Catalyst Review 2024

Catalyst Trading Co. Ltd

Catalyst Trading Co. Ltd (CTC) was formed in 1990 to create a market for unused surplus petroleum refinery catalysts. The business began with a phone call from a refiner, with a storehouse of mixed lots of fresh catalyst. The refiner needed an inventory along with a better understanding of what was useable and what was surplus to its needs. CTC visited the refinery storehouse and inventoried all the fresh catalyst, including the partial packages. The customer received a spreadsheet with a detailed inventory, which included catalyst manufacturer, type, size, quantity and condition.

Surplus catalysts are generated in any number of ways. Following a catalyst replacement, refiners might return unused catalyst to their storehouse. These partial lots of fresh catalyst accumulate over time. Refiners may switch catalyst providers. Sometimes there is a spare charge of an incumbent catalyst in the storehouse. Over time, most of these unused catalysts, which were never placed in service, end up going to metals reclaim. Today with 30+ years of service, CTC is well qualified to acquire any fresh hydroprocessing catalyst that facilities may have on hand.

CTC’s first major catalyst acquisition was in 1990, when it acquired 270 t of fresh hydrocracking catalyst from a major refiner. It was purchased as a spare charge and deemed surplus when the refiner switched technology providers. Since that time, CTC has acquired fresh surplus catalysts from petroleum refiners around the world.

Clariant Catalysts

Clariant Catalysts is a leading producer of catalysts and adsorbents designed to increase production throughput, enhance quality, lower energy consumption, and reduce emissions. Sustainability continued to be a major topic for Clariant in 2023 and its energy-efficient catalyst technologies made a significant contribution to climate protection and enabled the use of alternative feedstocks for sustainable chemical and fuel production.

Among the most important recent milestones were the following:

• Clariant’s MegaMax® catalyst was chosen by European Energy for the world’s largest e-methanol plant located in Kasso, Denmark.
• The launch of CLARITYTM, Clariant’s Service Portal, which provides customers with 24/7 access to their real-time catalyst performance data, as well as access to advanced visualisation, analysis, and monitoring tools.
• With the inauguration of its new CATOFIN catalyst production site in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, China, Clariant intensified its production capacity and increased its already expanding footprint in China.
• Clariant Catalysts strengthened its presence in the maleic anhydride industry by forging a partnership with Conser, part of MAIRE Group, in the development and supply of next-generation catalysts for producing maleic anhydride.
• The company continued to expand its global academic collaborations by renewing the long-term strategic alliance named MuniCat (Munich Catalysis), in place since 2010, for the research and application of new catalyst systems.

Axens

Axens has years of scientific achievement in catalyst and adsorbent research, product development, engineering expertise, process licensing, manufacturing capability and industrial feedback. The company offers an advanced, reliable portfolio of catalysts and adsorbents to serve the refining, petrochemical, chemicals, gas, alternative fuels and water industries.

Supplying assistance throughout the catalyst life cycle is part of Axens’ commitment. Thanks to experienced and local technical service teams, the company offers a service programme of start-up, loading and unloading assistance, performance follow-up (including remote monitoring unit performances via Connect’In^®), analysis of spent material, regeneration recommendations and performance predictions.

Axens is focused on contributing to the decarbonisation of aviation through the use of its Jetanol^TM technology, which contributes to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production. Jetanol is an optimum combination of five well-proven technologies:

• AxSorb^® adsorbents series: drying and purification of a wide variety of gaseous and liquid streams with activated aluminas, promoted aluminas, and molecular sieves. More than 10 000 t of Axsorb adsorbents are sold per year.
• Dehydratation catalysts series: production of olefins based on a wide range of alcohol feeds. Atol^® achieves conversion by dehydration on a proprietary catalyst of ethanol into high-purity ethylene. Seven units have been licensed.
• Homogeneous catalysts series: production of olefins based on ethylene feed, such as Dimersol^TM-E technology, which achieves conversion in liquid phase on a proprietary catalyst, of ethylene into C4 and C6 olefins.
• Oligomerisation catalysts series: conversion of light olefins into higher value gasoline and middle distillate cuts, mainly achieved with the Polynaphtha^TM technology. Axens is a leader in oligomerisation/homogeneous catalysis technology, evidenced by the award of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Axens’ parent company, IFPEN, and over 100 commercially-proven references.
• SeLene^TM selective hydrogenation catalysts series: purification of highly valuable olefinic and aromatic streams produced by steam crackers and FCC units. Axens has over 700 hydrogenation unit references worldwide.

