Construction on FRPC’s First Ethylene Unit Completed

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Construction of the 120,000 ton-per-annum (TPA) gas-fractionation unit on Fujian Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited’s FRPC first ethylene project has been completed, marking the official start of the unit’s installation stage.

The unit’s construction began January 18. Under the scientific management and careful planning by FRPC’s integrated project management technology (IPMT) team, the engineering, procurement and construction contractor overcame the difficulties of bad weather, a tight schedule and numerous engineering challenges to finish construction in five months, setting a record for the speedy construction of a gas-fractionation unit.

FRPC officially started its operation June 12. By the end of July, it had refined 496,500 tons of crude oil. The gas fractionation unit is crucial for FRPC’s production-capacity expansion in propylene and polypropylene production.

The ethylene project at FRPC includes a set of 800,000 TPA ethylene cracking facility, an 800,000 TPA polyethylene unit, and a 400,000 TPA polypropylene and 700,000 TPA paraxylene aromatic hydrocarbon combined unit.

Besides chemical production, the ethylene project at FRPC will also bring FPPC’s refining capacity from 80,000 barrels (4 million tons a year) a day up to 240,000 barrels a day (12 million tons a year). Also, the new refining equipment will be engineered to better suit the refined crude oil containing sulfur, since the major supply to this refinery will come from Saudi Arabia, whose oil tends to have higher sulfur content.

So far, FRPC’s new refining infrastructure for its ethylene project has entered installation stage. Big equipment is being crane-lifted into place, and the primary construction of the polypropylene and polyethylene units has been completed. Now the architectural structure and the steel framework are being set up. Construction of the ethylene production unit, the integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) unit, is at the last stage, and equipment installation is about to commence. As for the public-use area of the ethylene project, the installation of main storage units is being carried out smoothly.

At the same time, work on the 300,000 ton oil port at Qinglanshan is going at full speed. Its No. 1 and No. 3 storage units have been completed, and the work on bridge surface, box girder bridge and steel frame is proceeding as planned.

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