Worley wins contract for Vertex Hydrogen low-carbon hydrogen plant in UK

Worley wins contract for Vertex Hydrogen low-carbon hydrogen plant in UK

Worley has been awarded a project management services contract by Vertex Hydrogen for its low-carbon hydrogen production plant at Stanlow Manufacturing Complex in Ellesmere Port, UK, said Process-worldwide.

The 350 MW plant is the first in the UK to have completed front-end engineering and is expected to be one of the first large-scale and low-carbon hydrogen plants in the world. The plant will allow UK industrial businesses to transition away from fossil fuels, capturing around 600 thousand tonnes of CO2 per year. It’s also an integral part of Hynet, one of two UK Government Track 1 clusters for industrial decarbonization.

“Hydrogen has the potential to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors, and this project is essential to the decarbonization journey of the Hynet low-carbon cluster in the UK,” said Chris Gill, Vice President Low-carbon Hydrogen at Worley.

The firm’s scope will cover the inside battery limit of the production plant, and all necessary outside battery limit works. It also includes support in creating the infrastructure needed to connect to feedstocks, products, and modifications within the refinery to accept low-carbon hydrogen as a means of powering production instead of fossil fuels. The company’s UK teams will deliver the work with support from its global experts.

We remind, Corpus Christi Polymers LLC has awarded Worley construction management and general services contracts. The scope of the construction management contract includes Corpus Christi’s new polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and purified tereph-thalic acid (PTA) facilities in Corpus Christi, Texas, US. The scope of the general services contract includes providing support to the installation and maintenance of the construction of temporary facilities.

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Borealis to retender the majority of contracts for PDH construction site in Kallo

Borealis to retender the majority of contracts for PDH construction site in Kallo

Completion of a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant being built at Kallo, Belgium, will be delayed by at least six months into the second half of 2024 after owner Borealis announced it would retender the majority of the project’s construction contracts following termination of all contracts with the main contractor IREM Group, said the company.

For large construction projects, Borealis works together with specialized construction companies. The IREM Group was in charge of 80% of the remaining construction work and the majority of average 1200 workers on the PDH construction site in Kallo. The terminated contracts for both highly specialised piping and mechanical works, as well as electrical and instrumentation works, now need to be retendered. This process will cause a substantial delay for the progress of the construction works.

Borealis has implemented these additional social controls to ensure that the remaining contractors entering the site are fully compliant with Belgian labour law: Each (sub)contractor must sign a formal binding declaration prior to start-up in which they again formally confirm to be fully compliant with applicable Belgian labour, social security and tax laws.

Each (sub)contractor must provide Borealis a list of all personnel before starting to work on the site and confirm for every individual that they are fully compliant with the applicable Belgian labour, social security and tax laws prior to start-up.

All employees and (sub)contractors are being proactively briefed and continue to be encouraged to make use of Borealis’ ethics hotline. This tool was launched in 2021 and is accessible for Borealis employees and externals and allows for ethics-related concerns to be filed in 24 languages.

“We are taking all necessary steps to ensure that the remaining contractors entering the site are fully compliant with Belgian labour law. As a first step we have terminated all contracts with our contractor IREM, who was in charge of 80% of the works on site. We have also implemented additional social controls well beyond industry standards to identify and address any potential lack of control by (sub)contractors who are not compliant,” commented Wim De Smet, Borealis Location Leader Kallo.

As per MRC, Borealis lifted the cracker products force majeure, declared on 23 June, on 9 July, following the successful restart of the cracker. A company spokesperson said the cracker was back in normal operations. Borealis (Vienna, Austria) has declared force majeure on all cracker products from its ethane-fed steam cracker at Stenungsund, Sweden, after encountering technical difficulties during a restart of the facility following a maintenance turnaround.

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Henkel Korea Inaugurates Production Facility for Electronics Solutions in Korea

Henkel Korea Inaugurates Production Facility for Electronics Solutions in Korea

Henkel Korea has completed work on its Songdo Plant, a production facility for electronics solutions in Korea, said Process-worldwide.

The project is expected to become the firm’s production hub in the Asia-Pacific region for high-impact electronics solutions.

Incheon/Korea – A building dedication ceremony was recently held in the presence of more than 160 guests, including Incheon City Mayor Jeong-bok Yoo, Charge d’Affaires of German Embassy Peter Winkler, the Chairwoman of the Korean-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry Hyun-nam Park, Executive Vice President Henkel Adhesive Technologies Jan-Dirk Auris, and President of Henkel Asia-Pacific Mark Dorn.

Henkel Korea signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Incheon Free Economic Zone Authority in April 2019 for the project and started construction work in the same year. With an investment of approximately 35 million Euros, this is the largest single investment in the company?s history in Korea.

With a total floor area of 10,144 square meters and in a two-story building, the Songdo Plant implements an advanced smart factory system (SFS), enhancing process monitoring, data collection and troubleshooting. After undergoing trial production and quality verification since last year, the plant began production in the second half 2022.

We remind, Henkel Adhesive Technologies strengthens its capabilities for predictive maintenance solutions by investing in Direct-C LTD (Direct-C), Edmonton, Canada. The company has developed a sophisticated sensor technology for the early detection of hydrocarbon leakages. With the investment Henkel aims to further expand its maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) business and to drive the implementation of innovative digital applications.

