World-scale plant

The propylene-based process developed by Sohio was able to displace all other commercial production technologies because of its substantial advantage in overall production costs, primarily due to lower raw material costs. Raw material costs less by-product credits account for about 60% of the total acrylonitrile production cost for a world-scale plant. The process has remained economically advantaged over other process technologies since the first commercial plant in 1960 because of the higher acrylonitrile yields resulting from the introduction of improved commercial catalysts. Reported per-pass conversions of propylene to acrylonitrile have increased from about 65% to over 80% (28,68—70). 

Most by-product acetylene from ethylene production is hydrogenated to ethylene in the course of separation and purification of ethylene. In this process, however, acetylene can be recovered economically by solvent absorption instead of hydrogenation. Commercial recovery processes based on acetone, dimetbylform amide, or /V-metby1pyrro1idinone have a long history of successfiil operation. The difficulty in using this relatively low cost acetylene is that each 450, 000 t/yr world-scale ethylene plant only produces from 7000 9000 t/yr of acetylene. This is a small volume for an economically scaled derivatives unit. 

T. Horigome, R. Johnson, and D. Gandhi, "The Eirst World Scale Plant using the Lummus/Unocal/UOP Process for Ethylbenzene is a Huge... 

These products can be fairly easily processed into high-quality diesel and jet fuel in theory, any source of carbon can be used to generate synthesis gas. These facts along with the growing need for petroleum alternatives have renewed interest in FT synthesis. During the twentieth century, the FT process was used to produce fuels from coal in large and costly reactors. Recently, this megasize approach has been applied to world-scale GTL plants in Qatar. However, to tap abundant biomass resources and stranded natural gas reserves, a smaller scale, yet economically viable, FT process is needed. 

In contrast to many other countries, chlorinated solvents and the vinyl chain are of minor importance. Carbon tetrachloride (CTC), perchloroethylene (PCE), vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) and ethylene dichloride (EDC) were manufactured for over 40 years by ICI Australia in Sydney, but the facilities were small by world standards and were progressively closed (CTC/PCE in 1991, VCM in 1996 and EDC in 1998) as they were no longer able to compete against imports from world-scale plants overseas. 

For plants that use brine purge, an additional environmental benefit is the reduction of purge volumes by up to 90%. The SRS is commercially proven, having been demonstrated for over two years of successful operation in a world-scale chlor-alkali plant. The SRS has been optimised, based on field experience, to yield a fully developed and commercially competitive product. 

World-scale producers use spreadsheet analysis to evaluate the economics of different options over the lifetime of the plant (often 20 years is assumed), taking account of operating, maintenance and capital costs. The chlor-alkali industry also expects the current density (CD) to increase in a manner that is dependent on membrane development. Other important factors expressed by producers about membrane technology choice included component lifetimes and reliability. 

The low conversion rates for both the ethane dehydrogenation and the ethylene-to-EB steps result in high capital costs for a world-scale plant. That limits the potential application of this process to boutique sites. 

Butadiene from a world scale olefin plant at 50c per pound is also derived from natural gas. Cyclohexane is assumed to be derived from 4.17 per gallon benzene and is priced at 70.4c per pound. 

Adipic acid overcapacity, softening worldwide oil prices, and the increased investment necessary to establish a novel chemical process has made implementation of a world scale adipic acid plant based on butadiene oxycarbonylation technology less attractive. 

An attractive alternative to building a world scale adipic acid plant is to construct a specialty smaller volume oxycarbonylation plant which is capable of exclusively producing the more valuable precursors for pelargonic and sebacic acid. Oxycarbonylation process conditions can be controlled to give methyl, 4-pentadienoate which is the product from butadiene mono-carbonylation(39,40). Methyl, 4-pentadienoate can react in a subsequent step with butadiene to give an unsaturated pelargonic acid precursor in high yield(41). Methyl, 4-pentadienoate... 

Fourth, the chemical engineer will be squarely in the middle of developments in many of the high-technology industries. We must transcend the image of the chemical engineer as the guy in the hard hat standing on the catwalk of a refinery surveying his world-scale plant. 

Larger methanol production plants are more efficient than smaller ones. The size of a large (called world-scale) methanol plant is in the range of2000-2500 metric tons per day. If methanol were to become a widely used alternative fuel, many more methanol production plants would be required. Plants as large as 10,000 metric tons per day have been postulated to serve the demand created by transportation vehicles. 

Fatora III, F. C., Gochenour, G. B., Houk, B. G., and Kelly, D. N., "Closed-Loop Real-Time Optimization and Control of a World Scale Olefins Plant" Paper Presented at the National AIChE Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana (April 1992). 

A large ammonia plant in 2001 is more fuel-efficient than plants that were built in the 1970 s and 1980 s. A typical world-scale plant that was built in the 1970 s consumed about 42 billion BTU of natural gas per tonne of ammonia produced. Retrofitting such a plant to improve fuel efficiency can reduce gas consumption to about 36 million BTU per tonne. Ammonia plants that were built in the late 1990 s use only about 30 million BTU per tonne of ammonia, are easier to operate and have slightly lower conversion costs. Some new plants also recover more than one million BTU per tonne by generating electricity from waste heat57. 

It is certain that world use of natural gas will increase dramatically in the near future as industrialized countries replace coal-fired facilities with cleaner-burning natural gas. In addition, a number of countries remote from major markets are in the process of installing world-scale plants for utilization of natural gas and gas liquids for production of fertilizers, methanol, premium gasoline blending stocks, and other basic petrochemical derivatives that will result in higher-value products from natural gas and gas liquids for which there are no local markets. 

A typical world-scale plant that was built in the 1970s consumed about 42 billion BTU of natural gas per tonne of ammonia produced. Retrofitting such a plant to improve fuel effi-... 

Commercial plants The first plant, among the largest in the world, began operation in 1992 at the Deer Park (Houston) plant now owned and operated by Resolution Performance Products LLC. Since that time, two other world-scale plants were licensed to the Asia-Pacific market. 

Commercial plants BP s first world-scale 60,000-tpy GEMINOX BDO plant in Lima, Ohio, has been successfully operating since July 2000. 

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