Inner Mongolia Rongxin Chemical’s 800,000-ton olefin project is scheduled to begin trial operations by the end of 2026!

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Inner Mongolia Rongxin Chemical’s 800,000-ton olefin project is scheduled to begin trial operations by the end of 2026! On February 1, 2026, with the completion of the unhooking operation for the hexane distillation tower (T-3101), the lifting work of large-scale equipment at the Inner Mongolia Rongxin Chemical Project Department was successfully finished. CNPC Sixth Construction started lifting equipment on December 25, 2025. Over the course of 39 days, the project team completed the lifting operations for a total of 20 large-scale equipment units, including 14 finished product silos, 3 reactors, 1 feed tank for sedimentation centrifuges, 1 powder handling tank, and 1 hexane distillation tower. According to a report issued by the Inner Mongolia Department of Commerce in January 2026, the overall progress of Inner Mongolia Rongxin Chemical Co., Ltd.’s project to produce 800,000 tons of olefins per year is 63.14%, with equipment installation being 16.45% complete. After the winter construction is completed, emphasis will be placed on completing equipment installation, pipeline laying, electrical and instrumentation debugging, as well as overall system testing. It is expected that all construction tasks will be completed by the end of 2026, followed by the commencement of trial operations with feedstock. Inner Mongolia Rongxin’s 800,000-ton per year olefin facility uses methanol as a raw material and the DMTO-III technology to produce polymeric-grade ethylene and propylene monomers, which are then used in polymerization to create high-density polyethylene and high-performance polypropylene products; meanwhile, by-products such as 1-butene, isobutane, C5+, and MTBE are also generated. The capacity is 800,000 tons per year for methanol-to-olefins, 400,000 tons per year for polyethylene, 400,000 tons per year for polypropylene, and 15,000 tons per year for 1-butene. With the rapid advancement of the new materials industry, ultra-high molecular weight polyolefins and polyolefin elastomers are becoming key areas of focus in China’s coal chemical and petrochemical new materials sector. Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE or UPE) is primarily used in lithium battery separators and fibers, etc. Ultra-high molecular weight polypropylene (UHMWPP or UPP) is one of the high-end thermoplastic engineering plastics, with great potential in high-end application areas. According to statistics from Yaha Consulting, as of the end of 2025, the total installed UPE production capacity in China was approximately 700,000 tons per year. Over the past year, multiple UPE projects in the country have been put into operation or made significant progress. Such as the commissioning of Yulong Petrochemical’s 100,000 tons per year production facility ； The 50,000 tons per year chemical production project in Yulin, China has entered the trial production and commissioning phase ； Shaanxi Coal Pujie Energy Chemicals’ first large-scale domestic coal-based industrial plant with an annual capacity of 40,000 tons has been put into operation ； Chengzhi’s 40,000-ton/year production facility was completed ； The 140,000 tons per year ultra-high purity high molecular weight polyethylene plant of Puyi Jing has been put into operation. ExxonMobil, Shandong Jincheng Petrochemical, and the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences have made progress in the research, development, and industrialization of UPP. Polyethylene elastomer (POE) is primarily used in fields such as photovoltaic encapsulation films, automotive components, high-end footwear materials, and wires and cables, and its development in China is progressing rapidly. Polyethylene elastomers represented by E-POE and H-POE, which are produced using only ethylene as a raw material without relying on α-olefins or metallocene catalysts, have attracted widespread attention in the industry. Furthermore, in December 2024, the first pilot-scale production facility for polypropylene-based elastomers (PBE) in China, built by Sinopec Beijing Research Institute of Chemical Technology, was successfully put into operation, breaking the technical monopoly held by international giants. With the expansion of ethylene and propylene production capacity and an ample supply of raw materials, markets such as UPE, UPP, POE, and PBE hold promising prospects, and manufacturers of related technologies and equipment will face favorable development opportunities.