Sinopec Qilu plans to shut cracker in Tianjin for repairs in June

MOSCOW (MRC) - Sinopec Qilu Petrochemical, the subsidiary of one of the world's largest energy and chemical companies, Sinopec, plans to shut the cracker unit in Tianjin in northeast China for scheduled repairs on 15 June, 2020, Polymerupdate reports.

This cracking unit with a capacity of 900,000 tonnes of ethylene per year and 480,000 tonnes of propylene tons per year will be closed for scheduled repairs until 24 June, 2020. Earlier it was reported that Sinopec Qilu Petrochemical in March closed for repair a plant for the production of aromatic substances in Zibo (Zibo, Shandun Province, China).
Maintenance at this enterprise, which can produce 340 thousand tons of benzene, 280,000 tonnes of toluene and 240,000 tonnes of xylene per year, lasted until March 23.

Ethylene and propylene are the main raw materials for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.

According to ScanPlast of Market Report, the estimated PE consumption in Russia amounted to 1,589,580 tonnes in the first nine months of this year, which is 7% more than a year ago. Shipments of all PE grades increased.
Calculated PP consumption in the Russian market was 976,790 tonnes in January-September 2019, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of PP block copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.

Sinopec corp. is one of the world's largest integrated energy and chemical companies. Business Sinopec Corp. includes oil and gas exploration, production and transportation of oil and gas, oil refining, petrochemical production, production of mineral fertilizers and other chemical products. In terms of refining capacity, Sinopec Corp. ranks second in the world, in terms of ethylene capacity - fourth.
MRC

Penoplex opened a thermal insulation plant in Uzbekistan

MOSCOW (MRC) - Penoplex, the largest Russian producer of extruded polystyrene foam, has opened a thermal insulation plant in Uzbekistan, the company said.

The new production site was commissioned in the city of Angren in the Tashkent region, 80 km from the capital of Uzbekistan, on the territory of the Angren free economic zone, where more than 50 industrial enterprises of various directions already operate. The plant operates a modern line of European production with a capacity of 500 kg / h.

This will satisfy the demand for Penoplex insulation in the construction market of Uzbekistan, as well as in other countries of Central Asia - Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.

The Angren plant became the tenth for Penoplex, which today also has eight production sites in Russia and one in Kazakhstan.

In July of this year, Penoplex Spb launched a new production of extruded polystyrene foam in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The capacity of the new production line reaches 500 thousand cubic meters of expanded polystyrene per year.

Penoplex is a large Russian producer of polymer-based building and decorative materials. The company began its activity in 1998 with the launch of Russia's first line for the production of heat-insulating materials from extruded polystyrene foam under the PENOPLEX trademark. The company has eight production sites, seven of which are located in Russia and one - in the Republic of Kazakhstan (Almaty region), with a total production capacity of 4 million cubic metres.
MRC

BASF to sell construction chemicals business to Lone Star Funds

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF SE announced that it has entered a deal to sell its construction chemicals business to Lone Star Funds, a global private equity firm for EUR3.17 billion (USD3.5 billion), reported Kemicalinfo.

The deal, which has immediate effect upon BASF’s reporting, is expected to close in the third quarter of 2020, according to the statement.

The deal is subject to competition authority approval, BASF said in a joint statement with the PE firm.

"Our aim was to find a new home for our Construction Chemicals business where it can leverage its full potential," said Saori Dubourg, member of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE and responsible for the Construction Chemicals business. "Under the umbrella of Lone Star, the Construction Chemicals team can focus on a growth path with an industry-specific approach."

"The business complements Lone Star’s portfolio of investments in construction materials," said Donald Quintin, President of Europe at Lone Star.

BASF’s construction chemicals unit is the world’s largest maker of additives for concrete. It also offers a range of substances including concrete repair fillers, grouts and sealants under a business dubbed Construction Systems, where BASF is the No. 4 player globally. The business unit has more than 7,000 employees, operates in over 60 countries and generated sales of about EUR2.5 billion (USD2.77 billion) in 2018, according to the statement.

BASF announced a strategic review of the division last year. Lone Star entered exclusive talks with BASF after beating out a rival consortium that included Cinven and Bain Capital.

