PetroKimia Plans PDH/PP/ACN Plant in Iran

Iran's Mehr PetroKimia plans to start up its new propane dehydrogenation (PDH) facility and polypropylene (PP) plant at Pars Special Economic Energy Zone in Assalouyeh in early 2013, the company's managing director said on Wednesday.

After the completion of the engineering phase in early 2010, the 450,000 tonne/year PDH facility is currently in the proprietary equipments supply and engineering procurement and construction (EPC) phase, said Hamidreza Haghighat Padjooh.

The company said in 2008 that it would invest?50m ($461m) in the PDH project, which would use process technology and engineering licensed from Germany's Uhde.

Due for start-up in early 2013, the PHD plant, projected to be the country's largest propylene facility, would bring Iran's total propylene capacity to 1.4m tonne/year.

The physical progress of the downstream PP plant, with a projected capacity of 250,000 tonnes/year, is currently 10% and the project is in the basic engineering phase, said Padjooh.

He added that at the time of start-up in early 2013, Iran's total PP capacity would increase to 1.34m tonne/year.

Padjood said that finance and products sales agreements had been awarded for the PDH/PP project.

The company is also planning to build a 90,000 tonne/year acrylonitrile (ACN) plant at the site. This would be the first ACN plant in the country.

Padjooh said that this project was in the final steps of licence negotiations, and that land preparations along with all legal approvals were done in early 2010.

He added that Iran currently imports around 40,000 tonnes/year of ACN for local consumption, but that imports were predicted to reach 120,000 tonnes/year in 2014.

The site also includes a central utility plant that would supply all required utilities. The plants would be fed with propane from the South Pars gas field.

Mehr PetroKimia is a subsidiary of Parsian Investment Co - an affiliate of the private Parsian Bank.