Register for MEED’s 14-day trial access 

Petrokemya, an affiliate of Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic), has awarded China National Chemical Engineering Group Corporation (CNCEC) the main contract for an ethylene oxide catalyst project.

The project covers engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of a new 4,000-tonne-a-year (t/y) ethylene oxide catalyst production unit, encompassing multiple units for catalyst carrier washing and drying, as well as supporting utilities.

Ethylene oxide catalysts are the core technology of the ethylene oxide industry chain, directly determining production efficiency, product quality and energy consumption of the process unit.

Petrokemya is a wholly owned affiliate of Sabic, with its main petrochemical production complex located in Jubail Industrial City, in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.

The ethylene oxide catalyst project is the ninth contract awarded by Petrokemya to CNCEC since 2015. Previous jobs cover EPC works on seven specialty chemical projects and a project to upgrade and expand output capacity at Petrokemya’s main methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) production unit.

Petrokemya awarded CNCEC the contract for the MTBE plant expansion project in November 2022, with the contractor starting work the following month.

Through the project, the output potential of Petrokemya’s MTBE unit will increase from 700,000 t/y to 1 million t/y, purportedly making it the world’s largest single-unit MTBE plant.

CNCEC achieved mechanical completion of the MTBE plant expansion project in August last year, and the project is now understood to have been commissioned.