Will 300,000 tons of ethylene fade from history? ? ? ?

On November 18, 2006, after two months of trial operation, the 1 million tons per year ethylene expansion project at Sinopec Maoming was officially completed and put into operation. As a result, Maoming Petrochemical has become China’s largest ethylene production base, which will effectively alleviate the demand gap for high-quality ethylene products in the domestic market. 　　At the celebration ceremony for the project’s completion and commissioning held on the 18th, Chen Tonghai, General Manager of Sinopec Group, said that the Maoming 1 million tons per year ethylene expansion project, which involved an investment of 8.1 billion yuan, was the first ethylene project with a capacity of one million tons to be completed and put into operation in China during the 11th Five-Year Plan period. Once this project is put into operation, Maoming Petrochemical’s ethylene production capacity will account for 1/6 of China Petrochemical’s total capacity and 1/10 of the country’s overall capacity, with an annual output of over 3 million tons of various ethylene-based chemical products. The newly built polypropylene plant with an annual capacity of 300,000 tons, the high-density polyethylene plant with an annual capacity of 350,000 tons, and the high-pressure polyethylene plant with an annual capacity of 250,000 tons all have the highest single-line production capacities in China at present. 　　The expansion and renovation project of Maoming ethylene plant officially commenced on December 15, 2004, and was completed and put into trial operation on September 16, 2006, taking 21 months in total – a record for the shortest construction period for a large-scale ethylene plant in China. The localization rate of the newly built pyrolysis unit has reached 87.8%, with core equipment such as pyrolysis gas compressors and cryogenic tanks all being domestically produced. The expansion project for ethylene production in Maoming requires only an investment of 12,000 yuan per ton of additional ethylene production capacity, which is far lower than the current investment level of 25,000 to 40,000 yuan per ton for new ethylene production facilities in China.

As early as the Sixth Five-Year Plan period, Maoming proposed building an ethylene plant, but it was not approved due to the limitations at that time. In the mid-1980s, the winds of reform and opening up swept across southern Guangdong, creating an opportunity for the people of Maoming to realize their desire to build a large ethylene plant and a petrochemical city. On New Year’s Day 1986, the **leader visited Maoming and instructed that Maoming Petrochemical should focus on producing ethylene, so as to make full use of oil resources and promote the localization of petrochemical raw materials. The employees of Maoming Petrochemical were greatly inspired and promptly initiated the preliminary work for building a large-scale ethylene plant. In August 1986, Maoming Petrochemical submitted a report to Sinopec Corporation regarding the construction of an ethylene plant with an annual production capacity of 300,000 tons ； In July 1987, Ye Xuanping, the governor of Guangdong Province, issued a document submitting formally to the State Council a report on the construction of a 300,000-ton/year ethylene plant in Maoming ； In 1991, Maoming’s 300,000 tons per year ethylene project was approved by the State Council and included in the **“Eighth Five-Year Plan” key construction projects. On November 8, 1993, the roar of machinery awakened the sleeping Feijialing. More than 20,000 elite soldiers from all over the country gathered on the shores of the South China Sea, sounding the call to build Maoming’s 300,000-ton/year ethylene plant. In the second half of 1994, just as the civil engineering work for the ethylene plant had been largely completed and equipment installation was in full swing, macroeconomic controls were implemented across the country to reduce investment in infrastructure projects. As a result, the funding gap for the ethylene plant grew increasingly larger, leading to difficulties in proceeding with the construction. At a critical moment, Zou Jiahua, then Vice Premier of the State Council, visited Maoming. There, he saw the desire of the people there to develop ethylene production, as well as how the workers at Maoming Petrochemical managed to achieve in just one year the progress that would normally take one and a half years under normal conditions. At the subsequent project coordination meeting, he said it had been very difficult to achieve this result in just over a year, that there was no room for retreat, and that priority must be given to the Maoming ethylene plant. With the support of the State Council and various financial authorities, Sinopec leveraged its group advantages to raise the much-needed funds for the Maoming ethylene project. Subsequently, the State Council approved the issuance of 2.4 billion yuan in petrochemical bonds for the construction of the Maoming ethylene plant. All of this greatly inspired the builders on site; four \"100-day campaigns\" were carried out one after another, and the construction progress was rapid. The project was completed in just 33 months, 10 months ahead of the **approved construction timeline. On August 29, 1996, the cracking unit, the cornerstone of Maoming Petrochemical’s ethylene production, was officially put into operation for trial runs. After 10 full years of arduous and tortuous efforts, Maoming finally established its own ethylene plant, achieving a significant leap from a single oil refining enterprise to an integrated oil refining and chemical manufacturing enterprise. The construction of a 300,000-ton ethylene plant has placed Maoming among the top petrochemical bases in China, but the decision-makers in Maoming are setting their sights on an even higher goal: to create a world-class petrochemical hub. As the major ethylene plants in the country have successively completed their second round of upgrades, increasing their production capacity from 300,000 tons to 700,000–800,000 tons, Maoming Ethylene is the last plant to undergo such an upgrade. Can it manage to overtake the others and take the lead once again?

