Corrected: S Arabia’s SABIC starts up CO2 utilisation plant in end-’15

Correction: In the ICIS story headlined “S Arabia’s SABIC starts up CO2 utilisation plant in end-’15” dated 13 July 2015, please read in the 16th paragraph … and now stands at more than 70m tonnes/year… instead of… and now stands at 40m tonnes/year… . A corrected story follows.

SINGAPORE (ICIS)–SABIC is planning to start operations at the world’s largest carbon dioxide (CO2) utilisation plant at its chemical complex in Jubail, Saudi Arabia by the end of the year, a company official said.

Plant construction is now complete and commissioning work is underway.

“It [new plant] will compress around 1,500 tonnes of raw CO2 per day from out glycol plants, which will then be piped to make urea and methanol,” Atieh Abu Raqabah, general manager for corporate sustainability department at SABIC, told ICIS in an interview.

“This is new technology our engineers invented. [We] have the patents [to the technology], and a German company built the plant for us,” he said.

The unit is expected to ramp up to full operation toward the end of the year, by the time the company’s new 500,000 tonne/year ethylene glycol (EG) plant in Jubail comes online, he said.

The project will capture CO2 in gaseous form emitted by the EG plant, and then purify and liquefy it for piping to associated plants of SABIC at the site to produce methanol and urea, Raqabah said.

“This is our contribution to [efforts to address] climate change,” Raqabah noted.

Financial details of the project were not disclosed.

As part of SABIC’s overall strategy for sustainable development, the company aims to significantly raise the utilisation of CO2 to 4.2m tonnes/year in the next “one to two years” from 2.7m tonnes/year in 2014, he said.

CO2 is a feedstock in the production of chemicals, such as polycarbonate (PC), methanol and urea, Raqabah said.

In a separate report issued earlier SABIC outlined it future strategy by saying: “In addition, SABIC’s manufacturing affiliate, Gas, will purify a portion of the CO2 for industrial-grade input into the food and beverage industry.

“Both the United [EG] and Gas projects are on track for mid-2015 completion and are projected to decrease emissions by up to 500,000 MT [metric tonnes] CO2 per year.

“Looking ahead, SABIC is in a strong position to achieve further GHG [green house gases] savings through carbon capture and utilization. We have a number of manufacturing units that produce highly concentrated CO2, and other sites in the same manufacturing complex that are able to use CO2 as a feedstock.

“For example, our recently commissioned SAFCO 5 project is expected to result in 960,000 MT [metric tonnes] CO2 being converted into urea product,” it added.

SAFCO 5 is a fertilizer plant at the complex.

SABIC had achieved a 5% reduction in the GHG emissions and a 7% decrease in energy intensity and another 7% reduction in the use of water even though its product portfolio and overall production of petrochemical products was increasing, and now stands at more than 70m tonnes/year, according to Raqabah.

SABIC’s sustainable initiative also includes cutting down on transport fuel in moving its products.

It plans to deliver chemicals and polymers to its customers through rail transport as a means to reduce its carbon footprint, a company executive said earlier this year. Currently, the petrochemical giant moves its products via trucks. By switching to rail, SABIC will cut its CO2 emissions by 48,000 metric tonnes.

Interview article by Tahir Ikram