Honeywell announced today that IRPC PLC will use a range of advanced process technologies from Honeywell UOP for a new aromatics complex in Thailand’s Rayong Province.
As part of the project, Honeywell UOP (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com) will provide licensing, design, key equipment and state-of-the-art catalysts and adsorbents. When completed in 2022, the complex will produce 1.2 million metric tons per year of para-xylene used to make plastic resins, films and fibers. It also will increase its benzene production capacity from 114,000 to 495,000 tons per year. Benzene is a fuel additive and ingredient in plastics, lubricants, rubber, dyes and detergents.
The project will include a Honeywell UOP CCR Platforming unit, which converts naphtha into high-octane gasoline and aromatics, and an LD Parex unit, which recovers high-purity paraxylene from mixed xylenes and uses a new, more energy efficient light desorbent. The complex also will include Honeywell UOP Sulfolane technology to extract aromatics from the feed; Isomar technology to convert xylene isomers into more valuable para-xylene; and Tatoray technology, which converts toluene and C9 aromatics into mixed xylenes and high-purity benzene, and that more than doubles the yield of paraxylene from the naphtha feedstock.
IRPC Public Company Limited is a publicly traded petroleum and petrochemical company, and a subsidiary of PTT Group. IRPC is based in Mueang Rayong District, Rayong Province, Thailand, and operates the first fully integrated petrochemical complex in Southeast Asia.