Chinese operator lets contract for new petrochemical plant

Lihuayi Group Co. Ltd. has let a contract to Lummus Technology LLC to provide technology and engineering services for a new polypropylene (PP) plant to be built at its 5.5-million-tonnes/year (tpy) refining and petrochemical complex in Dongying, Shandong Province, China.

As part of the contract for the new PP unit, Lummus will license its proprietary Novolen PP technology, as well as deliver basic design engineering, trading, and other unidentified services for the project, the service provider said on Sept. 27.

Lummus confirmed this latest contract—for which the service provider did not reveal a value—follows Lihuayi’s previous award to the firm for its proprietary CATOFIN propane dehydrogenation (PDH) technology for a new 600,000-tpy PDH unit also to be built at the complex.

The new PP and PDH units come as part of Lihuayi’s upcoming petrochemicals expansion at the Shandong complex, which will include adding new units for production of ethylene, styrene, and propylene, according to a Mar. 29, 2022, release from Lummus catalyst partner Clariant International Ltd.’s Clariant Catalysts, to which Lihuayi awarded three separate contracts for new units included in the project.

As part of the March 2022 contracts, Clariant will provide a selection of its high-performance proprietary catalysts, including:

• OleMax 101 catalyst—used to purify gas streams for acetylene, dienes, oxygen, nitrogen oxides, and heavy metals in a single reactor—for olefins recovery from cracked gas and off-gas streams at a new 1-million tpy olefins plant.
• StyroMax UL 3 rib-shaped styrene catalyst for production of styrene monomer from a new 720,000-tpy styrene plant.
• CATOFIN catalysts and Heat Generating Material (HGM) to produce 600,000 tpy of propylene at the complex’s new Lummus-licensed PDH plant.

Firm details regarding a commissioning timeline for Lihuayi’s completed petrochemicals expansion at Shandong have yet to be revealed.