Catalytic Cracking of Lower-Valued Hydrocarbons for Producing Light Olefins

A number of important chemicals are made from light olefins such as propylene and ethylene, and it is expected that market demand for these light olefins will continue to grow at 4-5% annually, and the average overall growth of propylene will be about 1% higher than that of ethylene. From the viewpoint of supply of feedstock and demand of light olefins, it is anticipated that the thermal cracking process of naphtha will be gradually transformed to a catalytic process such as ACO(TM) that can efficiently produce both ethylene and propylene in high yield. Also, together with primary light olefin production technologies utilizing heavy feedstocks such as DCC(TM), and HPFCC, supplementary propylene production technologies utilizing C(4)-C(4) such as SUPERFLEX(TM), MOI(TM), and PROPYLUR(TM) will be applied gradually in commercial production.