Observation on the progress of key technologies in the transformation and upgrading of China's petroleum refining and chemical industry

During the"13th Five-Year Plan"period,China's refining and chemical market pattern has undergone profound changes.The cleaning and high-end of refining and chemical processes and products have become the trend of the times.The voice of"reducing oil and increasing chemicals","reducing costs and increasing efficiency"has continued to rise.In the face of the escalating competitive situation,PetroChina has highlighted the innovation leadership and intensified the efforts to tackle key problems.A large number of landmark achievements have emerged in the refining and chemical field,providing technical support for the upgrading of oil products quality,optimization of product structure and improvement of economic and technical indicators of the group company,and leading the transformation and upgrading of refining and chemical business,improving quality and efficiency,and high-quality development.

Clean power helps blue sky and white clouds

With the increase of national environmental protection efforts,the pace of oil quality upgrading is accelerating.As one of China's major product oil producers and suppliers,PetroChina is ahead in every round of oil quality upgrading campaign.

China's oil standards have gone through nearly 20 years of upgrading in Europe and the United States in a relatively short time.During the"13th Five-Year Plan"period,the quality of China's gasoline and diesel oil has achieved a leap from country IV to country VI.The sulfur content of gasoline and diesel oil has decreased from 50 ppm to 10 ppm,the olefin content has decreased from 28%to 18%,the aromatics content has decreased from 40%to 35%,and the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons content has decreased from 11%to 7%.Some indicators are even stricter than the European VI standard.

However,the nature of China's crude oil determines that the structure of refining units is different from that of Europe and the United States,and the structure of gasoline and diesel is also different from that of Europe and the United States.In order to meet the actual requirements of rapid economic upgrading,saving oil resources,and adapting to the high proportion of FCC gasoline and diesel,China's oil upgrading needs to simultaneously achieve the three objectives of reducing sulfur content,reducing olefin content(the main contributor of gasoline octane number),and maintaining octane number.It is necessary to independently develop more complex technologies,and the degree of difficulty is doubled.

After more than 10 years of hard research,PetroChina has developed a complete set of independent gasoline and diesel quality upgrading technologies that meet China's national conditions.

The clean gasoline quality upgrading technology has achieved original innovative research and development,and has formed two major technical series,namely,selective hydrodesulfurization(PHG)and hydrodesulfurization-upgrading combination(M-PHG-GARDES).It has also developed a complete set of technologies for light gasoline etherification and liquefied gas deep desulfurization,successfully solved the world-class problems restricting gasoline cleaning,such as deep desulfurization,olefin reduction,and maintaining octane number,and has found a unique gasoline quality upgrading route of PetroChina.The technical team can also organically couple the technologies of staged desulfurization,etherification and aromatization(octane number recovery)of olefins according to the properties and product quality requirements of catalytic gasoline in different refineries,forming a variety of process models,which meet the different needs of gasoline quality upgrading in various refineries of PetroChina.

The complete set of clean diesel production technology has also achieved leapfrog progress,which can achieve the simultaneous and coordinated ultra-deep removal of sulfur,nitrogen and aromatics in inferior diesel.The supporting new generation of national VI diesel hydrogenation catalyst has increased the hydrogenation activity by more than 10%,and reduced the cost by nearly 30%,which is comparable with the international advanced catalyst in terms of technical level and price.

At present,the complete set of clean gasoline production technology of PetroChina has been applied in 38 industrial units,and the complete set of clean diesel production technology has been applied in 18 industrial units.The cumulative production of clean gasoline and clean diesel has exceeded 100 million tons,helping to increase efficiency by billions of yuan.In the process of upgrading the quality of oil products,the accumulation and application of independent innovative technologies of PetroChina have also made important contributions to the overall improvement of the oil production and processing industry in China.

Self-developed small particles to build a large pattern of efficiency

Petroleum refining is the foundation of modern industry,providing most of the transportation fuel and chemical raw materials,and is one of the larger and more important processing industries in the world.In addition to a few processes such as atmospheric and vacuum distillation,coking and so on,more than 80%of the processes in the refining industry are catalytic reaction processes.Catalysts have become the key core technology to realize the efficient conversion and clean utilization of crude oil,which is more economical,flexible and more potential,and is a more active area of refining technology progress.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China for more than 70 years,China's refining and chemical industry has made rapid progress.In order to break the technical blockade of foreign countries,the older generation of scientific and technological workers,under the unified organization of the Ministry of Petroleum,have carried out a major battle of independently developed catalysts,which has become the cornerstone of China's refining industry.Today,China has become the second largest oil refining entity.By the end of 2020,the annual refining capacity of PetroChina alone has exceeded 200 million tons,and the annual use of catalyst is about 90000 tons.Domestic refining catalysts have made breakthroughs in production technology,conversion efficiency and product types.

