Hyundai Oilbank Co. Ltd. (HDO) has let a long-term contract to Praxair Inc., Danbury, Conn., to supply industrial gases to its 390,000-b/sd refinery at the Daesan petrochemical complex in South Korea’s Chungnam Province, 130 km southwest of Seoul.
Praxair will build, own, and operate four vacuum pressure-swing adsorption (VPSA) plants that will deliver a combined 750 tonnes/day of oxygen to HDO’s Daesan refining and petrochemical operations, Praxair said.
While Praxair confirmed the VPSAs are due for startup in 2017, it did not disclose either the value or specific duration of the contract.
This latest contract award, which aligns with HDO’s ongoing program to improve the quality and diversify the portfolio of fuel and petrochemical products manufactured at Daesan, follows a project already under way by HDO and Lotte Chemical Corp. joint venture Hyundai Chemical Co. Ltd. to build a condensate refining and mixed xylene (MX) production plant inside the refinery, according to HDO’s 2015 annual report.
The new plant, on which construction began in December 2015, will process 130,000 b/sd of condensate to produce 1 million tonnes/year of MX and other byproducts that will be sold to HDO, Lotte Chemical, and Hyundai Cosmo Petrochemical Co. Ltd. (a separate HDO venture with Japan’s Cosmo Oil Co. Ltd.) to replace MX imports used in the benzene, toluene, paraxylene (BTX) process.
Scheduled for startup late this year, the BTX plant’s condensate refining capacity will life overall crude processing at the Daesan refinery to 520,000 b/sd, HDO said.
Alongside its current 390,000 b/sd crude processing capacity, the HDO’s Daesan refinery is equipped with the following unit capacities: 76,000 b/sd of vacuum distillation, 26,000-b/sd of naphtha platforming, 27,000 b/sd of Kerosine Merox, 58,000 b/sd of kerosine hydrotreating, 124,000 b/sd of gas oil hydrotreating, 35,000 b/sd of delayed coking, 37,000 b/sd of hydrocracking; 85,000 b/sd of sulfur recovery, and 1.4 million tpy of BTX
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