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EIA expects U.S. ethane production to grow by 9% in the second half of 2022

EIA expects U.S. ethane production to grow by 9% in the second half of 2022

Ethane production has been increasing in the United States for the past five years, and it reached a monthly record of 2.5 MMbpd in March. More than 2.4 MMbpd of ethane has been produced in the United States every month since then, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

In our Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast ethane production in the second half of 2022 to grow by 9% compared with the first half of 2022, averaging over 2.6 MMbpd. We expect that production in 2022 will exceed production in 2021 by 16%, or 340,000 bpd.

Our STEO forecasts annual ethane production to increase again in the United States during 2023 by 7% to nearly 2.7 MMbpd to support continued growth in U.S. consumption and exports. Ethane is consumed almost exclusively as a feedstock in petrochemical plants known as steam crackers to produce ethylene, a precursor chemical for manufacturing many plastics and resins. Three new petrochemical crackers have come online to support growth in domestic ethylene production: two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania.

Since 2017, U.S. ethane prices have generally traded at a premium relative to natural gas prices, spurring natural gas plant operators to recover more ethane from raw natural gas streams. When ethane prices are relatively high, natural gas operators recover more ethane to sell in the liquid fuels market (known in the industry as ethane recovery). When ethane prices are relatively low, operators leave more ethane in the processed natural gas stream (known in the industry as ethane rejection), and this ethane is sold at the natural gas heating value. In 2021, ethane prices averaged 80 cents per MMBtu—26% higher than dry natural gas prices—driving higher rates of ethane recovery. During the first half of 2022, the ethane premium remained steady at USD1.36/MMBtu, which was 25% above the Henry Hub natural gas wholesale price, despite higher average natural gas prices.

Demand for ethane overseas as a petrochemical feedstock has been growing since 2015. We forecast U.S. exports of ethane to continue to grow from about 350,000 bpd in the second quarter of 2022 to about 440,000 bpd in the fourth quarter. We expect ethane exports to rise to 460,000 bpd in 2023.

In our long-term Annual Energy Outlook 2022 (AEO2022), we expect the rapid growth in U.S. ethane production to plateau around 2.7 MMbpd in the second half of this decade. We forecast a renewed period of generally steady growth after 2030, when we expect greater demand for natural gas to drive higher natural gas production. More natural gas production results in more natural gas plant liquids (NGPL), including ethane. We expect the majority of U.S. ethane production to be increasingly concentrated in two regions. In the Southwest, we expect ethane production to grow from 800,000 bpd in 2021 to 1.1 MMbpd in 2050. In the eastern United States, we expect ethane production to triple from 300,000 b/d in 2021 to close to 1.0 MMbpd by 2050. By 2050, the Southwest will account for 36% of all U.S. ethane production, and the eastern United States will account for 32%. We project total U.S. ethane production to peak at 3.0 MMbpd in 2050, the end of the AEO2022 projection period.

As per MRC, BASF has started producing fuel performance additives at its Pudong site in Shanghai, China. The new plant addresses the increasing regional demand for fuel performance additives and brings greater supply security and flexibility to customers in Asia. The site is the latest addition to BASF’s global network, strengthening its local manufacturing footprint in Asia.
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Technip Energies acquires Biosuccinium Technology from DSM for bio-sourced and fully biodegradable polymers production

Technip Energies acquires Biosuccinium Technology from DSM for bio-sourced and fully biodegradable polymers production

Technip Energies announced the purchase of Biosuccinium technology from DSM, adding a technology solution to its growing Sustainable Chemicals portfolio, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

This technology synergizes with recently developed proprietary bio-polymer technologies and provides a commercially referenced production of bio-based succinic acid (bio-SAc) that serves as feedstock for the production of polybutylene succinate (PBS).

PBS itself is fully biodegradable and, if based on bio-SAc, is an ideal bio-based sustainable packaging material for food contact applications. It addresses consumers and governments concerns for better materials with lower carbon footprints and environmental impacts.

The purchase includes a wide range of patent families and proprietary yeast strains, which have been demonstrated in production facilities of licensees at large scale. Biosuccinium technology will be the only technology for production of bio-based succinic acid to be licensed on the market.

Bhaskar Patel, SVP Sustainable Fuels, Chemicals and Circularity of Technip Energies, commented: “We are very pleased to acquire this proven technology from DSM. This addition to our growing sustainable chemicals portfolio will allow Technip Energies to license a solution for the production of a bio-sourced and biodegradable polymer, which has a 50% lower carbon footprint compared to fossil-based routes. Superior product properties, combined with best-in class sustainability performance, are key attributes in today’s consumer market. We shall leverage the whole PBS value chain, where we already license the technology for the polymerization of the bio-sourced monomers into PBS."

It was earlier said, Technip Energies and Agilyx announced today the launch of the TruStyrenyx™ brand, the only all-in-one solution for the chemical recycling of polystyrene. TruStyrenyx™ combines Agilyx’s pyrolysis process and Technip Energies purification technology, yielding a recycled styrene monomer with exceptional high purity. Styrene monomer is used to make numerous plastics and other polymers. It is one of the three primary components of ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene), can make the pure polymer polystyrene, and is an ingredient in various synthetic rubbers.

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