By Malini Hariharan
Commissioning activity at Indian Oil Corp's (IOC) new cracker and derivatives complex at Panipat, India, is progressing well, according to a company source. Operations at the new 857,000 tonnes/year cracker have started.
"Onspec propylene is in the storage tank and ethylene is expected in a day or two," he said.
Among the derivative units, the polypropylene (PP) plant with a total capacity of 600,000 tonnes/year is due to start first and should be up by end of the week. Next in line are the 350,000 tonnes/year swing high-density polyethylene (hdPE)/linear-low density PE (lldPE) and 325,000 tonnes/year monoethylene glycol (MEG) plants. Operations at the two plants are expected to commence from mid-April.
A 300,000 tonnes/year standalone hdPE plant is currently scheduled to start at end-April.
The start up has been quite smooth so far with commissioning of derivative units delayed only by a few weeks. IOC had said in early March that the PP, MEG and swing PE plant would start operations by the end of that month.
