Issue 23, 2015 - Successful industrialization of 1,4-butynediol catalyst

As of June 10, the first domestic 1,4-butanediol (BDO) production line using domestic catalysts has been successfully operated for one year on the 100,000-ton plant of Xinjiang Meike Chemical Co.
, Ltd.
, and the core catalyst RK-15 selected for this BDO plant is provided
by Dalian Ruike Technology Co.
, Ltd.
The successful application of the catalyst makes Dalian Ruike the only manufacturer in China to realize the industrial production and application of this type of catalyst, and also makes China one of the countries that have mastered the key preparation technology of this type of
catalyst.

At present, China's BDO industry is still in a stage of rapid development, according to the characteristics of China's rich coal and less oil, using acetylene and formaldehyde produced by coal chemical industry as raw materials, using the improved alkyne method to produce BDO is the trend
of development.
In recent years, most of the new and proposed BDO plants in China adopt this process route, that is, acetylene and formaldehyde react under the action of catalyst to synthesize 1,4-butynediol, and then hydrogenate to generate BDO
.
The core of the process, 1,4-butynediol
, is mainly based copper carbonate catalyst.
However, due to the monopoly of the improved alkydehyde process for large foreign companies, the catalysts required by the domestic built plants are completely dependent on imports, resulting in high catalyst prices and long
order cycles.
In addition, basic copper carbonate catalysts still have problems such as poor filterability, easy loss, short life and high production cost during
use.

In view of the many problems of 1,4-butynediol catalyst, many domestic scientific research and development have been carried out, but they have not been successful in industrial applications, and the performance is far inferior to imported catalysts
.
Dalian Rick has a strong R&D and industrial production foundation
in the research and development of copper catalysts.
In 2013, Dalian Rick cooperated with Xinjiang Meike to develop a highly active and highly stable 1,4-butynediol synthesis catalyst (basic copper carbonate type) RK-15 in 10 months, and successfully applied for a national invention patent, and its performance index exceeded that of foreign catalysts
.

In June 2014, the first batch of 20 tons of catalyst was used on Xinjiang Meike 1,4-butynediol plant, and the catalyst performance was basically consistent with the industrial siding results, and some of the performance was further improved
.

At present, the catalyst has been used for 6 batches continuously, and the performance indicators of the catalyst are stable and the product quality has been significantly improved
。 The comparison with foreign catalysts shows that the activation, initial activity and selectivity of RK-15 catalyst are consistent with the performance of imported catalysts, and the catalyst shows high selectivity under high temperature operating conditions, reduces by-products, and improves the yield of 1,4-butynediol.
At the same time, RK-15 catalyst has a larger particle size and higher wear resistance, so that the catalyst has better filterability, significantly reduces the loss of the catalyst, prolongs the life of the catalyst by more than 20%, and reduces the difficulty
of processing in the subsequent section.

(Chemical)