HighChem has a strong SEG® R&D team, and has built research laboratories in Tokyo, Shanghai and Nantong. The R&D team has more than 40 staff including 3 doctors and 6 masters. The Tokyo Research Lab has 5 senior catalyst experts. The company has improved the SEG® Technology and has mature research and development system on Palladium base and copper base catalyst.
HighChem has built a large laboratory in Nantong catalyst plant. The laboratory has various kinds of R&D equipment, including hydrogenation single-tube, hydrogenation micro-reaction and carbonylation micro-reaction catalyst evaluation devices, featuring internationally advanced performance and technology. The company also has Plasma emission spectrometer, surface area analyzer, chemicals adsorption instrument, etc. The laboratory covers 400m2 and has about 20 staff.
1. Catalyst evaluation device
1.1 Monotube
The company has designed and developedof a set of DMO (dimethyl oxalate) to ethylene glycol device and two sets of in-series monotube hydrogenation device, which are mainly used to simulate the industrial facility on selecting and evaluating catalyst and to optimize the EG synthesis system.
The device feeds materials in four gas circuits and three liquid circuits, equipped with hydrogen supercharger, electric heater, DMO carburetor, DMO synthesis reactor, etc. which can achieve cyclic utilization of gases and it is the simulation of industrialized facilities. The gas circuits adopt mass flowmeter to control and measure, and the liquid materials adopt precision measuring pump to measure and control.
The main pumps, instruments and equipment all adopt foreign brands. The automatic control system adopts the OPTO distributed control system(DCS), equipped with critical multi-stage protection system to ensure safety of the equipment and operators.
1.2 Hydrogenation microreaction evaluation device
The company also has several catalyst hydrogenation microreaction evaluation device used for the selection of catalyst and evaluation on the activity in the preliminary period during the research and development.
1.3 Carbonylation microreaction evaluation device
The carbonylation microreaction device is used in experiments to improve the DMO process and evaluate the performance of palladium-based catalyst. Using CO/NO as raw materials, the device is consisted of MN synthesis column reactor system and carbonyl synthesis reaction system.
