Formosa to complete turnaround at Mailiao PVC plant

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Formosa Plastics is likely to restart a No. 1 polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plant following a maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Taiwan informed that the company has planned to resume operations at the plant July 5, 2018. The plant was shut for maintenance last weekend.

Located in Mailiao, Taiwan, the No.1 PVC plant has a production capacity of 420,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed before, on 19 March, 2018, Formosa Petrochemical Corp (FPCC) undertook an emergency shutdown at its No. 1 cracker in Mailiao owing to technical issues. The plant remained off-line for around one day. Located at Mailiao in Taiwan, the No. 1 cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 700,000 mt/year, propylene production capacity of 350,000 mt/year and butadiene production capacity of 109,000 mt/year.

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

MOSCOW (MRC) -- A fire that broke out at Mitsui Chemicals' plant in Osaka in western Japan was extinguished on Friday morning, reported Reuters with reference to the Japanese company.

The fire started on Thursday afternoon in the chimney of a utility unit that supplies electricity, water and steam to multiple petrochemical facilities at the firm's Osaka Works in Takaishi City.

The local fire department confirmed the blaze had been extinguished by 8:30 a.m. on Friday (2330 GMT on Thursday), the company said in a statement.

An investigation is underway into the cause of the accident and its impact on the plant and the local environment, although no toxic gas that could affect human health had been detected, it added. There were no injuries.

The company has not so far identified any damage to other plant facilities including a 500,000 tonne-per-year naphtha cracker, which has been shut since June 14 for scheduled maintenance.

The company may consider alternative sources of electricity and steam to supply the plant's petrochemical facilities, a company spokesman said.

It was not immediately clear whether the cracker's restart would be delayed from its current schedule of late July.

The company said it would promptly report any major financial impact from the fire.

The fire did not have an immediate impact on the market because the naphtha cracker was shut, said a trading source, who declined to be identified.

The plant also manufactures products such as olefins, aromatics, ammonia, ethylene oxide, ethylene glycol, adhesives and unsaturated polyesters, the Mitsui Chemicals' website shows.

Mitsui Chemicals is a leading manufacturer and supplier of value added specialty chemicals, plastics and materials for the automotive, healthcare, packaging, agricultural, building, and semiconductor and electronics markets. Mitsui Chemicals is a Japanese Chemicals company, a part of the Mitsui conglomerate. The company has a turnover of around 15 billion USD and has business interests in Japan, Europe, China, Southeast Asia and the USA. The company mainly deals in performance materials, petro and basic chemicals and functional polymeric materials.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -– Fluor Corporation announced that the first modules for the Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC) Al-Zour project have arrived in Kuwait, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Fluor is working with its joint venture partners to deliver two engineering, procurement, fabrication and construction packages for key process support units, utilities and infrastructure for the Al-Zour refinery project. Upon completion, the new complex is expected to be one of the largest refineries in the world and produce 615,000 barrels per day.

Modules are being constructed at the COOEC-Fluor Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (COOEC-Fluor) fabrication yard in Zhuhai, China. The first 14 of the 188 modules were loaded onto a shipping barge and sailed away in May to Kuwait. The sail-away of the modules was marked by a ceremony officiated by Hatem Al-Awadhi, KIPIC’s deputy chief executive officer and Jim Brittain, group president of Fluor’s Energy & Chemicals business, and was attended by executive members of the project team.

"Fluor is proud to be part of KIPIC’s prestigious and strategically important Al-Zour project," said Brittain. “This milestone was achieved through the collaboration and commitment of our craft professionals at the newly expanded Zhuhai fabrication yard where more than 6,500 craft workers are safely fabricating steel and pipe and assembling modules for the project."

The Fluor-led joint venture, known as FDH JV, includes Daewoo Engineering and Construction and Hyundai Heavy Industries.

"Fluor and our joint venture partners are working closely with KIPIC to implement Fluor’s integrated engineering, procurement, fabrication and construction solutions across every phase of the project to enable the safe and efficient construction, commissioning and start-up of this new refinery," said Al Collins, president of Fluor’s Energy & Chemicals business in Europe, Africa and Middle East.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- TANECO has partnered with ChemTech to implement a pilot project to digitize production, the company's press service said. The project involves creating a "digital twin" of a CDU Unit, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

With the help of new machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, the project is expected to optimize the process of oil fractionation.

During the first stage of work, several previous years of unit operations data were processed. On this basis, a thermodynamic model of the existing production was created. Virtual analyzers were developed next with the possibility of prediction of compositions of process flows. Such approach allows optimizing the operating conditions of the CDU Unit.

"At present ChemTech specialists are tasked with creating a "digital twin" of the unit, which is the next step towards the industrial implementation of the project," the press service said.

The companies plan to expand cooperation in the introduction of advanced technologies for data analysis and following production optimization.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Celanese Corporation, a global specialty materials company, has announced that due to continued and projected escalating cost increases for logistics services, the company has begun a comprehensive assessment of all logistics policies for all products to ensure that processes and services are conducted in the most efficient and economical manner, as per the company's press release.

Upon conclusion of this assessment, Celanese expects to issue a new framework with guidelines regarding shipments and services in order to best address the increasing costs for freight as well as limited availability of truck carrier capacity.

While this assessment is ongoing, Celanese today announces that, effective immediately, it will implement a price increase of USD0.03/lb on all truck shipments of the following acetyl intermediate products being sent from or delivered to the US or Canada, subject to any applicable contractual commitments:

- all grades of Formaldehyde and Paraformaldehyde;
- all grades of MIBC and MIBK;
- all grades of Ethylene Vinyl Acetate (EVA);
- all grades of Emulsion Polymers.

Implementing the above price increases is necessary at this time given the increasing costs and fees that Celanese has already begun to incur for freight and in order to secure truck carrier capacity to deliver shipments of the above products to customers in the US and Canada. Celanese may also impose additional charges for rush orders or customer requests for changes to orders which are made 72 hours or less prior to the estimated shipment date.

As MRC reported earlier, Celanese Corporation increased its June list and off-list selling prices for EVA emulsions and copolymers of Vinyl Acetate Monomer (VAM) and EVA for the USA, Canada and the countries of South America, as follows:

- EVA - by 5%;
- VAM Homopolymers (PVAC) - by 5%;
- VAM Copolymers - by 5%;
- Pure Acrylics - by 5%;
- Styrene Acrylics - by 5%.

Celanese Corporation is a global technology leader in the production of differentiated chemistry solutions and specialty materials used in most major industries and consumer applications. Based in Dallas, Celanese employs approximately 7,600 employees worldwide and had 2017 net sales of USD6.1 billion.
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