Energy-Saving UHMW Polymeric Flow Aids: Catalyst and Polymerization Process Development

Abstract

Crude oil and refinery products are transported worldwide to meet human energy needs. During transportation via pipeline, huge pumping power is required to overcome the frictional pressure drop and the associated drag along the pipeline. The reduction of both is of great interest to industry and academia. Highly expensive ultrahigh molecular weight (UHMW, MW a million Dalton) drag reducing polymers (DRPs) are currently used to address this problem. The present paper, therefore, emphasizes particularly the development of a high-performance catalyst system that synthesizes DRPs (using higher alpha-olefins)—a highly promising cost reduction alternative. This homogeneous catalyst system features a new concept that uses a cost-effective titanium-based Ziegler–Natta precatalyst and a cocatalystLewis base complex having both steric hindrance (around N heteroatom) and electronic effect. This novel work, which involves precatalyst–cocatalyst molecular separation and cocatalystmonophenyl amine association-dissociation phenomena, already generated several US patents. The subject catalyst prepares UHMW DRPs at room temperature, avoiding the use of zero and sub-zero temperatures. The resulting product almost tripled the rate of transportation of a selected grade of refinery product and saved about 50% pumping energy at ppm level pipeline concentration. It is also very easily soluble. Hence, massive modification of existing pipeline will be unnecessary. This will save additional infrastructure cost. This paper also summarizes challenges facing the development of improved heterogeneous catalysts, dispersed polymerization process, molecular simulation-based DRP product formulation, and model/theory of turbulent mixing and dispersion in the transportation pipeline setting.

Polyolefin Catalyst Research: A Product‐Driven Industrial Perspective

“…Our study also establishes that the incorporation of particularly longer and bulkier branches in the backbone through copolymerization of α ‐olefins improves DRP performance even at moderate UHMW values [146] . This finding particularly shows an improvement over literature results.…”

“…The resulting product almost tripled the rate of transportation of a selected grade of refinery product and saved about 50 % pumping energy at ppm level pipeline concentration. It is highly amorphous and very easily soluble in a hydrocarbon solvent [146] . Hence, the use of this product will not require massive modification of the existing pipeline.…”

“…Table 1 reviews, and book and book chapters will beneficially guide the inquisitive and ambitious beginners in PO catalyst research. Particularly, all the works of Severn, [35,43,56,72,76] Hlatky, [31] and the book Catalyst Preparation: Science and Engineering edited by Regalbuto [147] Consider an innovation that offers advantages and improvements. But this does not ensure that the prospective investors and customers will adopt the new technology to be developed.…”

“…This sums that catalyst, polymerization process, and product formulation design are involved in the whole chain. Accordingly, we developed a novel high activity catalyst system in this area which has been patented [143–145] . Our homogeneous catalyst system comprises a cost‐effective titanium Ziegler‐Natta precatalyst and a cocatalyst ⋅ Lewis base complex having both steric hindrance (around N heteroatom) and electronic effect.…”

The effect of sonication on the ion exchange constant, KXBr of CTABr/chlorobenz

“…Apart from that, aqueous solutions of micelle systems exhibiting viscoelasticity have also been actively studied due to their remarkable rheological properties and large variety of applications. Naming a few are as household products [8] , [9] , petrochemicals [10] , [11] , pharmaceuticals [7] , in heating and cooling systems [12] , [13] , and health and drug delivery systems [7] , [14] . The interest to utilize micelles in new products and technologies are mainly due to two of its controllable properties: (i) their amphiphilicity and flexibility to form normal or inverse micelle structures, and (ii) their reversible aggregational responses upon stimuli manipulation.…”