On July 3, the 424 KTA ethylbenzene (EB) plant designed by the Company in Anqing Petrochemical Co., Ltd. was successfully started up one time and produced qualified products, making it the world largest dilute ethylene dry gas to EB plant, designed and constructed with the dry-gas to EB technology jointly developed by the Company and Shanghai Institute.

The plant produces EB with the dry gas produced by the upstream 3 MTA heavy oil catalytic cracking plant as raw material, realizing the value-added conversion and effective utilization of catalytic dry gas with high value. In the project design, the project team of the Company, aiming at the plant characteristics of large scale, long process flow, complex heat exchange network, and large number of large equipment, optimized a series of schemes such as high efficiency and low energy raw material pretreatment and separation process, multi-stage reactor feeding process, distributor of large scale alkylation reactor, and plant layout in compact space by strengthening communication with the owner, close cooperation among specialties and refined design, and new processes and technologies of high-efficient heat exchangers, comprehensive optimization scheme for multi-stage utilization of energy, positive pressure coil heat carrier heating furnace, full coverage gas leakage detection system and omnidirectional fire isolation interlock and cutting system were applied, to essentially raise the technological competitiveness and safety guarantee of the plant, as a satisfactory solution for Anqing Petrochemical to shift from oil refining to chemical processing.

The successful operation of this project has further improved the scale of the plant, and realized the high-value utilization of dilute ethylene resources, with great significance in pushing the high-value and green low-carbon utilization of by-product dry gas in the refinery, and promoting the energy structure transformation of Anqing Petrochemical.