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Debottlenecking efforts can yield profit and production efficiency. One of GTC's experienced and expert engineers shares rules of thumb and success stories.

When new petrochemical capacity for ethylene or derivatives is considered, most investors give relatively little attention to the optimum scheme for processing the pyrolysis gasoline (pygas) byproduct. Pygas operators will usually recover the benzene and possibly the toluene from the C6 + stream, but will rarely extract other components.

Extractive distillation (the use of a solvent in distillation to enhance the separation efficiency) is recognized throughout the academic world as a useful means to separate close-boiling mixtures. In recent years, this method has gained widespread acceptance among industrial users. This article will describe how Extractive Distillation (ED) technology can be applied to three important commercial applications to improve profitability of the petrochemical and refining industry.