Fujian Refinery Ready for Startup     

Fujian Refining & Petrochemical Co., Ltd., a joint venture between the Fujian provincial government, Sinopec Group, ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco, each holding 25%, has completed the construction on the new refinery in mid-March and will put it on stream in April, disclosed Wu Zhong, project manager of the company on the IGCC Polygeneration in China 2009 held by Asiachem Consulting in Shanghai March 26th-27th. With the expansion, the refining capacity of the jv will be increased to 12 million t/a from 4 million t/a.  
   Other two important production facilities in the integrated petrochemical project - the asphalt based IGCC (integrated gasification combined circulation) facilities and the 800 000 t/a ethylene cracker will start up in May and June respectively, according to Mr. Wu. This RMB4.2 billion integrated petrochemical project also includes a 700 000 t/a aromatics project, timesheet on which is not disclosed yet. The integrated operation will help the company reduce carbon dioxide emission and realize a lower storage in the production.
   The IGCC unit that consumes asphalt from the refining unit will supply hydrogen, steam and power to the whole integrated petrochemical project. Three gasification furnaces using Shell's oxidation technology are designed to gasify totally 135 tons per hour of liquid asphalt that contains 84% of carbon and 6.8% of sulfur, into syngas. One quarter of syngas will be used to make hydrogen through a PSA unit supplied by Chengdu Huaxi Company and other pushes engine to generate power. Two 40 000 m3/h air separation units made by Linde AG are installed. Lurgi's technology is also licensed to serve the acid gas removing unit. Ningbo Engineering Inc. is the EPC contractor. This IGCC unit will be China's second one put into commercial operation.