PetroChina Selected UOP Technology for New Complex near Chengdu     

On July 11th, UOP LLC, a Honeywell (NYSE: HON) company, announced that PetroChina Sichuan Petrochemical Co., Ltd.,  a subsidiary of PetroChina Company Limited, has selected UOP to supply technology, basic engineering services and equipment for a new integrated refining and petrochemicals complex to be installed at its facility near Chengdu, Sichuan province. Engineering design is currently in progress.  
   The new plant is a grass roots installation that will produce both fuels and petrochemicals, including 600 thousand t/a para-xylene using the UOP process. 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 more than 350 thousand tons of benzene per year, also a building block in plastics production. The demand for para-xylene in China is expected to grow at an annual rate of 11% over the next ten years driven largely by the downstream market.  
   Feedstock to the aromatics complex will in part be provided by a new UOP Unicracking TM process unit that will process 2.2 million tons per year of heavy gas oil from crude oil and convert it to more usable products such as diesel, kerosene, and naphtha.  The para-xylene complex will also include a UOP CCR Platforming TM process unit to convert naphtha to aromatics and hydrogen, a UOP Isomar TM process unit to convert other xylenes to para-xylene, and a UOP Tatoray TM process unit to increase the yield of para-xylene and benzene.
   This will be the fifth aromatics complex UOP has designed for PetroChina and the sixth Unicracking unit.