INVISTA’s technology and licensing group, INVISTA Performance Technologies (IPT; www.ipt.invista.com) and Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) Co., Ltd have announced the successful start-up of Hengli’s fourth purified terephthalic acid (PTA) line. This plant boasts a capacity of 2.5 million metric tons per year (m.t./yr), and is located in Changxing Island, Dalian City, Liaoning Province. The new plant, which utilizes INVISTA’s P8 PTA technology, came online on January 8th, 2020. As the result of joint effort of all parties involved, the schedule of this project is significantly shorter than other PTA projects, with start-up only 22 months after the project kicked off in early March, 2018.
A fifth PTA line, identical to the fourth PTA line is currently under construction and is expected to start-up around the middle of 2020. Hengli also operates another 3 PTA lines on the same site, each with a capacity of 2.2 million m.t./yr, using INVISTA’s P7 PTA technology. This makes the Hengli site the largest PTA site in the world.
Mike Pickens, IPT President, commented, “I congratulate Hengli on the successful start-up. The achievement represents yet another major milestone for Hengli, and for INVISTA, it lifts us beyond the 30 million tonnes mark in terms of successful PTA startups. I am appreciative of the collaborative efforts of the Hengli and INVISTA commissioning teams. The successful start-up of Hengli’s fourth line again demonstrates INVISTA’s capability in the global PTA market.”