CNPC chooses UOP technology for PX production plant
20 Jan '07
3 min read
UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, announced that PetroChina Company Ltd, a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), has selected UOP to supply technology, basic engineering services and equipment for an aromatics project to be installed at PetroChina's Urumqi facility.
Basic engineering design is underway, and commissioning of the complex, located in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is scheduled for early 2009. CNPC is China's largest producer and supplier of oil and natural gas and is a major producer of refined oil products and petrochemicals.
The new plant will produce one million metric tons per annum of para-xylene (PX) and will include the largest-capacity, single-train adsorption unit for para-xylene production in the world.
The Parex process will be used for the adsorption unit. Para-xylene is a key ingredient in the production of PTA (purified terephthalic acid), which is used to make polyester for fabric and PET (polyethylene terephthalate) chips for carbonated soft drink and water bottles. The new plant will also produce 360 thousand metric tons per annum of benzene.
In addition to the Parex unit, the complex will be comprised of other process units designed by UOP, including a CCR Platforming unit to convert naphtha, an oil-derived feedstock, to aromatics and hydrogen and an Isomar unit to convert other xylenes to para-xylene.
This will be the second aromatics complex UOP has designed for PetroChina's subsidiary, the Urumqi Petrochemical Co Ltd (UPC). UPC started up the first aromatics complex in western China in 1995, which contained units using the Parex, Isomar, and Tatoray processes designed for New Aromatics Project at Urumqi and licensed by UOP. Globally, UOP has licensed more than 725 individual process units for the production of aromatics.
marketing@alchempro.com
