Orlen Unipetrol Expands Ethylene Plant
Czech company Orlen Unipetrol, part of Poland’s refining and petrochemicals group PKN Orlen, has announced plans to expand its steam cracker at Litvinov by adding an eleventh furnace. The project costing about 700 million Czech koruna (about €27 million) will expand ethylene output at the site to 585,000 t/y from 545,000 t/y.
Engineering firm Technip Energies will build the pyrolysis furnace, which will be based on the contractor’s proprietary SMK coil technology and commissioned in 2022.
To meet growing global demand, Orlen Unipetrol has been making major investments to increase its petrochemical production. Last year, it commissioned a new 270,000 t/y HDPE unit, called PE3, which cost 10 billion Czech koruna (about €390,000). The company is also spending nearly 1 billion Czech koruna (about €39 million) on a 26,000 t/y dicyclopentadiene plant, which will make it one of the four largest manufacturers of DCPD in Europe when the facility starts up late next year.
“The petrochemical segment already represents a third of our production and more than half of our revenue. Its importance will continue to grow in the coming decades, as global demand for petrochemical products grows, too,” said Tomasz Wiatrak, Orlen Unipetrol’s CEO.
Wiatrak said the company wants to increase its total petrochemical production from 0.9 million to 1.4 million t/y by 2030. “We need to remove the existing capacity limitations of the steam cracker’s pyrolysis section, the heart of our petrochemical segment, to have sufficient space for the planned production increase.”
Author: Elaine Burridge, Freelance Journalist
