Staying Trendy: Honeywell UOP

Keeping up with trends is always tricky.

Honeywell UOP offers a Trends page on its Web site (https://www.uop.com/trends/). On my last visit to the page, the list included …

• Natural gas
• Diesel
• Integration
• Feedstock options
• ROI – Return on Investment

TIP #1: Bookmark the UOP Trends Web page (https://www.uop.com/trends/) and visit it once in a while. It is an easy way to stay on top of developments in the refining industry.

TIP #2: Google® UOP and one of the broad topic areas listed above. For example, when you Google® UOP integration, one of the results is …

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Cover Story: Catalysing refining-petrochemical integration - PEOPLE ...
https://www.refiningandpetrochemicalsme.com/article-18338-cover-story-catalysing-r...
Cached
Feb 7, 2018 - In the near future, all refineries will get integrated with petrochemical ... Honeywell UOP also has many natural gas processing capabilities in its ...
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Here are excerpts from the article …

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[EXCERPTS]
Refining & Petrochemicals
Arabian oil and gas
PEOPLE
Cover Story: Catalysing refining-petrochemical integration
In the near future, all refineries will get integrated with petrochemical complexes, and all downstream facilities will become digitally connected, envisages Rebecca Liebert, president and CEO, Honeywell UOP, in an interview given to Martin Menachery.
by Martin Menachery
07 Feb 2018
Rebecca Liebert, president and CEO, Honeywell UOP.
In the near future, all refineries will get integrated with petrochemical complexes, and all downstream facilities will become digitally connected, envisages Rebecca Liebert, president and CEO, Honeywell UOP, in an interview given to Martin Menachery.
Honeywell UOP is an innovator and enabler in the catalytic processing of hydrocarbons. The company has the widest offering of licensed technologies for the refining and petrochemicals manufacturing industry. Its core offerings are for the refineries, integrated with petrochemical complexes in many cases, and aromatics and propane dehydrogenation (PDH) units.
Honeywell UOP also has many natural gas processing capabilities in its portfolio of core competencies. In the Middle East, it offers many integrated natural gas processing technologies, which have the capability to remove all the contaminants like sulphur, water, mercury, etc. The company’s technologies also facilitate recovery of natural gas liquids.
“We focus on fully integrated solutions for the downstream industry. We demonstrate our core capabilities through our innovative solutions for the customers. Everything we do is to help our customers make more money – at the end of the day, it is all about better yields, lower CAPEX and OPEX, enhanced energy efficiency, etc.,” says Rebecca Liebert, president and CEO, Honeywell UOP.
Driving continuing success
In terms of introducing new technologies, Honeywell UOP has been very active in the past few years. For example, it recently unveiled the energy efficient Light Desorbent Parex process which is the most efficient way to recover high purity para-xylene from mixed C8 aromatics isomers. This process offers lower CAPEX and OPEX, and better energy intensity than any other process available in the market.
“On top of this, we launched our next-generation Oleflex capability, and continue to drive innovation in this process. The Oleflex process converts propane to propylene and isobutane to isobutylene using catalytic dehydrogenation. Compared with competing processes, Oleflex technology provides the smallest environmental footprint, the lowest cash cost of production and the highest return on investment,” observes Liebert.
“Then, we introduced ionic liquids alkylation technology. We call it ISOALKY which is the first successful liquid alkylation technology to be introduced in 75 years. While traditional technologies use hydrofluoric or sulphuric acid as a liquid alkylation catalyst, the new technology uses a non-aqueous liquid salt, or ionic liquid, at temperatures below 100ºC to convert a typical stream from a fluid catalytic cracker into a valuable high-octane blending component that lowers the environmental impact of motor gasoline. So, this is a greener technology,” Liebert explains.
Catalyst is the key
“You may have a good process technology; but, if you do not have a good catalyst to go with it, you will not maximise the yield through that process technology. Honeywell UOP looks at this as a hand-in-glove situation. First, you have to develop a strong process technology and then you have to develop a stronger catalyst to go with that. Every time we innovate the process, we also innovate the catalyst,” comments Liebert.
“Sometimes we actually innovate the catalyst even before we innovate the process because we find ways to make the catalyst better, more active, and drive higher yield. We are very focussed on how we evolve those catalysts. I think catalysts are very important to our industry because those allow greater output without a big CAPEX investment and the returns to the customers are huge. So, we focus on innovating catalysts all the time,” Liebert explains.
The Connected Plant concept
Honeywell Connected Plant connects processes, assets and people. It helps the company’s customers drive differential optimisation and reliability in their processes. The fundamental process involved in it is called Connected Performance Services, which is founded on Honeywell UOP’s core process technologies.
“In addition to Honeywell UOP’s process models, we have overlaid the decades of experience of our service people. If a service person encounters a problem in a process plant, what decisions will he or she make? How will he or she react? We have coded all these into the software of Honeywell Connected Plant. So, it can help our customers detect a problem before it happens. This drives better output, improved yields, higher reliability, and more money to our customers,” observes Liebert.
 “Our R&D collaborations are put in place to develop new products. By working with King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia, we are really able to understand the local requirements for catalysts and then work to develop optimised catalysts for Saudi Aramco plants. On top of that, we use this relationship to help develop local talent in the region and it is a huge base of very smart people to localise the talent from an R&D perspective,” Liebert remarks.
“We think of R&D in two ways. First, we do fundamental research on new zeolites, innovative catalyst technologies, out-of-the-box routes to new process technologies, and state-of-the-art equipment. Then, we spend lot of money on development, taking the results of the fundamental research to the market place, or evolving our  current technologies.”
Empowering refining-petrochemical integration
“The future of downstream industry is definitely in the direction of integration of refineries to petrochemical plants. We are right now the leader in driving the innovative solutions for this integration. We want to continue performing this role very actively.”
“Five years from now, I foresee the Middle East refining and petrochemicals manufacturing industry being more powerful than ever. It has a very innovative culture focussed on the future. And, I foresee the future being all refineries getting integrated with petrochemical complexes, and all refineries being digitally connected as well as ensuring that their workforce is the most talented and trained in the world,” observes Liebert.
source: https://www.refiningandpetrochemicalsme.com/article-18338-cover-story-catalysing-refining-petrochemical-integration
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