Recently, CHN Energy Ningxia Coal Industry completed full-process trial operations of its ten-thousand-ton-scale alpha-olefin separation unit, successfully producing polymer-grade 1-hexene and 1-octene. The purity of 1-hexene exceeded 99 percent, while that of 1-octene surpassed 98 percent.
Alpha-olefins are key feedstocks for producing high-end polyolefins and high-performance lubricant base oils. For a long time, China has relied heavily on imports for C6 and higher alpha-olefins, particularly technologies for separating high-purity products from coal-to-liquids outputs. The successful trial operation of this unit marks a breakthrough in this technological field.
The project was launched in 2019, with the Coal Chemical Industry Technology Research Institute of CHN Energy Ningxia Coal Industry leading the technology research and development, and China Shenhua Coal to Liquid & Chemical Co., Ltd. responsible for engineering construction and trial operation. Over several years, the R&D team developed a separation process featuring extractive distillation/catalytic distillation, overcoming a series of technical challenges including deep deoxygenation of Fischer–Tropsch oils, separation of alkanes and alkenes with the same carbon number, and purification of high-purity alpha-olefins. This work ultimately resulted in a complete process technology with independent intellectual property rights.
The unit has successfully passed a 72-hour performance assessment organized by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation. The successful trial operation provides a solid technical foundation for subsequent large-scale industrial application projects.
