On July 27, 2020 “The novel one-step process for oxidative esterification of methyl acrolein over the nanogold catalyst to methyl methacrylate (MMA)” developed by the CAS Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP)in collaboration with the Qingdao Sanli-Benno New Materials Company, Ltd. and the Tsinghua University Faculty of Chemical Engineering has passed the appraisal of scientific achievements organized by China Petroleum& Chemical Industry Federation. The experts attending the appraisal meeting have recognized that this achievement is the first of its kind in China, which generally has reached the internationally advenced level, while making proposal to speed up the construction of demonstration project and dissemination of this technology.

This process uses ethylene, syn-gas, and methanol as the feedstocks, featuring short process scheme, mild reaction conditions, and absence of toxic materials emission along with high conversion rate and selectivity, and can combine with the manufacture of propionaldehyde through ethylene hydroformylation and the manufacture of methacrolein via aldolcondensation of acrolein and formaldehyde to form a novel process for making MMA through three steps of ethylene processing.

The construction of a thousand-ton-class pilot unit was kicked off in August 2019. In July 2020 this pilot unit had passed the 72-hour uninterrupted assessment tests under full load, harvesting a methylacrolein conversion of 93.2% and a MMA selectivity of 96.9%. This technology is expected to make up for the backward situation of MMA production process in China with a promising application prospect.