China’s Baofeng Energy lets contracts for new coal-to-olefins plant

Ningxia Baofeng Energy Group Co. Ltd. has let two contracts to KBR Inc. to license technology and provide design for new units at its grassroots 500,000-tonnes/year coal-to-olefins (CTO) complex and 500,000-tpy C2-C5 comprehensive utilization project to be built in Ningdong Town, Kingwu City, Ningxia Province, China.

As part of the contracts, KBR will deliver process technology licensing and process design packages for its proprietary Selective Cracking Optimum Recovery (SCORE) steam cracking and MTO recovery technologies for the project that—with a planned olefins production capacity of 1 million tpy—will become the largest single-train methanol-to-olefins (MTO) plant in the world once completed, the service provider said on Aug. 24.

The SCORE steam cracking unit will convert the ethane and propane feedstock into ethylene and propylene, which will subsequently be separated and further purified in the MTO recovery section to ensure requisite quality specifications for production of polymer-grade ethylene and propylene, KBR said.

KBR revealed neither a value of the contracts nor a timeline for the project’s completion.

The newly awarded contracts follow Baofeng Energy’s Dec. 3, 2019, announcement of the release of an environmental impact assessment for a project that would involve construction of a newly proposed 500,000-tpy CTO complex at Ningdong, which would also include a new 1.5-million tpy methanol plant (OGJ Online, June 29, 2020).

Baofeng Energy recently commissioned a separate MTO plant an as part of its existing 600,000-tpy CTO complex at Ningdong Energy Chemical Base in Yinchuan City, Ningxia Province, China, as well as let an additional contract for a third methanol synthesis plant to be built at the site (OGJ Online, Aug. 5, 2020).

Baofeng Energy’s Ningdong CTO complex currently produces 4 million tpy of methanol, 1.2 million tpy of olefins, 4 million tpy of coke, and 780,000 tpy of specialty chemicals from coal-derived feedstock.