Sinopec Sabic Tianjin Petrochemical Co. Ltd. (SSTPC), a 50-50 joint venture of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. and Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corp., is expanding ethylene production at its 1 million-tonne/year plant in Tianjin Province, China.
SSTPC has officially broken ground on the expansion project, which will raise overall ethylene production at the site to 1.3 million tpy, the operator said.
Alongside debottlenecking work, the expansion will include construction of a 200,000-tpy cracking furnace, a high-pressure fire pump station, cooling water tower, and cooling water pump.
Work also will involve revamping of a cracked-gas compressor, propylene compressor, and binary refrigerating compressor; replacement of ethylene and propylene column internals; and installation of a cold box, three sets of 2,000-cu m ethylene spherical tanks, a 1,500-cu m ethylene cryogenic tank, and a low-temperature ethylene loading system.
Scheduled for start-up in April 2021, the expansion project required a total investment of about 1.5 billion renminbi, SSTPC said.