These five technologies are combined to facilitate the production of SAF in order to drive the decarbonisation of aviation using Axens’ catalysts.

hte

hte is a leading solution provider for laboratory-scale R&D workflows and offers contract research programmes, as well as hardware solutions for catalyst testing in the fields of energy and refining, chemicals and petrochemicals, battery materials and electrocatalysis.

The company’s solutions enable cost-effective testing that reduces time-to-market for new products and increases the efficiency of existing assets, which allows customers to keep their business ahead of the competition.

The refining and petrochemical industries are being called upon to decrease their carbon footprint to match net zero emission goals set for decades ahead. The aforementioned industries are already incorporating the processing or co-processing of renewable feedstocks, such as vegetable oils and pyrolysis oils, into their operations to produce fuels and chemicals.

The catalysts that refineries have used for decades are now required to process more complex feedstocks in reactors that are repurposed without any major changes for this new type of feed. Due to the significant changes to the reactions that the catalysts must favour, and the contaminants that these must tolerate, it is crucially important to benchmark the catalysts on the market to find the most suitable one for the system at hand.

With laboratories in Heidelberg, Germany, hte provides a fully digitalised testing workflow. The company’s customers can benefit from advanced data processing using proprietary software (myhte), as well as close support in all the phases of testing (from catalyst development to process optimisation and troubleshooting).

With a highly parallelised experiment plan where all catalysts can be compared in the same setup at the same time, one can be sure to obtain an exact like-for-like comparison of the catalyst’s performance.

Malvern Panalytical

Malvern Panalytical is a frontrunner in providing expert analytical solutions. Through collaborative efforts with leading petrochemical partners worldwide, Malvern Panalytical has been supporting a variety of clients to succeed with catalysts in the refining industry.

Heterogeneous (solid form) catalysts enhance many of the gas- and liquid-phase reactions that underpin routine chemical processing. The extent to which heterogeneous catalysts increase reaction rates depends on their surface area – which means that, when using particulate catalysts, processors rely on accurate and reliable particle size analysis.

A decrease in particle size corresponds directly with an inversely proportional increase in surface area, and hence reaction rate. From this perspective, finer particulates are advantageous, but they also bring disadvantages, including health risks, poor fluidisation properties, and agglomeration tendencies. Ensuring catalyst particles fall within the optimum size range is therefore key.

Laser diffraction is suitable for materials ranging from hundreds of nanometres to several millimetres in size. This method is increasingly recognised as a faster, more efficient assessment tool than BET physisorption when it comes to generating the catalyst particle size data needed to calculate the specific surface area (SSA).

One important feature of laser diffraction is that it can be used to measure particles in either wet or dry dispersion. In tests, wet dispersion laser diffraction has been compared to BET techniques to determine SSA. The results show excellent correlation with each other, indicating that laser diffraction can be used in place of BET, whether to predict catalytic activity or to provide rapid quality control.

Given the speed, accuracy, and versatility of laser diffraction particle sizing, it is no surprise that it is fast becoming a preferred option for characterising and developing consistently high-quality catalysts – and unlocking better profit margins for hydrocarbon processors.

Sabin Metal Group of Companies

The Sabin Metal Group of Companies provides customers with logistical support, precious metal financial services, pre-reclaim kilning, and some of the most sophisticated facilities in the world for safely and responsibly processing, sampling, and refining precious metal-bearing catalysts.

Now in its eighth decade of worldwide service, Sabin specialises in the recovery and refining of platinum group metals (PGMs) (platinum, palladium, ruthenium, rhodium), plus rhenium, gold, and silver from spent precious-metals catalysts including zeolite, soluble and insoluble alumina, silica-alumina, and carbon. Sabin’s refined platinum and palladium are accepted by the London Platinum and Palladium Market (LPPM).

