Shell Global Solutions OMEGA team scoop IChemE Award

The annual IChemE Awards recognize and promote organizations that have made an outstanding contribution to innovation and excellence in the fields of safety, the environment or sustainable development in process industries.

Collecting the award on behalf of the OMEGA Team, Jan Keijsper, Regional Manager Ethylene Oxide & Derivatives Technology said: “We are delighted to have received the IChemE Award in recognition of Shell Global Solutions OMEGA technology. The successful development and implementation of OMEGA would not have been possible without the dedication of the people who believed in the concept and worked tirelessly to integrate and optimize the process.” 

OMEGA process

The team responsible for the OMEGA process won the award for their work in developing 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; conventional thermal processes co-produce about 10% diethylene and heavier glycols.

Other key advantages include using about 20% less steam at equal ethylene oxide (EO) reaction selectivity and producing 30% less wastewater. An OMEGA plant costs 10% less to build for the same MEG yield.

Arthur Rots, Design Group Leader, Global Solutions EO/EG Process Site and Support said: “The market for EO, about 70% of which is converted to MEG, has tripled in the last 15 years so the implications for the OMEGA process are far-reaching.”

“The successful start-up in May 2008 of the first-of-its-kind plant using the new OMEGA process in Daesan, Korea for the Lotte Daesan Petrochemical Corporation (Lotte) was key to the commercial success of the process. Achieving contractual design and process guarantees just 10 days after start-up has been beneficial for our reputation as an innovation leader.”

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.