Qatar Petrochemical Company (Qapco) is lining up technology for the Al Sejeel petrochemical and commodity plastics production complex it is building at Ras Laffan, Qatar, and set to go on stream in 2018.

The 80:20 joint venture of Qatar Industries and France's Total Petrochemicals has acquired a license to use the Unipol PE process of Houston, Texas-based Univation Technologies in producing nearly 1.6m t/y of polyethylene. It has licensed the Unipol PP process from Dow Chemical's Union Carbide division for a 540,000 t/y polypropylene unit, the first PP unit in Qatar.

The Al Sejeel complex, which will be back-integrated into a mixed feed cracker, will have a 550,000 t/y LLDPE plant and two plants capable of producing 520,000 t/y of HDPE each, all using All Univation's XCAT metallocene and Prodigy bimodal catalysts. The PP unit will produce random copolymers and impact copolymers.

Oil- and gas-rich Qatar is aiming to widen its overall petrochemical production capability to 23m t/year by 2020. (dw)