• Sabin Metal Corp., in Scottsville, New York, US, is specially equipped for the intricacies of safely and accurately processing, sampling, and refining a wide variety of precious metal materials.
• Sabin Metal West is highly regarded for sampling large lots of spent precious metals hydrocarbon catalysts. It employs pyro-metallurgical recovery of PGMs for maximum recovery of precious metals.
• Sabin Metal Europe B.V., in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Sabin Metal Corp. (DMCC Branch), in Dubai, offer technical service divisions serving chemical, petrochemical, and nitric acid industries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
• Sabin International Logistics Corp. (SILC) deals with licensed hazardous waste, hazardous materials, and is a general commodities transporter and permitted and licensed freight broker. It provides global transportation and logistics for precious metals materials.
• SMC (Canada) Ltd, in Cobalt, Ontario, Canada, utilises processing technologies to extract the highest possible metal values from residual materials of refining, smelting, and milling operations.

UNICAT Catalyst Technologies, LLC

Dedicated to revolutionising catalyst technology to deliver improved customer, financial and environmental performance, UNICAT focuses on listening and learning about customer aims and problems in order to create and shape its pipeline of innovation to create customer value.

UNICAT commercialised Magcat^® Textured Sphere reformer catalysts and its UK counterpart was awarded the Queens Award for Enterprise – Innovation in 2022. This has been followed by transformative innovation to its Advanced Filtration System (AFS) technology, to significantly improve the protection of hydrotreaters, delivering step change up time benefits.

• Magcat^® Textured range of reforming catalysts represents a jump in both technology and performance, and has a number of key proven advantages including: strength, greater geometric surface area, heat transfer and low pressure drop.
• The Next Generation of AFS has optimised uniform flow channels, creating non-restrictive flow distribution that maximises foulant capture. With this new technology, unit cycle times can be increased by at least 50%.

UNICAT is continuing its innovation launch process with a new pre-reforming catalyst technology that is focused on significantly enhancing bed lifetime and performance.

UNICAT will be following this with more revolutionary technology in pressure swing absorption. Customers are at the heart of UNICAT’s innovation focus and the company continues to look to invest in solutions to help its customers solve their problems.

W. R. Grace & Co.

For nearly a century, catalysts from W. R. Grace & Co. have kept fuel and petrochemical feedstocks flowing from the industry’s largest refineries to the trucks, trains, planes, and ships that keep the world running.

The company’s long history of looking ahead helps make Grace, a Standard Industries company, a leading global supplier of catalysts, engineered materials, and fine chemicals. Grace is leveraging that history of innovation in fluid catalytic cracking to develop products that enable lower carbon fuels and help meet the challenges of the energy transition.

Grace pioneered work on bio-based and renewable feedstocks in the 1980s. Today, Grace is supporting multiple refiners across the globe who are coprocessing both bio-based and recycled/recovered materials, both in trials and on a continuous basis. Additionally, the company has developed tools and products to assist refiners in reducing the CO₂ intensity of FCC operations.

Grace recently launched MIDAS^® Pro FCC catalyst technology, which has been proven to handle even the worst iron excursions. In commercial trials with multiple in-unit applications, MIDAS Pro catalyst demonstrated sustained bottoms cracking in the face of iron spikes that measured among the highest in the industry.

Another major catalytic advancement is a vanadium-trapping technology, PARAGON^TM FCC catalyst, a high matrix surface area (MSA) catalyst solution that uses a novel, rare earth-based vanadium trap to deliver maximum bottoms upgrading and improved coke selectivity.

Grace’s catalyst and additive innovations are designed to increase each customer’s bottom line – by improving yields, increasing throughput or reliability, or solving a problem.

With a long history of looking ahead, the company helps to strengthen its customers’ businesses by providing exceptional financial return on their investments in Grace’s talent and technology.

This is a selection of entries to Hydrocarbon Engineering's annual Catalyst Review, originally published in the January 2024 issue of Hydrocarbon Engineering magazine. To read the article in full, sign in or register for a free subscription.

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/special-reports/17012024/catalyst-review-2024/