Sinopec, SABIC to keep Tianjin cracker rate at 70% over 3 months

25 February 2010 04:04  [Source: ICIS news]

GUANGZHOU (ICIS news)--Petrochemical majors Sinopec and Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC) have been running their 1m tonne/year cracker in Tianjing, northern China at around 70% of capacity this month, a company source said on Thursday.

“Such operation rate would be kept in the next three months at least as the upstream refinery would run at [an] 80% rate during the period,” said the source in Mandarin.

The cracker gets naphtha feedstock from a 10m tonne/year refinery that was started up in December last year, said the source.

All the downstream facilities of the cracker would also operate at around 70% load, he added.

These include an ethylene oxide/ethylene glycol (EO/EG) unit that can produce 40,000 tonnes/year of EO and 360,000 tonnes/year of EG; a 300,000 tonne/year linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant; a 300,000 tonne/year high density polyethylene (HDPE) facility.

The petrochemical facility in Tianjin also has a 450,000 tonne/year polypropylene (PP) plant, a 600,000 tonne/year cracked gasoline hydrogenation unit, a 200,000 tonne/year butadiene extraction facility, a 350,000 tonne/year phenol/acetone unit; and a 120,000/50,000 tonne/year methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE)/ butene-1 plant.

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By: Fanny Zhang
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