Chemical Engineering January 2017 - 10

HyBRIM series, the new TK-611 HyBRIM catalyst
offers new possibilities to either increase
profitability of high-pressure, ultra-low-sulfur
diesel production from heavy feedstocks or
to guarantee a superior pre-treatment for the
hydrocracking unit. Refiners can process more
severe feeds, increase cycle lengths by several
months, achieve larger volume swells or maximize
unit throughput, says Topsøe. HyBRIM
also supports profitability by substantially improving
the cetane number of the final product,
the company adds.
The improved activity for nitrogen removal improves
overall hydrocracking-unit performance
because it lowers the nitrogen slip from the
pre-treatment step to the second stage in the
hydrocracker. This minimizes inhibition of the
hydrocracking catalyst, enabling higher conversion
and selectivity.
The HyBRIM technology combines the wellproven
BRIM technology with an improved
catalyst-preparation step. This leads to optimal
interaction between the active metal structures
and the catalyst carrier, which increases activity
while delivering the same high stability.
NEW ODHP CATALYST
Chemists and chemical engineers from the University
of Wisconsin-Madison (www.wisc.edu)
have discovered a new family of catalysts to
drive the oxidative dehydrogenation of propane
(ODHP) reaction. The catalyst family of hexagonal
boron nitride and boron nitride nanotube catalysts
is said to produce a greater proportion of
propene during the reaction than traditional oxide
catalysts. Whereas the traditional catalysts lead
to the formation of CO2 and other undesirable
byproducts in addition to propene, the new catalysts
instead produce ethane as a byproduct.
" Boron nitride catalysts are nontoxic, they
don't contain precious metals, and they reduce
the temperature of the reaction, resulting in
energy savings, " says UW-Madison graduate
student Joseph Grant, first author of the new
study published in a recent issue of Science.
Additionally, the boron nitride catalysts may
be used continuously without an intermediate
regeneration step, as required in alternative
dehydrogenation processes.
This work was supported in part by the Wisconsin
Alumni Research Foundation (WARF)
Accelerator Program. WARF has filed a number
of patent applications on this technology.
MOF MAKES METHANOL FROM CO2
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's
Swanson School of Engineering (Pa.; www.engineering.pitt.edu)
are developing a new catalyst
that enables the hydrogenation of CO2 into
methanol. The catalyst - a Lewis-pair functionalized
metal organic framework (MOF) - was
described in a recent issue of Catalysis Science &
Technology, authored by postdoctoral associate,
Jingyun Ye, and Karl Johnson, the William Kepler
Whiteford Professor in the Swanson School's
Dept. of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering.
(Continues on p. 11)
10
Australians move to supply vanadium for
redox flow batteries
T
wo Australian companies
- Australian Vanadium
Ltd. (AVL; www.australian
vanadium.com.au) and TNG
Ltd. (both Perth; www.tngltd.com.
au) - are now able to produce commercial-grade
vanadium electrolyte
for use in vanadium redox-flow batteries
(VRFBs). Those batteries are
increasingly gaining favor, primarily
for grid-scale energy storage applications
(Chem.
Eng. September
2016, pp. 14-20).
AVL is sourcing its vanadium from
its Gabanintha project in Western Australia.
The company has just received
a vanadium-electrolyte pilot plant
from C-Tech Innovation Ltd. (Chester,
U.K.; www.ctechinnovation.com),
and is marketing VRFBs in Australia
through a distribution agreement with
Gildemeister Energy Solutions GmbH
(Würzburg, Germany; www.energy.
gildemeister.com).
TNG is sourcing its vanadium from
its Mount Peake vanadium-titaniumiron
project in the Northern Territory.
The company has produced highpurity
vanadium electrolyte for the
first time using vanadium pentoxide
(V2O5) from that project. TNG will
apply its Tivan process, designed
primarily
for extracting vanadium,
preferably as vanadium pentoxide
from a titano-magnetite ore body,
which contains iron, titanium and vanadium.
The process serves also to
separate titanium and iron, preferably
as ferric oxide and titanium dioxide.
In the Tivan process, the vanadium
is recovered entirely through a hydrometallurgical
route incorporating
leaching and solvent extraction. A
benefit of this process is that within
the same flowsheet hematite and
titanium dioxide are separated and
recovered as saleable byproducts in
addition to vanadium pentoxide.
TNG says the Tivan process is
unique in that existing processes
cannot extract all three metals -
iron, titanium and vanadium - as
industrial-grade products. The company
says the conventional method
for extracting vanadium from titanomagnetite
ore deposits is through
a salt roasting energy-intensive,
pyro-metallurgical process, which
is suitable for only a narrow range
of selected ore compositions, and a
water leach route to recover a water-soluble
vanadium compound.
Laminate packaging that is
easier to recycle
A
collaboration between ExxonMobil
Chemical Co.
(EMCC; Spring, Tex.; www.
exxonmobilchemical.com)
and Thanh Phu Plastic Packaging
Co. (TPPP; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam;
www.thanhphupack.com) has
resulted in the development and
commercialization of laminate packaging
materials that can be collected
and recycled in the same stream as
polyethylene (PE) products. Due to
their multi-component makeup, recycling
laminated packaging is quite
challenging, usually requiring a complex
process to separate a nonpolar
polyolefin layer from a polar laminate,
such as polyethylene terephthalate
(PET), polyamide (PA), ethylene vinyl
alcohol (EVOH) or oriented polypropylene
(OPP).
The collaboration combines
TPPP's proprietary film-conversion
process with PE performance polymers
from EMCC's Exceed and Enable
product families. This full-PE alternative
to conventional laminated
products is comparable to traditional
laminate products in terms of aesthetics
and integrity, says EMCC. In
similar products, the full-PE solution
exhibited competitive secant modulus
and bag-drop performance to
PA-laminated at the same total film
thickness, says TPPP. Leveraging
TPPP's Veloflex film-blowing technology,
which is based on specific
directional-orientation of polymers
during the extrusion process, the
new laminate packaging is being
produced at global scales, and has
been commercially deployed in the
Asia-Pacific region. The full-PE laminate
packaging is especially suited
for use in pouches and mediumdensity
sacks.
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
JANUARY 2017
http://www.australian http://vanadium.com.au http://www.tngltd.com http://www.ctechinnovation.com http://www.energy http://www.wisc.edu http://www.gildemeister.com http://www.exxonmobilchemical.com http://www.thanhphupack.com http://www.en http://gineering.pitt.edu http://WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
Chemical Engineering January 2017

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