As MRC informed earlier, BASF, the world's petrochemical major, restarted its No. 1 steam cracker on September 30, 2019, following a maintenance turnaorund. The plant was shut for maintenance in mid-August, 2019. Located at Ludwigshafen in Germany, the No. 1 cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 235,000 mt/year and a propylene production capacity of 125,000 mt/year.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,724,670 tonnes in the first ten months of 2019, up by 7% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market in January-October 2019 totalled 1,066,520 tonnes, up by 7% year on year. Supply of block copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymer) and homopolymer of propylene (homopolymer PP) increased, demand for statistical copolymers (PP random copolymer) decreased.

BASF is the leading chemical company. It produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries. BASF generated sales of around EUR63 billion in 2018.
MRC

PJSC Nizhnekamskneftekhim ethylene plant was under a planned shutdown

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PJSC Nizhnekamskneftekhim Ethylene Plant was under a planned shutdown in November, said the producer.

On November 26, a short-term scheduled shutdown was performed at ethylene production facility of PJSC Nizhnekamskneftekhim, due to which a smoky flaring of petrochemical products’ residues might be possible. This is a compulsory measure connected with preparation of equipment for auditing, which purpose is to ensure a further stable operation of the production unit.

Flare Plume Monitoring was organized for the period of production unit shutdown which resulted in smoky combustion.

According to Price Report ICIS-MRC, Nizhnekamskneftekhim in 2019 produces exclusively linear polyethylene (LLDPE). LLDPE shipments to the Russian market increased in the first seven months of 2019 by 8% year on year to 234,130 tonnes. Local producers increased their production by 24%.

PJSC "Nizhnekamskneftekhim" (NKNH) is one of the largest Russian producers of petrochemical products. The production complex of the company includes ten factories of the main production and ten departments (railway transport, ethylene pipelines, etc.). NKNH produces more than 120 types of chemical products, including synthetic rubber, polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, and surfactants. Nizhnekamskneftekhim is a member of TAIF Group of Companies.
MRC

Bilfinger to help Total with turnarounds at Leuna refinery

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The TOTAL refinery in Leuna has recently awarded Bilfinger two further major contracts worth roughly EUR30 million: the first involves exchanging the reactor systems; the second, performing the turnaround for the plant’s POX methanol facility, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.

More than 800 Bilfinger specialists will be involved in these two projects.

TOTAL’s refinery Mitteldeutschland in Leuna is one of the most modern industrial plants in Europe. Its output products include gasoline, heating oil, liquefied gas, diesel and methanol - indispensable raw materials for any economy. It is easy to see that operating and maintaining such a huge facility is no simple task.

The first of the contracts - replacing the six reactor systems - will have to be carried out in the midst of ongoing production operations and, if at all possible, without any downtimes. This is because the reactor systems, along with the downstream plant components, convert heavy petroleum residues from the refinery into methanol, a key industrial input chemical, by means of partial oxidation (POX). This will be the most extensive refurbishment work ever done on the Leuna plant, which is one of the last industrial holdovers from the Communist period in Eastern Germany. The project is expected to result in a 20% increase in the volume of methanol produced.

A project of this magnitude requires careful advance preparation; accordingly, planning was begun as early as at the start of 2019. Gerald Weber has been looking after the plant’s maintenance for a long time. The twenty-year veteran of Bilfinger’s Engineering & Maintenance service line explains how he and his team will bring the plant up to the latest technical standard: “We will be removing and modernizing each of the reactors individually, which weigh between 60 and 70 tons - a process that will take 85 days each. Our tasks will also include building a new burner-cooling system."

The project’s logistics present a particular challenge: The plant components to be installed are big and heavy. Thus, a special crawler crane with a capacity of 600 tons will be used to fit the reactors into place. Several days will be needed just to set up and remove the crane and to prepare its operating lane – a process that will have to be repeated for each of the six reactors. Transporting the crane and its appurtenant equipment will require some 50 trucks. Weber provides the details: “So you see that our services consist of more than the pre-assembly work and the conversion as such. Just as important is our preparatory planning and our coordination of the various trades on the construction site. In the end, everything has to run like clockwork. It’s high-precision work. Of course, safety always comes first.” The reactors are scheduled to be replaced by the end of 2021, thereby completing the project.

