Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Petrochemicals industry in brief

Petrochemicals generally are polymers and compounds derived direct way not from petroleum that are used in the chemical market. There are lots of Petrochemical products such as plastics, synthetic rubber , synthetic fibers, nitrogen fertilizers, and detergents. And industries such as aerosols ,paints, , insecticides, pharmaceuticals and adhesives.Those industries may involve one or more products of petrochemical based on thier steps of manufacturing.
The raw materials for petrochemicals industry are crude oil and natural gas and other carbonaceous materials such as oil shale, coal, or tar sand can be processed (but very expensive) in production. The industry of petrochemicals has main three types of intermediates that based on. They derived from those primary raw materials. These are the the C6-C8 aromatic hydrocarbons, synthesis gas (an H2/CO2 mixture) , and C2-C4 olefins.
Generally, natural gases and crude oils are composed of a mixture of unreactive hydrocarbons with various amounts of nonhydrocarbon compounds. This mixture essentially has no olefins. However, the C2 and C2+ from these sources (natural gas and crude oil) can be converted to light olefins to be used as starting materials for the production of petrochemicals.
The C6-C8 aromatic are generally very low in concentration that it is not economically or technically feasible to separate them. However, from catalytic reforming and cracking processes, we can obtaine aromatic-rich mixture , which can be extracted more to obtain the required aromatics for use of petrochemical.
LPG (C3-C4) from refinery gas and natural gas can also be catalytically converted into a liquid H.C. mixture rich in aromatic C6-C8.
synthesis gas, the 3rd important sourse for petrochemicals, is generated by steam reforming of either crude oil fractions or natural gas . Synthesis gas is a mixture of two big-volume chemicals, methanol and ammonia. From these simple sourses, many important chemicals and polymers are obtained by different conversion reactions

source : Chemistry of PETROCHEMICAL PROCESSES for 
Sami Matar, Ph.D
Lewis F. Hatch, Ph.D

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