Dragon Aromatics

The Dragon Aromatics petrochemical plant is located in the port of Gulei, Zhangpu County, which is in the southernmost Fujian province;[1] As of 2015, the company name contains Zhangzhou, the main city of the prefecture.[2] Gulei lies within Dongshan Bay, on a peninsula formed by the Zhang River estuary at the Taiwan Strait of the Pacific ocean. Gulei peninsula was once famous for carrot production, and the area used in flower and fruit production.[3]

The plant makes paraxylene (PX), a feedstock in the production of polyester chips and fiber. It uses a production process called ParamaX, licensed by a French company named Axens, seated in Rueil-Malmaison, which occurs in two main stages:

In a 4-million-tons per year (tpy) condensate distillation unit (often referred to as condensate splitter), natural-gas condensate, referred to as condensate, is processed to light naphtha and heavy naphtha and naphtha hydrotreating for purification. The PX facility was originally designed to turn heavy naphtha feedstock into PX by "aromizing" or mixed aromatics production, paraxylene purification, C8 aromatics isomerization (xylenes and ethylbenzene) and aromatics transalkylation. The one million tonnes a year of light naphtha were supposed to be marketed to Chinese plants making ethylene.[4][5] The original plan of using heavy naphtha as feedstock was later modified to add a condensate splitter.[1]

Besides PX, the PX facility creates other aromatics components (over 1.0 tpy per 2007 plan): It produces orthoxylene (160,000 tons per year (tpy) per 2007 plan), needed to make plasticizers and resins in paints, coating and auto parts industries. The plant also produces benzene (228,000 tpy per 2007 plan), "the starting block of a large set of polymeric materials such as nylon fibers, polystyrene for plastic packaging, polycarbonates for impact-resistant glass substitutes and compact disks".[5]

As of 2015, the plant included two PX production lines and a benzene unit, each with a capacity to produce 800,000 tpy of paraxylene per unit (and 1.6 million tpy total) and 240,000 tpy of benzene,[6][7] which was twice the PX (800,000 tpy) and about 5% more of the benzene (228,000 tpy) that had been planned in 2007.[5]

By the end of April 2015, the plant was to increase condensate splitting to 5.5 million tonnes a year (137,000 barrels per day).[8]

Dragon Aromatics is a subsidiary of the Taiwanese Xianglu Dragon Group, owned by Taiwanese expatriate tycoon Chen Yu-hao.[9] In 2004, Dragon Aromatics was based in Xiamen province, and received a license to build a petrochemical complex producing PX there. This was surprising given that "Chen's other plants in Xiamen had already been cited for repeated emissions infractions".[5][9] In March 2007, Zhao Yufen, a chemistry professor at Xiamen University had collected 105 signatures by members of the China's "top political advisory body" opposing the project and, in June, thousands of Xiamen residents protested, forcing local officials to drop the plan".[10] After this "rare mass protest", the parent company Xianglu moved the project to Zhangzhou.[11] The company initially intended to build in Dongshan County, "but large protests, in which some people were detained, prompted the site to be changed to Gulei.[12]

In January 2009, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection permitted construction of a petrochemical plant in Zhangzhou and Gulei, to produce p-xylene and a nearby Xianglu company factory to transform p-xylene into polyethylene terephthalate.[4] By the end of 2009, there were 16 PX producers by 13 companies, nearly doubling capacity over the next years, with the petrochemical department at China International Engineering Consulting Corp predicting that China needed "to build at least 10 new PX facilities each with a capacity to produce 800,000 tons of the chemical a year over the next decade".[10]

The plant was expected to begin production in mid 2012, but "was delayed by slower-than-expected construction and problems in gaining environmental clearance".[4] Other sources reported that the Ministry of Environmental Protection opposed the project in October 2012, because no environmental assessment had been done, and fined it 200,000 yuan in January 2013 for starting construction prior to an approval. In May 2013, it had requested that the National Development and Reform Commission, in charge of economic planning, stop the project.[10] Until the plant opened in 2013, China had imported 53% of its paraxylene.[6] On July 30, 2013, before its start up, a "small blast" occurred at the Gulei plant, when its 3.2-million-tpy hydrocracker unit was tested and a hydrogen pipeline leaked. This incident delayed start-up by one week.[4] No casualties or toxic leaks were reported at that time.[11]

On April 3, 2015, one day after the news of a breakthrough in the Comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, Reuters reported that Iran was to supply China more condensate under a new contract, specifically mentioning Dragon Aromatics.[13]

• polyester resin

• Official website