Clariant Catalysts to Provide AI-Powered Digital Services to SECCO Petrochemicals
Clariant has signed a 10-year agreement with SECCO Petrochemicals to deploy its AI-driven CLARITY Prime catalyst performance monitoring platform at SECCO’s 900,000 tonnes per year ethylene plant in Shanghai. This extends Clariant’s digital services, previously limited to ammonia, methanol, and hydrogen catalysts, to ethylene production. The platform aims to enhance plant efficiency, safety, reliability, and profitability through advanced AI analytics and expert support.
Clariant, a global specialty chemicals company, announced a long-term partnership with SECCO Petrochemicals to supply its CLARITY Prime digital services for SECCO’s large-scale 900-KTA ethylene cracking unit in Shanghai’s Jinshan District. The 10-year agreement marks an expansion of Clariant’s AI-powered catalyst monitoring platform, previously available only for ammonia, methanol, and hydrogen catalyst users, now extended to ethylene producers. CLARITY Prime integrates artificial intelligence with technical expertise to optimize catalyst performance, enhance operational efficiency, improve safety, reliability, and profitability of the plant. Tools within the platform include catalyst monitoring, performance forecasting, benchmarking, upset prediction, virtual hydrogen analysis, and advanced alerting functions. Gene Mueller, VP and Head of Ethylene at Clariant, highlighted that the partnership strengthens Clariant’s digital footprint in China, a key petrochemical market. SECCO Petrochemicals, a joint venture primarily involving Sinopec and INEOS, operates one of China’s largest single-line ethylene units, producing over one million tons annually and approximately 4.2 million tons of petrochemical products yearly. SECCO’s Ethylene Production Manager, Yang Ying, emphasized that adopting CLARITY Prime aligns with SECCO’s digital transformation strategy and is expected to deliver operational improvements and sustained benefits over the next decade. CLARITY Prime is developed in collaboration with Navigance, a Clariant digital solutions company, underscoring a commitment to innovation in the petrochemicals industry.
