Shell Oil

Fig. 1. Typical refinery—olefin plant complex. Courtesy of Shell Oil Co.

Thermia. Oil C. Thermia Oil C, Shell Oil Co., is a selected mineral-oil fraction containing appropriate antioxidants. 

Paraffin Isomerization. Another weU-estabhshed commercial process which employs zeoflte catalysts is the isomerization of normal paraffins into higher octane, branched isomers. The catalyst for the Hysomet process of the Shell Oil Co. is dual-functional, and consists of a highly acidic, latge-pote zeoflte loaded with a small amount of a noble-metal hydrogenation component. This catalyst possesses the same... 

Company (Bayway, New Jersey). This was followed in 1921, by the start-up of isopropyl alcohol production in Clendenin, West Virginia, by the Carbide and Carbon Chemicals (Union Carbide) Corporation. The Shell Oil Company began production in the 1930s at Dominguez, California (55). These three companies are the principal domestic manufacturers as of the mid-1990s. 

It has been discovered that styrene forms a linear alternating copolymer with carbon monoxide using palladium II—phenanthroline complexes. The polymers are syndiotactic and have a crystalline melting point - 280° C (59). Shell Oil Company is commercializing carbon monoxide a-olefin plastics based on this technology (60). 

U.S. producers of benzene from petroleum and their approximate production capacities are shown in Table 5. These figures are inexact because the size of the market and instabiUty of benzene prices causes frequent changes in capacity. Dow Chemical, with total armual benzene capacity of 8.3 x 10 t (250 million gallons) is the largest producer in the United States. Other companies with total domestic capacity of over 3.3 x 10 t (100 million gallons) per year are Amoco Corp., Lyondell, British Petroleum America, Chevron, Exxon Chemical, Occidental Petroleum, Shell Oil, and Mobil. These companies account for approximately 60% of total U.S. benzene capacity (65). 

To reduce catalyst losses even further, additional separation equipment external to the regenerator can be installed. Such equipment includes third-stage cyclones, electrostatic precipitators, and more recentiy the Shell multitube separator, which is Hcensed by the Shell Oil Co., UOP, and the M. W. Kellogg Co. The Shell separator removes an additional 70—80% of the catalyst fines leaving the first two cyclones. Such a third-stage separator essentially removes from the due gas stream all particles greater than 10 p.m (36). 

Figure 3 shows a simple schematic diagram of an oxygen-based process. Ethylene, oxygen, and the recycle gas stream are combined before entering the tubular reactors. The basic equipment for the reaction system is identical to that described for the air-based process, with one exception the purge reactor system is absent and a carbon dioxide removal unit is incorporated. The CO2 removal scheme illustrated is based on a patent by Shell Oil Co. (127), and minimises the loss of valuable ethylene in the process. 

The current widespread interest in MFC techniques was initiated by pioneering research performed by two industrial groups in the 1970s. Shell Oil (Houston, TX) reported their Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC) approach in 1979, while a similar technique, marketed as IDCOM, was published by a small French company, ADERSA, in 1978. Since then, there have been over one thousand applications of these and related MFC techniques in oil refineries and petrochemical plants around the world. Thus, MFC has had a substantial impact and is currently the method of choice for difficult multivariable control problems in these industries. However, relatively few applications have been reported in other process industries, even though MFC is a veiy general approach that is not limited to a particular industiy. 

Humpluey Chemical Phillips Petroleum Shell Oil (Netherlands)... 

Shanghai Tian Yuan (Group) Corp. (China) Shell Oil (UK)... 

We gratefully acknowledge the comments and suggestions submitted by the following companies and peer reviewers Henry Blunt (Shell Oil) Arthur F. Burk (DuPont) Charles Dancer (Allied Signal) J. A. Hoffmeister (Martin Marietta Energy Systems) Robert Ormsby (Air Products and Chemicals) Duane Sanderson (3M) Anthony A. Thompson (Monsanto) and Guy Van Cleve (Petrocon). 

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