Saudi Sadara plans by-product recycling project

LONDON (ICIS)–Saudi Arabia’s Sadara Chemical is planning a “by-products upgrade project”, the petrochemicals joint venture between Saudi Aramco and US chemicals major DowDuPont said on Tuesday.

Sadara said that it has agreed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Gulf Interchem, a Bahrain-based technology company focused on chemical by-product recycling, to build the project at the PlasChem Park in Saudi Arabia’s Jubail Industrial City II.

Under the non-binding MoU, Gulf Interchem will build an integrated treatment plant to recover valuable molecules from Sadara by-products and convert them into chemicals that can be used in the production of specialty chemicals such as corrosion inhibitors, adhesives, lubricants and others.

The project is expected to yield an estimated reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of 50,000 tonnes/year and create 50 specialised jobs.

Details about capacities, investment costs or completion and start-up were not disclosed.

However, Mohammad Alazzaz, director of Value Park, Sadara, added that many of the investors in PlasChem Park would conclude their planned project engineering activities by early next year, with ground-breaking expected in the third quarter of 2018.