Friday, April 19, 2024
Jubail & Yanbu

Olefins III launch in November

A new project at Arabian Petrochemicals Company (Petrokemya) - called Olefins III - is set to come onstream by November, according to the company.

The new project will consist of an 800,000 tpy flexible feedstock ethylene plant, a 160,000 tpy propylene plant and a 25,000 tpy benzene unit.

Using a basic design and license from Stone & Webster for ethylene and polypropylene and ABB Lummus Global technology for the benzene, construction has been carried out by a group of Saudi contractors.

A new polyethylene plant will come onstream with a capacity of 400,000 tpy, and this is expected to soak up excess ethylene from Olefins III. Until then, Petrokemya will have 400,000 tpy of excess ethylene, most of which will be sent to Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Petrokemya president Khalid Al Rawaf is unfazed by a surplus of ethylene crackers in Asia. "It is more of an intermediate product for us, not really a major product," he said. "Besides, there are markets in Latin America and South Africa.''

Petrokemya has undertaken several major expansion projects over the past decade, including two olefins project.

Olefins I started production in 1985 with a production capacity of 500,000 tpy. Its capacity was then increased to 650,000 tpy in 1998.

Petrokemya's plants include:

  • Olefins I - 650,000 tpy of ethylene. The plant uses ethane, supplied by Saudi Aramco, as feedstock. Ethane is fed to cracking furnaces where it is cracked and converted to ethylene and other hydrocarbons. The cracked gases are compressed, cooled and separated to recover pure ethylene;

  • Butene-1 No1 - 50,000 tpy capacity. Started up in 1987 with IFP-France technology;

  • Butene-1 No.2 - 50,000 tpy capacity. Built in 1995 to meet the increased demand of Butene-1 at Sabic affiliates such as Kemya, Sharq and Yanpet;

  • Olefins II - 800,000 tpy ethylene, 325,000 tpy propylene, 130,000 tpy butadiene and 125,000 tpy benzene. This plant was designed with the flexibility to use different types of feedstocks depending upon availability and price. Feedstocks include propane, butane, gasoline and ethane, which is supplied by Saudi Aramco. Petrokemya is to take 50 million cu ft per day of gas from the Ju'aymah gas plant. Propylene output is used as feedstock for polypropylene plants elsewhere in Jubail.

  • General Purpose Polystyrene (GPPS) - 50,000 tpy capacity. Produced by polymerising styrene monomer in heated reactors. Each reactor receives the solution and increases the polymer concentration until it reaches the final processing where the polymer is purified and palletised for bagging;

    * High Impact Polystyrene (HIPS) - capacity 65,000 tpy. Similar production process to GPPS, but an impact modifier is added in the feed preparation stage to give the product impact resistance property;

  • Expandable polystyrene (EPS) - 20,000 tpy capacity. EPS is produced by suspension polymerisation process, where styrene is suspended in water and polymerised. A number of chemicals are added into the reactor in measured quantities to improve the processability. After polymerisation, a blowing agent is injected into the reactor to give the commercial product the expandability property. Product is then dried and coated with powder, then drummed.

    Petrokemya also provides support services to National Plastic Company (Ibn Hayyan), besides operating the following plants as per an operating agreement between the two companies:

  • Vinyl Chloride Monomer plant - 390,000 tpy capacity;

  • PVC plant - 300,000 tpy capacity; and

  • PVC paste plant - 24,000 tpy capacity.

    Ibn Hayyan shares its site with Petrokemya, and Petrokemya's manpower provides administrative, financial, technical, operational and security services to Ibn Hayyan as part of a joint operating agreement to optimise operating costs for the two companies.

    Petrokemya also receives a share of the 450,000 tpy production of ethylene glycol (EG) at Sharq. Petrokemya supplies the EG plant with ethylene.

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