BASF and FINA crack it in Texas
15 Jan 2000
The vogue for mammoth plant building (see pages 7 & 9)appears to be worldwide. In Port Arthur, Texas, the ground is being prepared for a major new steamcracker complex that will dwarf most existing units. Costing some $800million, the complex is a 60/40 joint venture between the US subsidiaries of Germany's BASF and Belgium's FINA.
The complex will be one of the largest single-train olefins operations ever built, almost twice the size of most European crackers. It will produce 820 000tpa of ethylene and 880 000tpa of propylene. Unusually for a US cracker, it will use petrochemical liquid feedstocks, instead of the more normal liquefied gaseous ethane and propane.
The plant will be operated by BASF and sited at FINA's Freeport, Texas refinery, which will also supply the feedstocks. This will provide opportunities 'to optimise refinery and cracker feedstocks as well as by-product streams,' yielding cost-savings to both companies. The massive amounts of products will be 'mostly for captive use' by both companies, with BASF taking 60 per cent of the plant's output as well as contributing 60 per cent of the project funding.
BASF is particularly interested in the propylene product. The company estimates that current oxo-alcohol and acrylic acid expansions at Freeport, Texas, will double its propylene demand; the new cracker will meet these requirements, it says. To help boost the cracker propylene yield, the cracker uses 'integrated metathesis technology', a technique using a Ziegler-Natta catalyst, under license from Phillips Petroleum, which extends the length of carbon chains in olefins. Ethylene will be sent by pipeline to ethylene oxide, styrene and other plants at Freeport and Geismar, Louisiana.
The companies are still awaiting final approval from their boards, but anticipate beginning work on the project next September. The plant should be on-line in 2000.
