Aromatics
Metaxylene (MX)
BP is the world’s largest producer of metaxylene. BP operates two metaxylene units at its Texas City, Texas facility. The number one MX unit utilizes a HF/BF3 extraction process to recover MX from mixed xylenes. The number two MX unit was completed in 1998 and uses UOP’s MX Sorbex process to recover and purify metaxylene. BP was the first company to license this technology. The metaxylene units are highly integrated with other aromatics units at the Texas City facility.Paraxylene (PX)
BP is one of the largest paraxylene producers in the world. It owns the largest single PX unit in the world. BP's own studies have shown that our isomerisation catalyst technology coupled with its crystallisation technology to be the best. Periodic independent, outside studies have confirmed this.The proprietary xylene isomerisation catalysts can be tailored to process a variety of aromatics feeds to take advantage of the local economics. In addition, BP's crystallisation recovery process can handle a variety of feeds and is particularly advantageous for the recovery of PX from STDP produced xylenes.
BP's process is very energy efficient which makes it particularly attractive in regions of the world having expensive or increasing energy costs. Improvements over the past few years have also allowed for further reductions in energy and capital.
