Gradual upgrading of internal combustion engine oil has a promising future for hydrogenation

At present, the foreign lubricant base oil production process is also the traditional phase of solvent refining and hydrogenation process. With the gradual upgrading of engine oil grades, the hydrogenation process has a promising future. According to Chevron, in the past 10 years, the US has 1.20 Mt/a solvent-based base oil plant shut down. It is expected that by 2001, the US will use the hydrogenation process to produce the total amount of base oil and cesium base oil. At 49% of production, the production capacity of terpenoid base oil in the Asia-Pacific region is also increasing. It is expected that by the year of 2002, the base oil produced by hydroisomerization technology will account for 25% and 30% of the total base oil.

In recent years, China National Petroleum Corporation has introduced IFP and Chevron technology and established production facilities in Lanzhou and Daqing. The Petrochemical Research Institute has also developed a solvent refining-hydroprocessing-solvent dewaxing technology (RLT). According to statistics, the total capacity of hydrogenation processes already built and proposed to date has reached 1.70 Mt/a. If these devices are guaranteed to be put into operation before 2005, China will have the capacity to produce approximately 1.00 Mt of hydrogenated lubricating oil base oil annually.

It is feasible to partially replace the solvent refining process with a hydrogenation process in some of China's enterprises that focus on the production of lubricating oil and have poor crude oil resources. In order to balance the paraffin production, most of the solvent refining and solvent dewaxing processes should be retained to meet the market demand for mid-range lubricants and industrial lubricants and paraffins.