Sinopec develops my country’s first ethylene oxide reactor

At the National Science and Technology Award Conference held on January 9th, the "Design of important pressure vessels under extreme conditions, "Manufacturing and Maintenance" project won the first prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award.

The project has achieved innovative results in four aspects, especially the realization of the first domestic production of 6 types of pressure vessels, breaking the foreign monopoly, and improving the independent design and manufacturing capabilities of my country's important pressure vessels. It is widely used in chemical, gas and other fields and has reached the international leading level.

my country's first large-diameter ultra-thick forging tube-sheet ethylene oxide reactor, which Sinopec participated in the development of, is the last domestically-made key static equipment of one million tons of ethylene in my country. The domestic production of the reactor has ended the long-term dependence on imports of large ethylene high-end static equipment in my country.

Pressure vessels and other pressure-bearing special equipment are widely used in petrochemical, chemical, gas and national defense industries, directly affecting national economic construction and national defense security. In recent years, pressure vessels have gradually developed towards extreme service conditions such as high temperature, cryogenic temperature, and complex medium corrosion, as well as extreme scales such as ultra-large diameter, ultra-large wall thickness, and ultra-large volume. Traditional design, manufacture, and maintenance technologies are facing severe challenges. Some important pressure vessels in our country cannot be produced domestically, or have short service life and low reliability. A large number of key equipment urgently needed for the construction of major national projects such as 10 million tons of oil refining, million tons of ethylene, and large-scale coal chemical industry have to rely on imports. Large-scale ethylene projects of one million tons such as Tianjin Petrochemical and Zhenhai Refining & Chemical have encountered technical "stuck" in the construction of foreign manufacturers. The other party refused to provide my country with steel plates for manufacturing low-temperature ethylene spherical tanks, and domestic steel plates have no mature application performance. , These projects were facing the dilemma of shutting down at that time.

A large ethylene oxide reactor is critical

The large-scale ethylene oxide reactor is a crucial reaction vessel for enhancing heat transfer in the ethylene industry. Rely on imports. In the past, the reactor was designed by an American design company and manufactured by a Japanese company, but most of the 16 ethylene oxide reactors they manufactured for the world cracked in less than two years, and the two for Shanghai Petrochemical The reactor cracked after less than a year of use.

In April 2009, as a major equipment localization project of Sinopec, Nanhua Company and Yangzi Petrochemical signed a large-scale ethylene oxide reactor manufacturing contract, undertaking the important task of localization of large ethylene static equipment. On the basis of the cooperative units completing the work of life-span risk identification and control, Nanhua Company and other units combined the previous technical achievements and aimed at the difficulties in the development of the first large-scale ethylene oxide reactor, from 4 aspects and 12 important topics respectively Experts were organized to tackle key problems, and successfully solved the problems of large-size tube plate welding deformation control and welding residual stress reduction technology, and achieved the "turtle back" design of tube plate surfacing welding, the invention of "plum pile" for grid making, and the "plum blossom pile" of tube joint circle calibration. Important innovations such as the design of the "steering wheel" mold and the welding process of the pipe head, and the grille assembly tooling have obtained the national utility model patent certificate.

On September 22, 2011, the first domestic large-scale ethylene oxide reactor manufactured by Nanhua Chemical Machinery Factory and designed by the engineering construction company was completed. The key technical indicators of the equipment reached the world's advanced level, marking my country's long-term dependence on The imported large vinyl high-end static equipment has been localized.

The maximum diameter of this reactor is 7 meters, the length is 22 meters, and the weight is 850 tons. 100%. The world-renowned ethylene oxide technology provider and the project manager of the American Science and Technology Design Company, Bai Ruier, said: "The structure of the ethylene oxide reactor is complex, the material is special, the manufacturing is difficult, and a lot of repeated tests are required. I would like to express my sincere admiration for the successful manufacture of the first large reactor!"

In March 2013, the 180,000 tons/year ethylene oxide transformation project of Yangzi Petrochemical was successfully started up at the first time, and qualified products were produced smoothly. At present, the ethylene oxide reactor is still in safe use in Yangzi Petrochemical, and has been promoted and used in more than 10 enterprises, creating an output value of more than 1 billion yuan