Yangzi Petrochemical plans to build another 1 million tons per year of ethylene production capacity
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On October 30, the Jiangsu Environmental Protection Public Website released the first public notice regarding the environmental impact assessment for the project aimed at upgrading Yanzhi Petrochemical’s ethylene production technology and integrating it with downstream new material production processes. Sinopec Yangzi Petrochemical Co., Ltd. plans to invest around 12 billion yuan to build a project for the technological upgrading and reconstruction of ethylene production at Yangzi Petrochemical, as well as an integrated facility for downstream new materials, within the existing plant site of Yangzi Petrochemical in the Nanjing Jiangbei New Materials Science Park. The project construction includes the establishment of 6 production units, namely one unit for producing 1 million tons per year of ethylene, one unit for hydrogenating 500,000 tons per year of pyrolysis gasoline, one unit for producing 50,000 tons per year of hexene-1, one unit for producing 100,000 tons per year of POE, one unit for producing 50,000 tons per year of polyethylene wax, and one unit for producing 100,000 tons per year of octene-1. In addition, there are utility systems and auxiliary facilities that need to be built or upgraded to support the implementation of this project. According to the information on the Yangzi Petrochemical website, the company currently operates 58 large-scale petrochemical units with capacities of 12.5 million tons per year for oil refining, 800,000 tons per year for ethylene production, and 1.4 million tons per year for aromatic compounds production. These units enable the production of more than 50 different products across 5 categories, including synthetic resins, raw materials for synthetic fibers, basic organic chemical materials, refined oils, and synthetic rubber.
It seems that the downstream supporting facilities are not capable of handling 1 million tons of olefins.
6 production units, including 500,000 tons per year of pyrolysis gasoline hydrogenation, 50,000 tons per year of hexene-1, 100,000 tons per year of POE, 50,000 tons per year of polyethylene wax, and 100,000 tons per year of octene-1
These devices can consume only a small amount of the raw material ethylene. The 500,000 tons/year pyrolysis gasoline hydrogenation unit is a by-product facility of the ethylene complex.
The refinery has been upgraded and optimized, achieving a capacity of 14 million tons per year; therefore, the production of millions of tons of ethylene is part of the subsequent downstream facilities.