Oleflex process

The OLEFLEX process uses multiple side-by-side, radial flow, moving-bed reactors connected in series. The heat of reaction is suppHed by preheated feed and interstage heaters. The gas-phase reaction is carried out over a catalyst, platinum supported over alumina, under very near isothermal conditions. The first commercial installation of this technology, having an annual capacity of 100,000 t, was made in 1990 by the National Petrochemical Corporation in Thailand. A second unit, at 245,000 t capacity, has been built in South Korea by the ISU Chemical Company (70). 

Application To produce polymer-grade propylene from propane using the Oleflex process in a propylene production complex. 

UOP Butene Butane Oleflex process converts iso- and n-butane into butenes by catalytic dehydrogenation 7 1997... 

This early process is very capital and maintenance intensive and spurred improvements to catalysts and technology. The Oleflex process (UOP) has been commercialised to dehydrogenate propane to propylene using a platinum supported catalyst. Philips has developed a process using steam as a diluent and uses a tin-platinum catalyst. 

The carbon dioxide emissions from propane dehydrogenation is estimated at about 0.9tCO2/t propylene Table 10.8. The data is derived from the descriptions for the Oleflex process. 

Both Catofin and Oleflex use an adiabatic reactor concept. The Oleflex process uses four reactor beds in series, which as such is more suitable for addition of a ceramic membrane separation unit than the Catofin process which uses a parallel reactor system. A comparison between the Oleflex process as a base case and an Oleflex process equipped with ceramic membranes is made for the following cases ... 

Two semi-quantitative models describing the reactor and membrane performance were used to evaluate the overall performance. The reactor was modelled using the flow-sheeting package PRO II. A membrane model was used which describes both the transport through the membranes and transport along the membrane. These models are described in Ref. [33]. Based on the Oleflex process the following boundary conditions were chosen for the calculations ... 

UOP s Oleflex process uses multistage adiabatic reactors with CCR. 

The flow diagram of the UOP Oleflex process is seen in Fig. 16. The process consists of a reactor section and... 

Use of the Oleflex process for the dehydrogenation of ethane to ethylene has also been investigated but, to date, the economics do not appear to be favorable because of the low equilibrium conversion and the need to operate at a pressure lower than atmospheric if a reasonable ethane conversion is to be expected ... 

Only cases (3) and (4) show any improvement in propylene yield over the base Oleflex process. The authors concluded, further, that moderate improvements in membrane permselectivity (say 10 for H2 vs. CsHg) give marginal improvement in yield. Increasing the feed-side pressure, the amount of hydrogen in the feed, and using a sweep gas also had questionable value. Only lowering the pressure on the permeate side had some noticeable effect on the yield. 

They also evaluated isothermal MR concepts and compared them in performance with the adiabatic Catofin and Oleflex processes. They studied two different type processes using Knudsen diffusion membranes a process called CMRL, patterned after the commercial Oleflex process, with low propane conversion, and a process called CMRH, patterned after the commercial Catofin process with high propane conversion. They have calculated the return on investment (ROI) for all four processes. Though marginally better than the commercial processes, the ROI for all four processes evaluated is not very attractive. A sensitivity analysis indicates that for the ROI of the MR processes to be attractive a price difference between propane and propylene of more that 300/ton is required. Though published calculations have only been performed for the propane/propylene pair, it is not unreasonable to assume that similar conclusions apply to other alkane/alkene pairs. Similar conclusions about catalytic alkane dehydrogenation have also been reached in a technical/economic evaluation study by Amoco workers and their academic collaborators (Ward et al [6.3 ]). 

UOP LLC, A Honeywell Co. Propylene Propane Oleflex process produces polymer-grade propylene from propane by catalytic dehydrogenation 11 2010... 

Van Veen et al. [126] studied the technical and economic feasibility of the apph-cation of ceramic membranes in different dehydrogenation processes. As the Oleflex process uses four reactor beds in series, this process is more suitable... 

Fig. 5.12 Generalized process flow diagram of the Oleflex process extended with four membrane modules [126].

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