PetroChina Co. Ltd.—the publicly listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC)—has started up an alkylation unit at its 200,800-b/d refinery in Jilin City, Jilin Province, China.
The 9,000-b/d unit reached commercial startup and production just 17 months following initial design, McDermott International Inc. (formerly CB&I) said. The unit is based on McDermott’s proprietary CDAlky advanced sulfuric acid alkylation process technology and is now the single largest CDAlky reactor to date.
The Jilin unit is the first of four previously announced CDAlky units for PetroChina to reach startup, with additional units also to be implemented at PetroChina subsidiaries Dalian Petrochemical Co.’s 411,700-b/d Dalian refinery and Jinzhou Petrochemical Co.’s 140,600-b/d Jinzhou refinery, both in Liaoning province, as well as at Urumqi Petrochemical Co.’s 100,400-b/d Urumqi refinery in Xinjiang Uygar Autonomous Region (OGJ Online, Aug. 28, 2017).
A timeframe for commissioning of the remaining three units, however, has yet to be revealed.
The new CDAlky units come as part of PetroChina’s plan to produce lower-sulfur, higher-octane, alkylate to ensure compliance of gasoline and diesel production with more stringent global emission standards, including China 6-quality specifications (equivalent to Euro 6 specifications), which will cap the maximum sulfur content of fuels at 10 ppm beginning in 2020.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
