Hunan Petrochemical's 600,000 tons per year caprolactam industry chain relocation and upgrading transformation development project, esterification cyclohexanone unit B line was successfully started up, supplying 20 tons of high-quality raw material cyclohexanone to downstream units every hour. So far, all 17 new main production units of the project have been successfully started up at one time, marking the full start-up of the world's largest single-unit production capacity and technologically advanced caprolactam production and research base.
Caprolactam is an important organic chemical raw material, widely used in degradable films, medical devices, high-end clothing, automobile wheels and other fields. The project will relocate the entire Hunan Petrochemical caprolactam industry chain to the Hunan Yueyang Green Chemical High-tech Zone, and build 17 sets of main production units such as coal gasification, caprolactam, and polyamide, with supporting public works, power stations and other auxiliary equipment, covering the entire industry chain from coal-to-hydrogen to polyamide. The annual production capacity of caprolactam will be increased from 300,000 tons to 600,000 tons, and the unit product discharge wastewater, COD (chemical oxygen demand), and comprehensive energy consumption can be reduced by 73%, 67%, and 20%, respectively, providing a new path and new model for the green transformation and development of heavy chemical industry along the Yangtze River. The project is built according to the "5G Smart Factory" standard, with a localization rate of 99.9% for equipment and all central control systems are localized.
The project adopts Sinopec's new generation of green complete set of new technologies for caprolactam with independent intellectual property rights. This is the first time that this technology has been industrialized. Among them, esterification and hydrogenation to produce cyclohexanone and slurry bed anthraquinone method to produce hydrogen peroxide are Sinopec's "Ten Dragons" scientific and technological research projects. The esterification and hydrogenation to produce cyclohexanone unit is the world's first industrial unit, with high carbon yield, low "three wastes" emissions, clean and efficient advantages; slurry bed anthraquinone method to produce hydrogen peroxide technology and cyclohexanone oximation to produce cyclohexanone oxime technology were successfully scaled up for the first time, and the safety factor of the new hydrogen peroxide technology was effectively improved; the coal gasification unit is Sinopec's first unit to use the third-generation domestic water-coal slurry water-cooled wall gasification process technology.