(483b) Ethylene Oxide Catalyst and Process Innovations: A Successful Journey Towards Asustainable Industrial Process

Ethylene oxide (and ethylene glycol) are very large volume, commodity chemicals and building
blocks for a large number of other derived chemicals-with annual production exceeding 50 Billion
pounds per year. These commodity chemicals have been growing globally at the rate of 5-6%/year
for the last 3-4 decades. Improving catalyst selectivity and hence reducing carbon dioxide
emissions has been very intense competitive activity amongst the major competitors; Union
Carbide/Dow Chemical, Shell/Criterion and Scientific Design for the last 50 years. The key catalyst
inventions leading to innovations of successively improved generations of ethylene oxide catalysts
from about 70% to 90%, over the last three/four decades, will be presented. In addition, the
process evolutions from the old multi-reactors in series for Air based and then the multiple parallel
reactor-based oxygen-based processes leading to the current designs of a single reactor to
produce 500-1000 MM lbs/year in a single plant, will be presented. In addition, these innovations
have resulted in a much simpler process design having lower capital & operating costs along with
process simplicity and enhanced process safety. Most importantly, from sustainability standpoint,
Carbon dioxide emissions have been reduced enormously, from about 30% to 10%, even though
the worldwide capacity has nearly doubled in the last 15 years. Importantly, even more reductions
in carbon dioxide emissions and improvement in selectivity are possible in the coming years.