China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) subsidiary Hainan Baling Chemical New Material Co. Ltd. has commissioned the world’s largest plant for production of styrene-butadiene copolymer (SBC) at its operations in Hainan, China.
At an overall investment of $279.74 billion by Hainan Baling Chemical New Material and fellow Sinopec subsidiary Hainan Refining & Chemical Co. Ltd., the new 170,000-tonne/year (tpy) plant produces 120,000 tpy of SBC and 50,000 tpy of styrene-ethylene-butylene styrene (SEBS) products, Sinopec said on Apr. 10.
Consisting of 13 units and based on Baling Chemical New Material’s proprietary clean, environmentally friendly SBC polymerization technologies, the plant uses a feedstock of styrene and butadiene it receives from Hainan Refining & Chemical’s nearby 8-million tpy refinery in the Yangpu Economic Development Zone of Hainan Free Trade Zone (HFTZ) (OGJ Online, Jan. 15, 2021).
The plant’s SBC production will be exported via the HFTZ to destinations in Europe and Southeast Asia Pacific, as well as to other unidentified markets in the region.
Following mechanical completion of Hainan Refining & Chemical’s 1-million tpy ethylene and refining expansion project in June 2022, the operator completed commissioning of the site’s new polypropylene plant on Dec. 20, 2022, with the project’s remaining unidentified units subsequently achieving startup, Sinopec told investors in its final 2022 annual report released in late-March 2023.