By this time, the second contract awarded to Bilfinger - the refinery’s turnaround in the fall of 2020 - will also have been completed. Gerd Braune, the engineer at the Bilfinger Engineering & Maintenance service line who is supervising the turnaround, explains: "Operators are obligated to shut down their plants in this way at regular intervals. This sort of general inspection is intended to ensure that the plant remains technically reliable, legally compliant and environmentally friendly. We will be making the plant fit for the next six years while providing top-to-bottom maintenance.” The plant has to be kept idle while all this is going on, Braune points out, thereby causing substantial turnover losses for the operator: “Our job is to keep these losses as small as possible. Every additional day of downtime for the plant increases the economic damage our customers stand to suffer."

In order to keep such downtimes as short as possible, Bilfinger has developed its own in-house concept for executing turnarounds. "How we go about it exactly is a trade secret,”"says Braune and laughs: "But I can say this much: Efficient scheduling and work planning are essential.

Another factor is that our workforce is highly qualified and very familiar with the routines involved in such interventions. What’s more, we’re using digital solutions to an increasing degree." The results speak for themselves: Every year, Bilfinger performs around 30 comprehensive turnarounds of industrial plants across Europe. The service field responsible for turnarounds has expended 4.5 million man-hours of work in recent years – and this without a single accident entailing lost working days.

This hopefully will hold true also for the turnaround of the TOTAL refinery Mitteldeutschland. Bilfinger acts as general contractor for a number of the plant’s systems, including the POX methanol facility. The maintenance services, which have been planned far in advance, must be completed within four to six weeks. This will involve opening, inspecting and cleaning innumerable containers and pipes – and of course also repairing them if needed. Subsequently, the individual components will be inspected and certified by the German Technical Supervision Association (TUV). Braune sums up: "What counts here is experience, familiarity with the routines, and keeping a cool head: Every move has to be executed perfectly and the relevant work steps have to be clear to all involved."

To ensure that this is the case, giant workflow diagrams wallpaper have been hung up where everyone can see them. These depict the individual work steps and work packages, which can then be checked off as they are completed. Thus, everyone will be able to keep an eye on the big picture. As Braune puts it, "A turnaround is a like a vast mosaic composed of many small tiles representing work packages, one that has been painstakingly planned two years in advance." In fact, a planning period this long is indispensable: Certain portions of the plant will be turned into huge construction sites for short periods of time, where many people will be expected to work in coordination at very close quarters. It goes without saying that, despite the intense time pressure involved, occupational safety and diligence will always have top priority.

With these two projects, Bilfinger will support the TOTAL refinery in further boosting its competitiveness. The complete replacement of the reactors will form part of the "Leuna 2020+" catalogue of measures intended to make the refinery viable for the future. By ramping up its production of methanol, the refinery is reacting to declining demand for heavy fuel products.

As MRC reported before, Total is evaluating new gas cracker project in South Korea as part of petchems growth strategy.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,724,670 tonnes in the first ten months of 2019, up by 7% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market in January-October 2019 totalled 1,066,520 tonnes, up by 7% year on year. Supply of block copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymer) and homopolymer of propylene (homopolymer PP) increased, demand for statistical copolymers (PP random copolymer) decreased.

Bilfinger is a leading international industrial services provider. The Group enhances the efficiency of assets, ensures a high level of availability and reduces maintenance costs. The portfolio covers the entire value chain from consulting, engineering, manufacturing, assembly, maintenance, plant expansion as well as turnarounds and also includes environmental technologies and digital applications.

The company delivers its services in two service lines: Technologies and Engineering & Maintenance. Bilfinger is primarily active in the regions Continental Europe, Northwest Europe, North America and the Middle East. Process industry customers come from sectors that include chemicals & petrochemicals, energy & utilities, oil & gas, pharma & biopharma, metallurgy and cement. With its 36,000 employees, Bilfinger upholds the highest standards of safety and quality and generated revenue of EUR4.153 billion in financial year 2018.
MRC