Parallel between UOP’s Reforming and Dehydrogenation Technologies and Catalysts

Meeting Program — March 2017

Manuela Serban
Manuela Ser­ban
Prin­ci­pal Research Sci­en­tist,
Hon­ey­well UOP

 

Abstract — With sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence in Con­tin­u­ous Cat­a­lyst Regen­er­a­tion (CCR) reform­ing tech­nol­o­gy, i.e., Plat­form­ing™ process, Honeywell’s UOP was unique­ly posi­tioned to invent, devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize 25 years ago, a CCR-type light paraf­fins dehy­dro­gena­tion tech­nol­o­gy, i.e., Ole­flex™ process, lever­ag­ing on the Plat­form­ing tech­nol­o­gy. These two tech­nolo­gies rep­re­sent two of UOP’s core tech­nolo­gies and togeth­er with their cat­a­lysts, are being con­tin­u­ous­ly improved and opti­mized to max­i­mize end-user prof­itabil­i­ty. Cur­rent­ly there are 300+ CCR Plat­form­ing units and 25+ Ole­flex units oper­at­ing world­wide, with more in con­struc­tion or in com­mis­sion. This pre­sen­ta­tion will high­light sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between the Plat­form­ing and Ole­flex tech­nolo­gies and cat­a­lysts. We will dis­cuss the chem­i­cal and phys­i­cal require­ments and prop­er­ties for the two types of cat­a­lysts, the main cat­a­lysts deac­ti­va­tion routes, and high­light some of UOP’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion tools and exper­tise used to devel­op new reform­ing and dehy­dro­gena­tion cat­a­lysts and diag­nose dif­fer­ent symp­toms relat­ed to aged com­mer­cial cat­a­lysts.

Biog­ra­phy — Manuela Ser­ban is a Prin­ci­pal Research Sci­en­tist in the Olefins and Deter­gents Devel­op­ment Group lead­ing teams respon­si­ble for the devel­op­ment of new Ole­flex cat­a­lyst gen­er­a­tions. Manuela has over 12 years of expe­ri­ence with UOP, includ­ing reform­ing tech­nol­o­gy and cat­a­lysts, cat­alyt­ic hydrodesul­fu­r­iza­tion, flue gas desul­fu­r­iza­tion for coal gasi­fi­ca­tion plants, break­through liq­uid fuels decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion tech­niques. She is the author of sev­er­al arti­cles in peer reviewed Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing jour­nals and has 38 US patents. She has a PhD in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Worces­ter Poly­tech­nic Insti­tute and post-doc­tor­al expe­ri­ence at Argonne Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry.