Shenghong Petrochemical lets contract for new integrated refining complex

Shenghong Refining & Chemical (Lianyungang) Co. Ltd. (SRCLC), a subsidiary of Shenghong Petrochemical Group Co. Ltd., has let a contract to Honeywell UOP LLC to provide hydrogen technology for its new 16 million-tonnes/year integrated refining complex in Lianyungang City in China’s province of Jiangsu.

As part of the contract, Honeywell UOP will deliver five of its proprietary Polybed pressure swing adsorption (PSA) units to supply high-purity hydrogen.

UOP’s scope of delivery will include the four Polybed PSA systems—which are skid-mounted, modular units complete with hardware, adsorbents, control systems, and embedded process technology, as well as proprietary UOP adsorbents to remove impurities at high pressure from hydrogen-containing process streams, allowing hydrogen to be recovered and upgraded to more than 99.9% purity to meet refining needs.

Alongside recovering and purifying hydrogen from steam reformers and refinery offgases, SRCLC also can use the Polybed PSA systems to produce hydrogen from other sources such as ethylene offgas, methanol offgas, and partial-oxidation synthesis gas.

SRCLC’s selection of UOP’s PSA technology comes amid an increasing need of global refiners to secure extremely pure, reliable, and economical supplies of hydrogen, an essential component in the removal of contaminants for production of clean transportation fuels and petrochemicals, said Bryan Glover, vice-president and general manager of Honeywell UOP’s Petrochemicals & Refining Technologies business unit.

This latest contract to Honeywell UOP follows SRCLC’s previous contract awards to E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co.’s DuPont Clean Technologies and Axens, respectively, to deliver alkylation and residue hydrocracking technologies for the grassroots complex (OGJ Online, July 10, 2019; Apr. 24, 2019).

Project overview

While Shenghong Petrochemical has released few details directly regarding SRCLC’s proposed integrated complex, including any definitive timeframe for its commissioning, a definitive timeframe for the new project from Shenghong Petrochemical, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China (MEE) provided an overview of the planned development in its “Reply on the Environmental Impact [Assessment] (EIA) Report of Shenghong Refining & Chemical (Lianyungang) Co. Ltd.’s Refining & Chemical Integration Project” issued on Dec. 12, 2018.

To be located at Lianyungang Petrochemical Industrial Base in Xuwei New District, Lianyungang City, the proposed integrated complex will process imported crude oil for production of China VI-quality fuels, as well as produce 2.8 million tpy of aromatics and 1.1 million tpy of ethylene.

Alongside its combined 16 million-tpy atmospheric-vacuum distillation unit, the complex will include the following unit capacities:

• Light hydrocarbon recovery, 4 million tpy.
• Kerosine hydrogenation, 1.8 million tpy.
• Delayed coking, 2 million tpy.
• Hydrocracking (Unit 1), 3.5 million tpy.
• Hydrocracking (Unit 2), 3.6 million tpy.
• Residue hydrogenation, 3.3 million tpy.
• Gasoline-diesel hydrogenation, 3 million tpy.
• Sulfur recovery, 600,000 tpy.
• Continuous reforming (two units), 3.2 million tpy each.
• Paraxylene production, 2.8 million tpy.
• Ethylene production, 1.1 million tpy.
• Acrylonitrile production, 260,000 tpy.
• Methyl methacrylate production, 90,000 tpy.
• Ethylene vinyl acetate production, 300,000 tpy.

Alongside its own integrated gasification combined-cycle power generation plant as well as 27 sets of other unidentified equipment, the complex also will include a terminal port in the Xuwei Port area of Lianyungang Port, which will include a 300,000-tonnes crude oil berth and four 50,000-tonne liquid chemical berths, according to MEE.

While MEE lauded the proposed project for its ability to help meet domestic demand for cleaner products, as well as its potential to promote future development of the regional petrochemicals industry, the ministry determined the project’s overall scope of construction and operation would negatively impact the region’s environmental health. As a result, MEE stipulated the project—to move forward—must strictly implement various ecological environmental protection measures, as well as adopt the most stringent environmental risk prevention measures, environmental management systems, environmental monitoring methods, and emergency measures.

Based on a search of information available to the public, Shenghong Petrochemical has yet to disclose a formal reply or revision of the project’s EIA in response to MEE’s December pronouncement.