The 4.2 million tons per year wax oil hydrogenation unit of the Guangdong Petrochemical project has been handed over!

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On the morning of June 29, the handover ceremony for the 4.2 million tons per year wax oil hydrogenation unit of the Guangdong Petrochemical Integration Project (hereinafter referred to as “Guangdong Petrochemical”) was held at the construction site. According to Sun Hongyu, deputy manager of the Second Refining Production Department at Sinopec Guangdong Petrochemical Branch, the facility utilizes Shell’s patented technology for parallel reactor installation, and it is the largest of its kind in the country. The 4.2 million tons per year wax oil hydrogenation unit is also one of the ten main production units in Guangdong Petrochemical’s integrated refining and chemical processing project. It was constructed under a PC general contract by China Petroleum Engineering Construction Company (CPECC), with CPECC’s Seventh Construction Company handling the actual construction work. Since work began on March 30, 2020, the project’s workers have overcome challenges such as high temperatures, severe heat, typhoons, and heavy rains, working hard to ensure the safety, quality, and timely completion of the project; it has thus been regarded as a \"model\" for the construction of integrated petrochemical projects in Guangdong. It is worth mentioning that the installation of 2 heating furnaces in this unit marked the first time in Sinopec that square furnaces were installed in a fully skid-mounted configuration. The two heating furnaces are the reaction feed heating furnace and the distillation tower feed heating furnace; the latter is 12.5 meters long, 16 meters wide, 29 meters high, and weighs 660 tons. To reduce on-site construction work and ensure the quality of the project, the project team came up with a creative solution: the prefabrication and assembly are carried out in another location, and then the components are transported directly to the site using barges and trucks, where they are installed in place through hydraulic sinking using equipment mounted on vehicles. Calculations show that with this construction plan, the overall production efficiency of the two heating furnaces is increased by more than 100%. Moreover, the construction period is shortened by at least 3 months compared to the scenario where components are delivered separately and assembled on-site. The Guangdong Petrochemical Project is located in Jieyang, Guangdong, and is built alongside the sea. The project’s capacity is 20 million tons per year for refining, 2.6 million tons per year for aromatics, and 1.2 million tons per year for ethylene. It is the only petrochemical project built by China National Petroleum Corporation in Guangdong Province, and it also represents the largest single-investment project of its kind. It plays a significant role in enhancing the balance and coordination of regional development. The wax oil hydrogenation unit developed by CCCC uses heavy vacuum wax oil from atmospheric and vacuum distillation units, as well as coking wax oil from delayed coking units as raw materials. Through catalytic hydrogenation reactions, impurities such as sulfur, nitrogen, and metals are removed, the hydrogen content is increased, and the residue amount is reduced. This unit supplies raw materials for downstream catalytic cracking units, while also contributing to the sustainability, intelligence, and efficiency of Guangdong Petrochemical, a world-class refining and petrochemical complex. CPECC is responsible for the general contracting of 77 main units in the Guangdong Petrochemical Project. As of June 29, it has completed 41 of these main units, including 4 core facilities. In addition to the 4.2 million tons per year wax oil hydrogenation unit, these include 2 units with a capacity of 10 million tons per year for atmospheric and vacuum distillation, which were completed on June 26, as well as a catalytic cracking unit with a capacity of 3.6 million tons per year, completed on June 28. The centralized delivery of the first batch of core equipment has laid a solid foundation for the Guangdong Petrochemical project to begin operations and testing at an early date.