Europe was producing almost 90 million gallons per year. This reached 300 million gallons per year by the end of 1990. In the U.S. MTBE production began in the early 1980s and reached more than a billion gallons by 1987. 

MTBE plant, polyisobutylene plant, or solvent extraction... 

The isobutylene in the C4 stream generally ends up in one of four places a refinery alkylation plant (covered further below), an MTBE plant, a polymerization process, or in gasoline. The first three are methods of removing isobutylene from the C4 stream the fourth is the default—the isobutylene just follows the other butanes and butylenes to the gasoline blending pool. 

The applications of butene-1 usually require very low levels of isobutylene and butadiene. Sometimes an extra reactor in the MTBE plant is added to get the isobutylene content down from the typical 2.0% to a 0.2% level. Small amounts of butadiene are removed by hydrotreating the stream over a catalyst, which converts the butadiene to butene-2 and maybe some butane. 

Commercial plants The Uhde (Edeleanu) proprietary ETBE process has been successfully applied in two refineries, converting existing MTBE units. Another MTBE plant is in the conversion stage. 

Isobutene is also used to produce MTBE. Often the entire C4 cracked gas or FCC C4 stream, which contains isobutene, can be used as a feed for the MTBE plant without the need to extract the isobutene. 

One possible starting material for the production of Cio alcohols is the above-mentioned Raffinate-2, a C4 feedstock derived from mixed C4 streams of steam crackers. After butadiene has been removed from the mixed stream, Raffinate-1 is obtained. The isobutene content of Raffinate-1 is removed by conversion to MTBE (methyl t-butyl ether), leaving behind a stream rich in mixed butenes which do not react in the MTBE process this is designated Raffinate-2. Accordingly, in the USA and western Europe MTBE plants are the main consumers for Raffinate-2. 

Even though new MTBE plants are not being built in North America, CD is used currently for the production of other oxygenates such as TAME or ETBE, which being less soluble in water (i.e., less tendency to be transported in groundwater) are being considered or used as alternative octane enhancers. Ethyl-tert-butyl ether is produced from the etherification of ethanol and isobutylene while TAME production requires isoamylene and methanol. A simulation of the industrial production of a green octane enhancer from... 

As a consequence of this political choice, most MTBE plants in Europe will be (or have been) converted to ETBE production. 

The estimated capital cost for a propylene oxide plant to produce 540 million pounds per year of propylene oxide by the isobutane peroxidation process is given in Table 6. This estimate includes the equipment and offsites to coproduce isobutylene from TBA for feed to an MTBE plant. 

Concentration of these impurities can usually be controlled through an MTBE plant by means of selective hydrogenation, dimethyl ether extraction, and drying of the feed. The C4 cut generally engaged in a Dimersol-X plant contains from 70-90% olefins, the remaining part being paraffins. 

It is desired to construct an MTBE plant at your refinery, located on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Methanol will be purchased and iso-butene is available in a mixed-C4 stream that contains... 

The composition of your plant s C4 cut, which has already passed through your MTBE plant to react away the isobutylene, is ... 

Your company has technology for the production of MTBE. Your assignment is to provide management with a cost estimate for a 100,000 gallon per day MTBE plant in the Philadelphia tristate area. Your report should estimate the product prices necessary for annual production rates of 100,000, 70,000, and 50,000 gallons. You have a stream of butane available from an adjoining refinery and you have to purchase methanol from a nearby chemical plant. Steam can be purchased from a cogenerator. 

Great promise is seen for methanol producers in the western provinces of Canada in supplying their product to a wave of new MTBE facilities coming on-line in the West Coast states of the United States, a very natural market for Canadian producers. Also, a new worldscale dehydro MTBE plant came on-line in Edmonton, Alberta in 1992 that finds lucrative markets on the U.S. West Coast. 

Some of the outlying Western European nations, such as the Nordic countries, Spain, and Italy, rely mostfy on methanol imports from so-called deep-sea sources. These sources are as close as Libya and the former Eastern Bloc and as far away as Saudi Arabia and New Zealand. There are preliminary plans to build a world-scale methanol plant on the western coast of Norway that would be supplied by associated gas from a new offshore crude oil platform. Since the platform has not yet been built, nor has the delivery system to the mainland, we do not anticipate this plant to come on-stream until sometime in the middle to later part of this decade. The preliminary plans call for the associated gas to be delivered to the shoreline commingled with the crude oil and separated at that point. The plans also include a world-scale MTBE plant to utilize part of this methanol production. The only other new development in methanol production in Western Europe is that, since the reunification of Germany, the Leuna Werke plant in former East Germany (now eastern Germany) falls under Western European methanol-producing capability. 

In early 1991, Pequiven brought on-line a world-scale MTBE plant at San Jose, Venezuela. There are plans for a second MTBE plant and also for two methanol facilities. A 660,000 t/year methanol plant is currently under construction by Mitsubishi of Japan and Pequiven of Venezeula. This facility should begin production in 1994. Another methanol plant in the planning stage would be a joint facility between Pequiven and Ecofiiel of Italy. 

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