KPC's melamine plant

Khorasan Petrochemical Company (KPC), an NPC subsidiary located at the city of Bojnoord in the eastern province of Khorasan is building a 20 000 tonne/year melamine plant. The plant's basic engineering has been completed and the detailed engineering is 62% complete. Supply of equipment shows a progress of 31%. Orders have already been placed for critical equipment and machinery while supplying other equipment and machinery is proceeding. KPC will supply the melamine plant with its feedstocks including 12,240-tonne/year ammonia and 70,000-tonne/year urea. The entire ammonia feed and half of the urea feed will return to the urea plant (in the form of ammonium carbamate). Half of the plant's output, equivalent to 10,000-tonne/year, will be exported and the remaining will be used as feedstock for the downstream industries. Italy's Eurotecnica has won the project's license, engineering and procurement contracts.

Four NPC projects on stream in the current Iranian year

Four of the NPC's projects will come on stream in the current Iran year, which started on 21 March 01. They include a methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) project, the high-density polyethylene plant (hdPE) of Amir Kabir (olefin no. 6), the utility and off-site services project (Fajr project) and Kharg's sulfure granulation project. The 500,000-t/y MTBE is located at Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex (BIPC), south west of Iran, in a 10-hectare area. The project's licensor is UOP and its main contractor is Petrochemical Industries Design & Engineering Company (PIDEC) of Iran which is responsible for providing basic & detailed engineering, procurement, supervision and workshop engineering. The plant will consume butane and methanol as its feedstock, which will be supplied by BIPC and Kharg Methanol Plant respectively. About 40% of the project's output will be used by the country's downstream industries while the remaining output will be exported. The 140 000-t/y hdPE plant of the olefin no. 6 project is located at the Petrochemical Special Economic Zone (PETZONE). The contract for the provision of license, basic engineering and technical assistance for this plant was awarded to Germany's Krupp UHDE. It is based on Hochest technology. Detailed engineering and supply contract was given to Iran's PIDEC as the main contractor and Spain's Intecsa UHDE as the sub-contractor. Until the olefin plant becomes operational, the feed for the HDPE unit will be provided by other sources, including BIPC or will be imported.
The utility and off-site services project provides utilities and off-site services for the projects that are being built at the PETZONE. It consists of the following units: Steam and power generation unit, water treatment unit, air compression and separation unit, gas station unit, incinerator unit, waste-water treatment unit.
The basic and detailed engineering as well as manufacturing contracts for the air separation plant have been awarded to Air Product of Britain. Iran's Erection and Construction Co. (ECC) has won the installation contract. Austria's Va Tech-Wabag has won the contracts for basic engineering, detailed engineering and manufacturing of the water treatment plant. The contracts for the basic engineering, detailed engineering and manufacturing of the project's steam and power generation plant have been awarded to Alstom Power of France while Iran's Atanour has been selected as the installation contractor. The basic and detailed engineering as well as manufacturing and installation contracts for the effluent treatment plant have been given to Va Tech-Wabag and Iran's Zolal.
Kharg sulfur granulation project has been built in Kharg Island on the northern coast of the Persian Gulf. The project's production capacity is 800 tonne/day. It was implemented for environmental considerations and will boost Kharg Petrochemical Company's export revenues.

NPC to award ammonia/urea and PA/DOP contracts soon

NPC expects to award the contracts for its world-scale urea/ammonia project at Assaluyeh soon. Final round of technical, contractual and financial negotiations with the project's short-listed bidders are already under way in Tehran. It is mulling over the decision to select one contractor for both urea and ammonia plants. The facility will be built at Assaluyeh on the northern coast of the Persian Gulf in the vicinity of the off-shore South Pars gas field. It will produce 2050 tonne/day (676 500 tonne/year) of ammonia and 3250 tonne/day (1.07m tonne/year) of urea. Meanwhile, bidders for the phthalic anhydride (PA) and dioctyl phthalate (DOP) project have submitted their final financial proposals and NPC is expected to select the project's contractor soon. Located in the vicinity of the Esfahan Petrochemical Complex, in the province of Esfahan, the PA unit will have a capacity of 21 500 tonne/year and the DOP plant will produce 40 000 tonne per year.

NPC awards a benchmarking contract to Foster Wheeler

NPC awarded to Foster Wheeler Management Limited-UK a contract for benchmarking Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex's (BIPC) olefin plant. The contract aims to assess the overall efficiency of the plant and to establish a benchmark from which improvement programs can be developed. In order to establish the basis for comparison and benchmarking, Foster Wheeler will systematically establish performance indices using reliability data and measurement of factors such as throughput, quality, yields, utility consumption, planned and unplanned outages, safety and loss statistics and environmental performance. To establish baselines against which benchmarking with similar facilities can be made it will review all aspects of plant operations, including physical integrity process configuration, operational systems and procedures, maintenance performance, safety and environmental considerations as per prevailing international standards.