BPCL lets contract for petrochemical project near Kochi

India’s state-owned Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (BPCL) has let a contract to Sumitomo Chemical Co. Ltd. to provide technology licensing for a large-scale petrochemical project to be built adjacent to its refinery complex near Kochi, at Ambalamugal, Ernakulam district, in the Indian state of Kerala.

Sumitomo Chemical will license its proprietary technology for production of propylene oxide (PO) for a PO plant at the site that will have a 300,000-tonne/year production capacity at its targeted completion in 2022, the service provider said.

BPCL currently is conducting front-end engineering design and detailed engineering on the proposed petrochemical project, which alongside the PO plant, also will include a polyols plant, Sumitomo Chemical said.

Sumitomo Chemical’s PO technology is based on a PO-only process in which, with cumene recycling, PO alone is manufactured without accompanying coproducts.

Further details regarding the project and contract were not disclosed.

Additional Thai PO project

Sumitomo Chemical said it also has licensed the PO technology to a subsidiary of PTT Global Chemical Public Co. Ltd. (PTTGC) of Thailand for a 200,000-tpy PO plant that, currently under construction, is scheduled to be completed in 2020.

The PO project comes as part of an investment under GC Oxirane Co. Ltd., a PTTGC wholly owned subsidiary.

The PO project comes alongside a polyols project currently under execution by GC Polyols Co. Ltd. (GPC), a joint venture of PTTGC and Japanese partners Sanyo Chemical Industries and Toyota Tsusho Corp., according to a Mar. 23, 2018, release from PTTGC.

GPC’s polyols project also is due for start-up in 2020, PTTGC said.

Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].