MOSCOW (MRC) -- Wanhua Chemical, a major petrochemical producer in China, plans to build a new propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant in Fujian Province, southern China, adding to the PDH plant it operates at Yantai, eastern China, reported Indian CHEMICAL News.
The new plant will be built within the Fujian Jiangyin economic zone, near the city of Fuqing.
According to sources, the plant is expected to be completed in 2023.
The company's board has also approved plans to build associated downstream propylene derivative production chains in the Fujian Jiangyin zone.
Wanhua's PDH unit at Yantai has 750,000 metric tons/year of propylene capacity. It also operates a steam cracker with capacity for 1 million metric tons/year (MMt/y) of ethylene and 520,000 metric tons/year of propylene at Yantai that came online in November last year.
As MRC wrote previously, in January, 2020 Wanhua Chemical Group disclosed plans for a second ethylene cracker project at its Yantai, China, site with local government officials. The project will include a 1.2-million metric tons/year (MMt/y) ethylene unit; pyrolysis gasoline hydrogenation; aromatics extraction; and production facilities for butadiene, high density polyethylene (HDPE), low density polyethylene (LDPE), polyethylene (PE) plastomers and elastomers, polypropylene (PP), and other derivatives. Timing and other details were not disclosed. The second ethylene project will use naphtha and C4s as feedstock.
Propylene is the main feedstock for the production of PP.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 141,870 tonnes in January 2021 versus 123,520 tonnes a year earlier. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
MRC