As we all know, petroleum is mainly a mixture of alkanes, cycloalkanes and aromatics. Petroleum can be separated into important substances such as liquefied petroleum gas, gasoline, kerosene, diesel oil, paraffin wax and asphalt by physical methods such as atmospheric pressure and vacuum fractionation, but olefins and dienes needed for the production of synthetic rubber cannot be directly obtained from them. Therefore, it is necessary to produce ethylene, propylene, butadiene and aromatic hydrocarbons needed by synthetic rubber industry and petrochemical industry by thermal cracking or catalytic cracking of petroleum light fractions. For example, the world-famous Rhuems cracking furnace can crack about the following quantities of various hydrocarbon products per ton of raw materials.
More than 60% of isobutylene production in the cracking products of various raw materials comes from C4 fractions of steam cracking ethylene unit and refinery catalytic cracking unit, and the volume ratio of isobutylene in the above two fractions is about 40% and 15% respectively.
The relationship between natural gas and people's life is getting closer and closer. As an energy source as important as oil, natural gas is bound to play an increasingly important role in industry. Chlorobutadiene is a monomer used for chloroprene rubber in synthetic rubber, which can be obtained by partial oxidation of natural gas to generate acetylene, and then dimerization addition with hydrogen chloride. It should be said that many products of petroleum cracking can be obtained from natural gas conversion. With the evolution and transformation of energy, it may become another treasure house of synthetic rubber. Now, scientists all over the world are devoted to the research and development of producing ethylene from natural gas.