Fujian Meide Petrochemical lets contract for new PDH unit

Zhongjing Petrochemicals Group subsidiary Fujian Meide Petrochemical Co. has let a contract to Lummus Technology LLC and catalyst partner Clariant International Ltd.’s Clariant Catalysts for a project to expand propylene production at the company’s operations in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, China.

As part of the contract, Lummus Technology will license its proprietary CATOFIN process technology for a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit that will use Clariant’s tailor-made catalysts and Heat Generating Material (HGM) to produce 900,000 tonnes/year (tpy) of propylene, the service providers said in separate releases on May 25.

In addition to increased production reliability, combination of Clariant’s HGM with CATOFIN technology will reduce the new unit’s energy consumption, providing Fujian Meide a low-carbon route to propylene production, said Stefan Heuser, Clariant Catalysts’ senior vice-president and general manager.

Scheduled for startup in 2023, the new unit will become the second PDH unit—and one of the world’s largest—at Fujian Meide’s Fuzhou petrochemical complex, according to McDermott and Clariant.

While McDermott and Clariant did not reveal further details of this latest joint technology-catalyst contract for Fuzhou’s Phase 2 PDH unit, Shengu Group, or Shenyang Blower Group Co. Ltd., confirmed in a release Feb. 1, 2021, its receipt of a contract award in January 2021 to supply new compressors for the Fuzhou complex’s gas, propylene, and ethylene units to support the Lummus-equipped, second-phase PDH unit.

Fujian Meide previously commissioned a 660,000-tpy PDH unit as part of the first-phase development of the Fuzhou complex. The Phase 1 PDH unit is equipped with process technology from Honeywell UOP LLC (OGJ Online, Sept. 17, 2019).