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February 20, 2013
Dow and Davy license LP Oxo Technology to Sinopec
Gerald Ondrey
Davy Process Technology Ltd. (DPT; London, U.K.; www.davyprotech.com), a Johnson Matthey company, and The Dow Chemical Company (Dow; Midlands, Mich.; www.dow.com) announced that China Petrochemical International Co., a subsidiary of China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), China’s largest petrochemical company, has once again selected LP Oxo Technology to produce 2-ethylhexanol, n-butanol and isobutanol in a plant in Anqing City, Anhui Province, China.
The new LP OxoSM unit will be built by Sinopec Corp. Anqing Co. with a capacity of 100,000 ton/yr 2-ethylhexanol, 115,000 ton/yr n-butanol and 23,000 ton/yr isobutanol. The new plant will adopt DPT & Dow’s LP Oxo Selectors10 Technology with liquid phase hydrogenation. The Technology offers a high conversion of propylene to alcohols, low capital investment, and easy operation.
Sinopec is the largest producer and supplier of refined oil products and major petrochemical products in China. Sinopec first started operating LP Oxo Technology at Sinopec Qilu Petrochemical Corporation in 1987 and has since acquired two more LP Oxo licenses for the site. Motivated by the market demand for oxo alcohols, Sinopec plans to further grow its oxo business by building a plant in Anqing.
LP Oxo Technology is a low-pressure hydroformylation process that is most commonly used with propylene and synthesis gas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide) to produce normal- and isobutyraldehydes. These butyraldehydes are then converted into 2-ethylhexanol (2-EH) and normal- and isobutanol. Additional applications of the LP Oxo Technology include a process for producing 2-propyl heptanol, a growing plasticizer alcohol alternative to 2-EH, from mixed butene streams and a process for producing C12 to C15 surfactant range alcohols from C11 to C14 Fischer-Tropsch olefins. The technology is also applied as a component of a process plant for converting heptene-1 that has been extracted from Fischer-Tropsch products to co-monomer grade octene-1. In 2011, DPT and Dow celebrated their 40th anniversary in collaborating in the field of LP Oxo Technology development and licensing. Over the course of those 40 years, DPT, Dow and their predecessors have licensed the LP Oxo Technology into 50 projects at 38 plants in 15 countries on four continents.
