Market sources told SSESSMENTS.COM that China’s Zhejiang Petrochemical (ZPC) had started up its new propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant at Zhoushan in Zhejiang province. The plant yielded its first propylene output on July 15 after being fed with propane starting on July 10-11. The sources noted that the plant is currently running at around 60% of capacity.
However, the new propylene yield still has high water content. ZPC is fine-tuning the production process and aims at producing on-specification propylene within a couple of days. ZPC’s new PDH unit can convert up to 720,000 tons/year of propane into 600,000 tons/year of propylene. ZPC’s integrated 400,000 bpd refinery at Zhoushan will supply most of the propane feedstock for the new unit.
ZPC will integrate the new PDH unit with downstream acrylonitrile and phenol/acetone units. The acrylonitrile plant has a capacity of 260,000 tons/year. ZPC started up the plant two weeks ago and is currently operating at around 70% rate. Meanwhile, the 400,000/250,000 tons/year phenol/acetone unit is expected to enter service soon. ZPC also plans to sell 20,000 tons/month of propylene in the merchant market.
As SSESSMENTS.COM noted, the new PDH unit will expand ZPC’s propylene capacity to 1.63 million tons/year, making it China’s largest private propylene producer. ZPC’s existing propylene capacity consists of 700,000 tons/year from its naphtha cracker and 330,000 tons/year from a fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) which both started operations in December 2019.