The existing 300,000 tons per year of ethylene production capacity at each plant has been upgraded through the first and second rounds of modifications, resulting in capacities of over 500,000 to 600,000 tons per year; further upgrades are likely not possible, so expansion or construction of new plants is necessary. New ethylene production facilities should start with a capacity of at least 1 million tons per year.

The 720,000 tons per year ethylene upgrade project at Qilu Petrochemical has passed the environmental protection inspection organized by the State Environmental Protection Administration. The 720,000 tons per year ethylene upgrading project at Qilu Petrochemical is a **key technical improvement project, and it is also one of the key projects under Sinopec’s 10th Five-Year Plan. With a total investment of 4.6 billion yuan, the project consists of 19 individual components, including 8 main production units and 11 auxiliary production and utility systems. From the start of construction in February 2003 to the production of qualified ethylene products on October 7, 2004, it became the project with the shortest construction period and the most concentrated construction timeline in China’s history of ethylene plant construction.

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The project with the shortest construction period in China’s history of ethylene production was the 600,000-ton ethylene expansion and renovation project at CNPC Lanzhou Petrochemical, which took 18 months.

The expansion project for Lanzhou Petrochemical’s ethylene production capacity, with an annual output of 600,000 tons, which is fully funded by China National Petroleum Corporation, began construction on April 8 last year. After 18 months of work, four out of the six main chemical processing units intended for product production have been handed over to the owner by the construction party, and they are now in the stage of system testing. The construction of the remaining two units is nearly complete, with all preparations for production already underway. Of the 33 design elements related to road transportation, water, electricity, and heating systems, 26 have been handed over, and 22 of these elements are already in operation; it is expected that they will be put into full production within this year. This is news sent on October 9th from the command post for the large ethylene project at Lanzhou Petrochemical. 　　It is reported that since July of this year, the various units of the project to expand the ethylene production capacity to 600,000 tons per year have entered the production preparation phase, with systematic \"commissioning\" tasks such as purging of process pipelines, airtightness testing, and inspection for leaks at pipeline connections being carried out one after another. To date, the pressure testing and airtightness tests for the main ethylene plant are nearing completion, while interlock testing and system drying are in progress. The butadiene and gasoline hydrogenation plants have successfully completed their chemical feed testing on the first attempt. The polypropylene and fully dense polyethylene plants have reached the intermediate completion stage, with physical material testing being carried out on a unit-by-unit basis. The compressors, which are the core components of the high-pressure polyethylene plant, are undergoing nitrogen testing and system calibration. 　　The Lanzhou Petrochemical’s project for the expansion and upgrade of its ethylene production capacity to 600,000 tons per year is one of the key construction projects in our province; it is also one of the most capital-intensive projects among the construction projects undertaken in our province to date. The total investment in this project is nearly 7 billion yuan. Once it comes online, the annual production of polyolefins will increase by 800,000 tons, resulting in an increase in the company’s annual sales revenue of over 10 billion yuan and annual profits of over 2 billion yuan. This will fundamentally change the situation at Lanzhou Petrochemical Company, where the overall scale of chemical production is low, the size of individual processing units is small, and the quality of assets is poor. At the same time, experts note that the ethylene industry chain will extend to various sectors such as automobiles, electronics, and building materials; therefore, the commissioning of this project will generate dozens of times more economic benefits in Lanzhou and its surrounding areas, while also creating numerous job opportunities. According to the budget, the tertiary industries in the surrounding area alone can generate an additional value of over 1 billion yuan. 　　In addition, this project introduces the world’s most advanced production technologies for polypropylene and polyethylene resins. Once operational, it will provide excellent raw material conditions for the development of water-saving agriculture in Gansu Province and even the western region, holding great significance for the advancement of the petrochemical and plastics industries in our province and across the west. At the same time, it also helps to accelerate the structural adjustment of China’s petroleum refining and processing industry, further enhancing its overall competitiveness; it holds great significance for driving the industrial development of our province and implementing the **Western Development Strategy**.

At present, the average construction period for million-ton ethylene plants in our country is 20 to 24 months, which is much longer than the international average of 36 to 40 months. However, in terms of various criteria such as construction cost, construction period, quality, and modularity, these plants are at world-class levels.

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