China Petrochemical Corp. (Sinopec) has let a contract to a division of E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. for delivery of an alkylation unit for subsidiary Sinopec Qilu Petrochemical Corp.’s (SQPC) 13 million-tonne/year refinery at Zibo in China’s eastern province of Shandong.
DuPont Clean Technologies will provide technology licensing, engineering, and equipment for a proprietary STRATCO alkylation unit, which will have a nameplate capacity of 400,000 tpy, the service provider said.
Plot-space limitations at the refinery required the unit to be custom designed for the first commercial use of DuPont’s Model 74 Contactor reactors, which were developed to reduce the number of reactors required for an alkylation unit.
Based on the design of DuPont’s standard-size Model 63 Contactor reactor, the Model 74 version features an individual reactor volume of 18,000-gal volume vs. the Model 63’s 11,500-gal reactor volume.
Scheduled for startup in mid-2018, SQPC’s new STRATCO alkylation unit comes as part of the refinery’s plan to produce low-sulfur, high-octane, low-RVP alkylate to help ensure overall quality of its fuel production complies with China 5 emission standards, which equivalent to Euro 5 specifications, cap the maximum sulfur content of gasoline and diesel at 10 ppm.
Earlier in the year, Sinopec let a contract to DuPont for a 300,000-tpy STRATCO alkylation unit to be installed at subsidiary Tianjin Petroleum & Chemical Corp.'s (TPCC) 15.5 million-tpy integrated refining and petrochemical complex at Tianjin Binhai New Area, Tianjin, in northern China (OGJ Online, Jan. 26, 2017).
DuPont said TPCC’s unit remains on schedule for startup in mid-2018.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