At the same time,the refining industry is faced with severe challenges such as the inferior quality of crude oil,the green process of environmental protection,and the clean and high-quality products.After entering the"13th Five-Year Plan",low oil prices have become the challenge of the new normal.The new changes in market demand require the refining and chemical enterprises to achieve flexible adjustment of the ratio of diesel to gasoline,reduce oil and increase efficiency,and improve the yield of high-quality and efficient products while achieving cost reduction and efficiency increase,To solve these problems,we still need to independently develop high-level refining catalysts.PetroChina has focused on the research work of catalyst structure design based on the concept of"molecular oil refining",the development of nano-functionalized new materials,and the clean production of high-efficiency and low-consumption catalysts,so as to promote the overall level of the Group's refining catalyst business to be world-class.

During the"13th Five-Year Plan"period,PetroChina independently developed six major categories,including catalytic cracking,hydrocracking,residue hydrogenation,and more than 50 varieties of main oil refining catalysts and eight varieties of new catalytic materials.The overall technology reached the international advanced level,and was promoted and applied in more than 100 industrial units in more than 60 enterprises,effectively supporting the cost reduction and efficiency increase of refineries.Among them,sulfur recovery catalyst successively won large private refining orders,and PHC-05 chemical feedstock-type hydrocracking catalyst achieved a heavy naphtha yield of more than 46%,providing technical support for the transformation and upgrading of Daqing Petrochemical;PHF-121/PHF-311 composite catalyst for FCC feedstock hydrotreating has achieved simultaneous ultra-deep removal of metal,sulfur,nitrogen,carbon residue and other impurities;The localization rate of Daqing Petrochemical catalyst exceeded 90%,and Lanzhou Petrochemical Ethylene Plant realized the localization of all chemical catalysts;"High gasoline yield and low carbon emission series catalytic cracking catalyst and industrial application"also won the second prize of 2017 National Science and Technology Progress Award.

Self-reliance,transformation and upgrading to build a future refinery

During the"13th Five-Year Plan"period,China's refining and ethylene production capacity has been expanding,ranking the second in the world,second only to the United States,but the refining industry as a whole is still"large but not strong".Due to the changes in policy environment and market environment,China's refining and chemical industry has presented a series of new development trends,which have put forward new requirements for refining and chemical enterprises to achieve high-quality development.

First of all,the era of large oil refining has begun,and the fierce competition between private large refineries,foreign refineries and main refineries has become inevitable.Optimizing the industrial layout,improving the degree of refining and chemical integration,and comprehensively improving the economic and technical indicators have become the only way to meet the challenges.

Secondly,there is a serious overcapacity in domestic refining capacity,but there is still a large gap in ethylene demand.It has become a common consensus in the industry to reduce oil and increase chemicals and transform from oil refining to chemical industry.

Thirdly,the market environment is unpredictable.Refining and chemical enterprises need to flexibly adjust devices and production processes according to market changes,meet the ever-changing market demand for raw materials and products,constantly optimize the value chain,and achieve higher product yields and benefits with lower input and operating costs.

To continue to promote transformation and upgrading and build a"future refinery"that can meet these requirements,scientific and technological innovation will play an essential role in supporting and leading.The core technology cannot be bought.He Shengbao,secretary of the Party Committee and president of the China Petroleum and Chemical Research Institute,pointed out that the future key research directions in China's refining and chemical industry need to start from the following three aspects:

First,the technology of reducing oil and increasing chemicals and increasing high-end and efficient products.The general trend of energy transformation will limit the demand for gasoline and diesel,but the demand for aviation kerosene,low-sulfur marine fuel,characteristic high-grade paraffin,high-performance lubricant base oil,high-grade asphalt and other products is strong.China's import proportion of high-end chemical products is large,but the self-sufficiency rate of basic raw materials is very low.Therefore,the development of core technologies for transformation and upgrading needs to be accelerated and carefully selected.

The second is molecular oil refining technology.That is to understand,process and manage petroleum resources at the molecular level,realize the refined management of petroleum processing process,and promote the realization of"appropriate oil for oil,appropriate olefin for olefin,and appropriate aromatics for aromatics"for petroleum components,so as to make the best use of petroleum resources.

Third,information and intelligent refinery technology.That is to use the new generation of information technology to establish a smart supply chain and logistics management system from crude oil procurement,transportation,refining production,warehousing and logistics to sales,so as to realize the overall optimization of the refinery,reduce production management costs,and achieve operational synergy and efficiency.

The new journey of the"Fourteenth Five-Year Plan"has begun,and the refining and chemical industry has ushered in the era of"capacity standard"in an all-round way.Only by adhering to independent innovation and scientific and technological guidance can refining and chemical enterprises firmly grasp the initiative of competition and future development,and make steady progress towards the goal of high-quality development.