Published March 1995
Haldor Topsoe A/S has developed, but has not yet commercialized, a novel refinery alkylation process that employs a liquid acid catalyst in a fixed bed reactor. In the preferred form, trifluoromethanesulfonic acid is supported in a silica bed.
In this process, a butylene feed and an excess of isobutane react in the presence of an acid catalyst to produce a high-octane alkylate. Reactor effluent is recycled and product streams are isolated by fractionation. Trace amounts of the acid catalyst are recovered from product streams using fixed bed adsorption.
In this review, we evaluate the technical and economic aspects of the Haldor Topsoe A/S process and compare the economic results with those from established sulfuric acid- and hydrofluoric acid-catalyzed alkylation technologies. We also evaluate several key economic parameters and discuss how their variation would affect operating profitability for the Haldor Topsoe A/S process.
