Patent 7553998 was granted and assigned to Honeywell UOP on June, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
This invention is drawn to a process for producing and recovering one or more high-purity xylene isomers from a feed stream having a substantial content of C9 and heavier hydrocarbons. The feed stream is processed to de-ethylate heavy aromatics, fractionated and passed to a circuit comprising C8-aromatic isomer recovery and isomerization to recover the high-purity xylene isomer with lowered energy costs.