MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Korea’s Lotte Chemical has restarted its fire-hit naphtha-fed steam cracker in Daesan, reported Chemweek.
Thus, the facility begins trial runs of naphtha on 7 December, and the company expects commercial production to be achieved on 8 December.
Lotte Chemical had initially planned to restart the cracker in September, then - in mid-November and finally - to early December.
As MRC wrote before, the cracker was shut on March 4 following an explosion, which injured more than 30 people.
Lotte Chemical has two steam crackers. The steam cracker in Daesan has a production capacity of 1.1 million mt/year of ethylene, 550,000 mt/year of propylene and 150,000 mt/year of butadiene, while the Yeosu steam cracker is able to produce 1.18 million mt/year of ethylene, 550,000 mt/year of propylene and 130,000 mt/year of butadiene.
We remind that Lotte Chemical shut down its Deasan cracker for maintenance turnaround on October 14, 2019. The cracker resumed production on November 10, 2019.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,760,950 tonnes in the first ten months of 2020, up by 3% year on year. Only high density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 978,870 tonnes in January-October 2020 (calculated using the formula: production minus exports plus imports minus producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively of PP random copolymer increased.
Lotte Chemical runs two naphtha crackers in South Korea. One cracker is located in Daesan county in Seosan which can produce 1.1 million tonnes per year of ethylene with the other 1.2 million tonnes per year cracker in the southwestern city of Yeosu.
MRC