Polypropylene startup
3 Dec 2004
Sahara Petrochemical and Basell have signed an agreement to construct a 450 KT per year polypropylene plant and propane dehydrogenation unit at Al-Jubail Industrial City in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The facilities will be operated by a joint venture that Basell and Sahara Petrochemical plan to establish in 2005.
The agreement between the two includes a license to use Basell's most advanced polypropylene technology, the Spherizone process.
First commercialised in 2002, this is a relatively new manufacturing process that features a multi-zone circulating reactor system that creates polypropylene and novel, propylene-based polyolefinic materials.
For its part, the propane dehydrogenation unit will be based on the UOP's Oleflex process - a catalytic dehydrogenation technology used for the production of propylene from propane and isobutylene from isobutane.
The polypropylene from the new plant will be marketed globally by Basell; start-up of the new plant is targeted for the end of 2007.
