Lummus Technology is a leading player in licensing proprietary process technologies to the hydrocarbon industry. Lummus is renowned for the scope of its technology assets and its ability to provide single-source solutions for customers globally. It licenses over 70 processes that are supported by more than 2,000 current and pending patents, with key strengths in olefins; petrochemical intermediates and polymers; refining – including hydroprocessing, residuum upgrading, fluid catalytic cracking and lubes; and natural gas processing.
In addition, Lummus Technology’s heat transfer group is a world leader in the design and supply of specialized heat transfer equipment to process industries worldwide. Since the 1930s Lummus has supplied fired heaters of every size and type, including more than 1,000 SRT® (Short Residence Time) ethylene cracking heaters, which are used to produce about 40% of the world’s annual ethylene capacity.
Customer Focus
The Lummus Technology team is dedicated to providing services to each licensee over the life cycle of a project, with emphasis on:
- Developing and maintaining new and existing technology
- Providing accurate basic engineering packages
- Supplying state-of-the-art catalysts
- Ensuring flawless start-ups
- Providing technical support to ensure safe, reliable and efficient plant performance
- Assisting with future plant expansions
We conduct ongoing research and development to support and improve our existing technologies and to develop and commercialize new technologies. We have active R&D programs that target the development of process technologies focused on upgrading bio-derived components into compatible fuels. We operate three R&D centers in the United States and one in Germany focusing on process chemistry and catalysis.
Lummus Technology offers extensive aftermarket services to our worldwide client base, including technical support services, training and licensee conferences.
Olefins/Polyolefins Technologies
Lummus Technology licenses the most widely used ethylene technology in the world, with about 40% of global capacity based on our process. A significant by-product of the ethylene process when cracking liquid feeds is propylene. Olefins Conversion Technology optimizes the balance among ethylene, propylene and butylenes depending on current market demand and pricing. We also offer the Novolen® gas phase polypropylene process for the production of a full range of polypropylene products.
Petrochemical Technologies
Lummus Technology offers a diverse line of chemical technologies along product lines such as styrenics and polystyrene, phenolics, light hydrocarbons (C3 -C5 dehydrogenation, butadiene extraction), and other assorted specialty chemicals including dimethyl carbonate, diphenyl carbonate, and maleic anhydride.
Refining Technologies
Our portfolio of refining technologies provides solutions for bottoms upgrading, hydroprocessing, reformulated fuels and high octane blending components, in addition to catalytic distillation processes that combine reaction and fractionation in a single unit operation. These processes are applied in selective hydrogenation, hydrodesulfurization, alkylation and etherification. Current offerings from Chevron Lummus Global, our joint venture with Chevron, include hydrocracking, residual hydrotreating, residual hydrocracking and lubricants.
Gas Processing Technologies
Patented process technology and proprietary know-how developed by Lummus Technology are used in more than 200 natural gas plants around the world. Many of the innovations we have developed, like the use of plate-fin exchangers and packings in cryogenic columns, remain today as standard designs in the industry. We have a wide portfolio of patented designs including deep ethane and propane recovery, NicheLNGSM, mitigation of CO2 recovery in NGL processing, and hydrocarbons from refinery streams, enabling us to expand our technology positions through the natural gas value chain.
Download brochure "A legacy of innovation in gas technologies" (pdf 384KB)