China's First Ethanol-to-Styrene Unit Went into Operation   

Nanjing Shangyuan Chemical Technology Co., Ltd. (Nanjing Shangyuan) announced on December 15th that a 200 000 t/a styrene unit using ethanol to produce styrene directly has put into commercial operation in Shandong Yuhang Chemical Co., Ltd.
   Construction on the unit was completed in September 2009, and after few days of regulating of facilities, the unit started up on October 26th and has been running well till now.
   Along with the economy recovery, global demand for styrene has shown an increase trend. But there are still a large number of firms facing the problem of short supply in ethylene, or of high cost and risk because of long-distance transportation and storage of ethylene. How do they solve the problem?
   Now a brand-new process that uses ethanol to replace ethylene as raw material was born and can exactly solve the problem. Many people may think it could be a long routine that firstly uses ethanol to produce ethylene by dehydration and then gets ethyl benzene through alkylation of ethylene and benzene. If the brand-new process uses such a long routine, it can end before high operating cost and equipment cost.
   Nanjing Shangyuan, the inventor of the technology, says the new process uses a single step alkylation method to react ethanol with benzene in the aid of catalyst, to produce ethyl benzene directly, and then converts ethyl benzene into styrene by dehydrogenation. A catalyst developed by Dalian Institute of Technology (DIT) is employed by the new process.
   The operation situation of the unit proved that it can run at about 110% of the design capacity, and the consumption values of benzene, ethanol and energy are also less than the design ones. Seen from the point of renewable resources, the technology has broken a way for the biological energy resources to replace the petrochemical resources.