MOSCOW (MRC) -- Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical Corp (FPC) is in plans to take its high density polyethylene (HDPE) plant off-stream, as per Apic-online.
A Polymerupdate source in Taiwan informed that the plant is expected to be shut for maintenance on February 24, 2017. It is likely to remain off-line until mid-March 2017.
Located at Mailiao in Taiwan, the plant has a production capacity of 320,000 mt/year.
As MRC informed earlier, FPC's 320,000 mt/year HDPE unit was shut for a few days at the end of August 2016 due to ethylene shortage while its No. 2 steam cracker went through maintenance from July 29 to September 2. Other polyethylene units, including a 235,000 mt/year low density polyethylene (LDPE)/ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) swing plant and a 260,000 mt/year linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant, were not affected and were running at that period.
Formosa has three naphtha-fed steam crackers and each goes through maintenance once every three years.
The No. 1 cracker is able to produce 700,000 mt/year of ethylene, 350,000 mt/year of propylene and 109,000 mt/year of butadiene.
The No. 2 unit is able to produce 1.03 million mt/year of ethylene, 515,000 mt/year of propylene and 162,000 mt/year of butadiene.
The No. 3 steam cracker has the capacity to produce 1.2 million mt/year of ethylene, 600,000 mt/year of propylene and 180,000 mt/year of butadiene.
Formosa Petrochemical is involved primarily in the business of refining crude oil, selling refined petroleum products and producing and selling olefins (including ethylene, propylene, butadiene and BTX) from its naphtha cracking operations. Formosa Petrochemical is also the largest olefins producer in Taiwan and its olefins products are mostly sold to companies within the Formosa Group. Among the company's chemical products are paraxylene (PX), phenyl ethylene, acetone and pure terephthalic acid (PTA). The company's plastic products include acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) resins, polystyrene (PS), polypropylene (PP) and panlite (PC).
MRC