Sinopec Beihai Petrochemical's 5-mil-mt/yr refining project in Beihai City of South China's Guangxi region is expected to start trial run on Sep 25, 2011 and begin commercial operation on Dec 18, a source closed to the refinery said.
The project includes 5-mil-mt/yr crude distillation unit, 1.7-mil-mt/yr fluid catalytic cracker, 2.6-mil-mt/yr gasoil hydrogenation unit, 1.2-mil-mt/yr delayed coker, 600,000-mt/yr continuous catalytic reformer, 400,000-mt/yr gas fractionation unit, 60,000-mt/yr sulfur recovery unit and 200,000-mt/yr polypropylene unit, etc.
Construction of the 2.6-mil-mt/yr gasoil hydrogenation unit and the 600,000-mt/yr continuous catalytic reformer will be finished on Aug 20 and Aug 25, respectively, according to the source.
Affiliated Zhanjiang-Beihai Crude Pipeline will become operational in mid-September this year, the source revealed.
Construction of the Beihai-Nanjing Oil Product Pipeline is expected to be complete at the end of August, which will be ready for serve a month later, the source added.
Crude processing capacity of Baihai Petrochemical will be expanded to 10-12-mil mt per year in 2013 at the earliest, the source also said.
The project is also affiliated by a 300,000-DWT crude jetty in Weizhou Island and 3.2-mil-cu-m commercial crude storage at Tieshan port, C1 reported earlier. The first batch of 16 tanks of the storage will be put into operations this August, and completion of the whole storage will be due Dec 5.
With the 5-mil-mt/yr project on-stream, Beihai Petrochemical will eliminate aged units, consisting of 600,000-mt/yr CDU, 340,000-mt/yr FCC, 80,000mt/yr catalytic gas desulfurization unit and 5-mil-mt/yr sulfur recovery unit.
Sinopec's rival PetroChina brought on stream 10-mil-mt/yr Guangxi Petrochemical in Guangxi in August 2010, which mainly focuses on Southwest China market and export market.
