——A Record of Hao Tianzhen's Innovation Team at Hebei Jingzhi Technology Co., Ltd.
Recently, a reporter saw at Hebei Jingzhi Technology Co., Ltd. in our city that the company founder, Hao Tianzhen, was wearing a white coat and working busily in the laboratory with his colleagues. "For so many years, whether in the laboratory or in the application site, working with my 'comrades' to overcome technical difficulties is what I like to do most." He said that this company, which focuses on the research and development of petrochemical desulfurization and energy-saving emission reduction technologies, is his second "home."
After graduating from university in 1984, Hao Tianzhen was assigned to the Cangzhou Refinery of China Petrochemical Corporation. He started from the most basic work and has done almost all the technical positions in the refinery. In every position, he carefully studied and thought, constantly innovating and improving. It was through diligence and innovation that during his work at the Cangzhou branch of Sinopec, he and his team completed the "Liquid propylene recovery scheme for propylene refining tower", which won the first prize of Hebei Provincial Economic Commission and Science and Technology Commission; "90#Gasoline Production Technology", which won the excellent award of Hebei Provincial Economic Commission and Science and Technology Commission; "Research and application of new liquid gasoline antioxidants", which won the excellent award of Sinopec Science and Technology Department; and "Experimental research on sulfur recovery oxy-enriched process", which won the excellent award of Sinopec Science and Technology Department……
In order to promote the innovation achievements in a larger field, in 2007, Hao Tianzhen initiated and jointly established Hebei Jingzhi Technology Co., Ltd. with like-minded technical R&D personnel, engaging in petrochemical technology development, technology transfer, technical services, R&D, production and sales of three petrochemical agents and raw materials, R&D, commissioned processing and sales of special-purpose equipment and instruments, and import and export of technology and goods.
With more than 20 years of experience in oil refining technology, Hao Tianzhen, at the beginning of the company's establishment, positioned the desulfurization and energy-saving emission reduction technology of petrochemical products as the direction of effort. The company's business has always focused on this field, paying attention to innovation and R&D. In 2012, the company was recognized as a high-tech enterprise for the first time, and jointly established a clean oil product joint laboratory with the National Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil at China University of Petroleum (Beijing). In 2015, the company was recognized as a high-tech small and medium-sized enterprise in Hebei Province. Years of market experience have cultivated a highly efficient R&D team and engineering design team. The company's continuously innovative technologies have met the requirements of the continuous upgrading of product quality and the continuous improvement of environmental protection standards in the oil refining industry. The company has made fruitful Achievements in the technical fields of refinery gas desulfurization, sulfur tail gas desulfurization, mercaptan removal from gasoline and liquefied gas, MTBE desulfurization, and catalytic gasoline desulfurization. Some technologies have reached the international advanced level and have gone abroad.
Hao Tianzhen, who has been fighting in the field of petrochemical scientific research for more than 30 years, has a forward-looking predictive ability for the development trend of the industry. Their research results often accurately follow the beat of market demand. The research and development of "Key component directional separation technology for FCC gasoline meeting the upgrade of National V/VI standards" is an example of Hao Tianzhen and his team's "active attack", once again meeting the urgent needs of the market.
Hao Tianzhen said that China's gasoline products are mainly catalytic gasoline, which is characterized by high sulfur and high olefins. National V/VI clean gasoline requires "deep desulfurization." When traditional hydrogenation technology is used for deep desulfurization of catalytic gasoline, the uncontrollable saturation of olefins in the refining process will inevitably cause a significant loss of octane number. How to overcome the contradiction between "deep desulfurization" and "octane number loss" is a major issue related to whether the upgrading of gasoline quality can be achieved as scheduled. Therefore, they started research in this area as early as 2009.
Cooperation leads to win-win results. In 2012, Hebei Jingzhi Technology Co., Ltd. signed a cooperation agreement with China University of Petroleum (Beijing) and established a clean oil product joint laboratory in Cangzhou. Based on the complementary advantages of both sides, a production-study-research cooperation relationship was established, and the research on catalytic gasoline desulfurization was strengthened. The "key component directional separation" idea was originally proposed.
Science is rigorous and cannot tolerate the slightest carelessness. Hao Tianzhen and other members of the R&D team conducted a large number of experiments and explorations on catalytic gasoline desulfurization, searching for the control point with the least octane number loss. They experienced repeated failures and setbacks, but the team never gave up.
Hard work pays off. With the efforts of all parties, the new technology was finally successful. It broke the traditional model of clean gasoline production. By implementing three-stage cutting and extraction separation on catalytic gasoline, it realized the directional separation of key components such as sulfides and olefins, achieving the quality upgrade goal of catalytic gasoline "deep desulfurization, moderate olefin reduction, and controllable octane number loss".
In March 2017, the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation organized an appraisal committee composed of Academician Cao Xianghong as the director and 9 experts from various disciplines, including Academicians Hu Yongkang and Shu Xingtian, to appraise this technology. The committee unanimously agreed that this technology is highly innovative and has reached the international advanced level. It cleverly solved the prominent problem and key contradiction of "deep desulfurization and gasoline octane number loss", realized the key component control and clean oil production under the concept of molecular refining, and has broad application prospects and promotion value. At the beginning of this year, the "Key component directional separation technology for FCC gasoline meeting the upgrade of National V/VI standards" won the second prize of the 2019 National Science and Technology Invention Award.
Currently, this technology has been granted 20 Chinese invention patents and 4 international invention patents, and has been successfully applied in 7 oil refineries. This technology has been successfully applied to the Shell (Malaysia) project, and a cooperation agreement has been signed with INVISTA, a subsidiary of Koch in the United States, to authorize overseas promotion. Application intentions have been reached with refineries in the United States, Colombia, Australia, and other countries.
Looking forward to the future prospects, Hao Tianzhen is full of confidence. He said that he will continue to follow the development trend of integrated refining and petrochemical industry, relying on the award-winning technology, deepen the laboratory optimization and industrialization test work of catalytic gasoline olefin directional cracking and multi-production of propylene technology, plan for the second national award, and strive to build the company's R&D institution into a national-level research unit within five years. At the same time, taking advantage of the historical opportunity of gasoline quality upgrading in South America, Australia, and North America in the future, vigorously expand the overseas market, and stabilize the export output value to more than US$10 million within two to three years.
Source: Cangzhou Daily, published on May 28, first edition.