Base Chemicals
Base chemicals are a broad group of several petrochemical products. The most well-known are toluene, ethylene, benzene, propylene, butadiene and butylenes. They are the base for other products such as polyethylene and ethanol.
These basic chemicals come from the constituents of crude oil and natural gas.
Crude oil consists of hydrocarbons (molecules with hydrogen and carbon) that come in different sizes and have various boiling points. Heating the crude oil causes its various constituents to boil off and therefore be recovered. The order of their appearance is propane, butane appears first and naphtha (similar to petrol). Higher boiling points trigger the appearance of kerosene/jet fuel, diesel, fuel oil (useful in powering large ships) and bitumen, the tarry stuff used for road surfaces. All these processes happen in an oil refinery.
Special units called ethylene crackers or steam crackers are used for processes connected with naphtha. There, for a very short time (fractions of a second) naphtha is heated up to around 850°C, mixed with steam and momentarily cooled to prevent further reactions. Such a process results in ‘cracking’, during which the naphtha molecules are broken down into smaller parts such as ethylene (two carbon atoms), propylene (three carbon atoms), butadiene (four carbon atoms) and benzene (six carbon atoms in a ring). Thanks to steam, coke formation in the furnaces is reduced.
Naphtha is not the only raw material processed in ethylene crackers. Gas gives satisfactory effects too. Methane is one of the natural gases used for heating and electricity production in power stations. It can also be consumed to make methanol, which constitutes a basic building block chemical. There are also other, a bit heavier parts of natural gas, ethane and propane. They constitute a few percent of natural gas. During a separation process in a steam cracker, they can produce ethylene and propylene.
There are also other ways to produce building blocks than steam cracking. Oil refineries conduct processes to improve the quality of petrol. These processes include the production of propylene from catalytic cracking and benzene, toluene and xylenes from catalytic reformers (used to increase the octane rating of petrol).
ETHYLENE
This flammable substance is a primary product of a steam cracking process. Ethylene constitutes the key building block used in the production of a significant number of higher value-added chemicals. These include polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride via ethylene dichloride and styrene via ethylbenzene.
PROPYLENE
This flammable gas constitutes a co-product of two processes - the refinery fluid catalytic cracker process (gasoline production) and the steam cracking process (ethylene production). Nowadays, it is possible to obtain propylene from propane dehydrogenation and metathesis. Many industrial products (such as polypropylene and acrylonitrile) treat Propylene as an essential feedstock.
BENZENE
Another co-product of steam cracker processes is Benzene. It can also be obtained as a result of refinery processes. Benzene is used in the production of many petrochemical intermediates, such as styrene, cumene for phenol and acetone, cyclohexane and nitrobenzene.
TOLUENE
This olefin co-product is a colourless, highly flammable liquid. Toluene which is derived in the steam cracking process is used in the production of benzene and as a gasoline blending component. It also serves as a plasticizer, chemical intermediate and polyester intermediate.
BUTADIENE
The steam cracking process used to produce ethylene and propylene also has a co-product in the form of Butadiene. This gas is mainly used to produce polymers such as synthetic rubbers. One of them is styrene-butadiene rubber, which is used in the production of tyres and many products made of rubber. Other polymers created from butadiene are acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and styrene-butadiene latex. Butadiene is also used in the creation of ethylidene norbornene monomer.
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