Engineering design for Zhoushan’s 400,000-ton POE mega-plant has commenced

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In 2026, during the 25th National “Safety Production Month”, everyone is encouraged to prioritize safety and be capable of responding to emergencies; efforts should also be made to identify and rectify potential risks and hazards. -------------------------------------------------- On June 25, the Zhoushan Ecological Environment Bureau issued its approval regarding the environmental impact report for the project undertaken by Zhejiang Zhiying New Materials Co., Ltd., which involves the construction of a pilot-scale facility for producing ton-level quantities of POE metallocene catalysts and special polyesters. According to the “Report”, the enterprise plans to invest 34.4 million yuan to lease Workshop No. 9 at the Daishan New Materials Research and Experiment Base of the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The total floor area of the workshop is 1,147.34 square meters. The company will purchase equipment such as depolymerization reactors, reaction kettles, distillation columns, and centrifuges, in order to construct one pilot-scale plant for POE metallocene catalysts and another for special-purpose polyesters. The maximum designed capacities of these pilot plants are in the tonnage and kilotonnage ranges respectively; the actual pilot-scale production capacities are 0.3 tons per year for the POE metallocene catalyst plant and 200 tons per year for the special polyester plant. On June 25, 2025, the kick-off meeting for the engineering design of the 400,000-ton/year POE plant under the High-End New Materials Project of Zhejiang Petrochemical Co., Ltd. was successfully held in Hangzhou. The process package for this project was licensed by Zhejiang Zhiying Petrochemical Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Zhejiang Ruizhi Holding Group Co., Ltd., while Shanghai Zhiying Chemical Technology Co., Ltd. was responsible for the engineering design. The facility utilizes the POE integrated process technology developed by Zhejiang Zhiying in collaboration with universities; this technology is protected by independent intellectual property rights. It has overcome numerous critical technical challenges. Thanks to the highly efficient Vemetsol™ metallocene catalyst, Zyneson™ cocatalyst technology, as well as high-performance reactors and devolatilization systems, a unique ZoneFlex™ solution polymerization process has been established. Building upon preliminary lab-scale tests and a thousand-ton pilot plant, a complete process technology capable of producing 100,000 tons per production line has been successfully developed. Technological progress: On August 21, 2024, Zhiying’s kiloton-scale pilot plant for α-olefins achieved continuous operation and successfully produced qualified 1-octene. Tests have shown that all performance indicators of the product meet industry-leading standards. This represents another major technological breakthrough following the successful development of 1-hexene. On September 6, 2024, the pilot plant for producing thousand-ton quantities of polyolefin elastomer (POE) at Zhiying was successfully operated through its entire process chain. The reaction system, static devolatilization system, and pelletizing system were operated in unison for the first time, resulting in the production of qualified POE products on the same day. This marks another solid step forward in the company’s development of comprehensive technologies for advanced chemical polymer materials. On December 7, 2024, the process technology for the 200,000-ton/year POE project at Jintang New Materials by Rongsheng New Materials (Zhoushan) Co., Ltd., developed under the leadership of Zhejiang Zhiying R&D Center and engineered by Shanghai Zhiying Engineering Design, successfully passed the “First Domestic Demonstration Meeting on Process Safety and Reliability” organized by the Zhejiang Chemical Safety Association. On March 19, 2025, the appraisal meeting for the pilot-scale results of the “Technology for the Selective Oligomerization of Ethylene to Produce α-Olefins” and the “Technology for Producing POE, an Ethylene-α-Olefin Copolymer Elastomer via the Solution Process”, jointly developed by Zhejiang Zhiying and universities, was successfully held in Hangzhou. The expert review panel unanimously agreed that the technology package features mature processes and advanced performance, meeting the conditions for industrialization; thus, they approved its technical appraisal and evaluation. This has laid a solid technical foundation for the design and commencement of this large-scale POE facility.