MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sonatrach, ranked by Forbes as the world’s 12th largest oil company, is nearing completion of a new paraxylene crystallization plant at its integrated refinery/petrochemical site in Skikda, Algeria, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The plant's start-up is scheduled for December of 2013.
The plant’s core units will utilize CrystPX and GT-IsomPX, both licensed from GTC Technology. CrystPX recovers paraxylene from reformate feedstock while GT-IsomPX, using ISOXYL catalyst from Clariant, isomerizes C8 aromatics into additional paraxylene. The license also includes naphtha hydrotreating and reforming, aromatics extraction, and other aromatics operations. Samsung Engineering Co., Ltd. provided EPC services for the new facilities.
The paraxylene plant was originally part of Sonatrach’s petrochemical subsidiary, Naftec, which Sonatrach absorbed in 2009.
The new units continue Sonatrach’s long-term expansion plans for additional refining and petrochemical capacity at its facilities in Algeria to meet the growing domestic demand for oil products.
As MRC wrote before, Ulsan Aromatics is likely to start commercial production at its new paraxylene (PX) plant production in May 2014. The new PX plant at Ulsan in South Korea will have a production capacity of 1 million tonnes per year.
Paraxylene (PX) is the largest volume isomer of the mixed xylenes. Around 98% of PX is consumed in the polyester chain, mainly in the production of fibre, film and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle resins, via one of two intermediates - purified terephthalic acid (PTA) or dimethyl terephthalate (DMT). A small amount of PX is used as a solvent and to produce di-paraxylene and herbicides.
MRC