What is the origin of Dow Aromatics Co-Products?
Dow Aromatics products are made during the production of benzene from pyrolysis gasoline (pygas), a co-product formed in the process of thermal cracking of more or less saturated hydrocarbons such as naphtha, butane mixtures or propane. During this thermal cracking process the molecules are broken down into smaller pieces in which radicals are formed as intermediates. The resulting mixture of “broken” molecules is highly unsaturated and contains various sizes of molecules, most of them having one or more double bonds. Even when small molecules like propane are cracked, the resulting mix may contain molecules as big as C10 because the radicals formed may react forming bigger molecules than the original raw material. The cracked mixtures, called crack gas, is then separated in various steps to isolate products such as ethylene, propylene, C4’s, pyrolysis gasoline (C5 – C12) and cracker oil (C12+).
