Reliance Plans Dahej Expansion

Reliance Industries is planning to invest $715 million to expand its Dahej Manufacturing Division (DMD) in Bharuch, Gujarat, India, according to an application it has filed with the country’s environment ministry.

The company is proposing to build new plants for producing EDC, cyclohexanedimethanol (CHDM) and polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PET-G). In addition, the project includes a new incinerator in the VCM plant and a CO₂ recovery unit in the ethylene oxide/glycol plant.

Capacity of the EDC plant will be sufficient to feed a 500,000 t/y VCM/PVC facility. DMD already produces 360,000 t/y of VCM/PVC and has approval to build a new VCM/PVC plant with a capacity of 1.2m t/y.

The PETG plant will have a capacity of 200,000 t/y while the CHDM unit will produce 50,000 t/y. CHDM is a feedstock for producing PETG as well as various other polymers.

Reliance has not indicated a timescale for the project. Last November, the Indian group announced plans to set up a crude-to-chemicals project adjacent to its Jamnagar refinery and petrochemical complex at a cost of nearly $10 billion.

The complex would comprise several oil-to-chemical units including a multi-feed steam cracker to maximize chemical monomers and multizone catalytic cracking units to convert feedstock to ethylene and propylene, along with converting existing fluid catalytic cracking units to maximize production of olefins and aromatics instead of gasoline.

Plans also include an aromatics complex along with chemical complexes to produce streams of C1, C2, C3, C4 and C6 chemicals.