Dow Chemical Co., Houston, has awarded Technip the front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract and cracking furnaces engineering and procurement services for an ethylene production plant at Dow’s operations in Freeport, Tex., which it announced earlier this year (OGJ, Apr. 30, 2012, p. 26).
The 1.5-million tonne/year plant will be based on low-cost ethane feedstock. Its products will be used by Dow’s downstream plants along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast.
Technip said it will complete its FEED in mid-2013. Dow said in its April announcement that it expected plant start-up to be in 2017.