Aker Kvaerner wins China contract

Aker Kvaerner’s Netherlands office is to handle the basic engineering for a world-scale polyethylene plant in Quangzhou, in China’s Fujian Province. The plant, part of a major petrochemicals complex, will use Univation Technology’s Unipol process, a low-pressure method of making PE.

The complex is operated by Fujian Petrochemicals, a joint venture between ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, the state petrochemicals company Sinopec and the local government of Fujian Province. It is centred around a refinery, whose capacity is currently being expanded from 80,000bbl/day to 240,000bbl/day.

The PE plant, with two lines each with a capacity of 400,000tpa, will be fed by a new 800,000tpa ethylene cracker, which will also supply a 400,000tpa polypropylene plant and an aromatics plant. Start-up is scheduled for 2008.

The project represents the 18th Unipol plant to be designed and/or built by Aker Kvaerner, of almost a hundred either operating or in commission around the world.

‘We are very pleased with the award of this project, which reconfirms our technology-driven focus and our in-depth knowledge of polyethylene technology requirements,’ commented Wim van der Zande, president of AK Process.