Sadara Chemical Co., a joint venture of Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemical Co., has commissioned Saudi Arabia’s first mixed-feed cracker (MFC) at the company’s Jubail integrated chemical complex in Jabail Industrial City II, in the Eastern Province (OGJ Online, July 26, 2011).
Entered into operation on Aug. 28, the MFC includes 12 furnaces, seven of which will be used to crack ethane, with the remaining five liquid furnaces dedicated to cracking naphtha, Sadara said.
Three of the five liquid furnaces, however, are equipped to switch between gas and liquid feedstock to further enable Sadara to adjust its production levels of chemicals between naphtha-based and ethane-based feedstock in accordance with market demand, the company said.
One of 26 manufacturing units in Sadara’s $20 billion complex, the MFC is designed to allow flexible cracking capabilities for on site production of more than 3 million tonnes/year of high-quality chemical products and performance plastics, including polyurethanes (isocyanates, polyether polyols), propylene oxide, propylene glycol, elastomers, linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE), low-density polyethylene, glycol ethers, and amines (OGJ Online, July 22, 2014).
Commissioning of the MFC follows startup of the complex’s first production unit in late-2015, when the polyethylene plant—which uses proprietary processing technology from Dow Chemical—began producing LLDPE, according to a Dec. 8, 2015, release from Sadara.
As of March, the complex was about 98% completed, with remaining units at the manufacturing site already entered into a phased startup and commissioning process, the company told investors on Mar. 9.
The complex is scheduled to become fully operation sometime in 2017.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].