Shell's 'Only MEG Advantage' team bags engineering excellence award

01-Nov-08

The Shell Global Solutions OMEGA (Only MEG Advantage) Technology team has recently won the prestigious SELLAFIELD LTD AWARD FOR ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE at the IChemE awards ceremony in Birmingham, UK. The annual IChemE Awards recognise and promote organisations making an outstanding contribution to innovation and excellence in the fields of safety, the environment or sustainable development in process industries. The team developed a first-of-its-kind integrated mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) process using a catalytic process - a major milestone for the global ethylene glycol (EG) industry. The process has a MEG selectivity of up to 99.3 - 99.5%, which means it produces virtually no heavy glycol byproducts as opposed to conventional thermal processes which co-produce about 10% diethylene and heavier glycols. Also, the OMEGA process uses about 20% less steam at equal ethylene oxide (EO) reaction selectivity, producing 30% less wastewater and costs 10% less to build for the same MEG yield. The OMEGA process has been licensed to five companies to date, including a world-scale 750 kta plant at the Shell Eastern Petrochemicals Complex currently under construction in Singapore. The first-of-its-kind plant using the new OMEGA process was installed in Daesan, Korea for the Lotte Daesan Petrochemical Corporation (Lotte) was integral for the success of the process. As per company's senior authority, the market for EO, about 70% of which is converted to MEG, has imcreased threefold and it will have a positive impact on the OMEGA process.