Urea is an important fertilizer for the farming sector. However, its major drawback is that it quickly dissolves in water diffusing into the soil in a very short period of time. Sulfur coated Urea (SCU) is a value added alternate product which diffuses in a slow, regulated fashion into the soil allowing for efficient use of urea by the plants and agricultural corps.
It is reported that such release can be controlled to as low as only 30% in seven days by good coating of urea with sulfur and wax for which appropriate coating technology and know-how is required.
NPC's Petrochemical R&T Company has taken the responsibility of developing this technology and constructed a pilot plant of ten tonnes per day capacity. The company's dedicated team of researchers and engineers have already developed the basic process knowledge and optimized the conditions.
So far, they have produced and tested about ten tonnes of sulfur and wax coated urea whose quality matches the international standards.
This development will increase the efficiency of the use of urea by 10-15 folds for farmers while consuming a substantial portion of the NPC's present total production of nearly 2 million tonnes per year. Meanwhile as further work on quality and process improvement is proceeding at the pilot plant, designing of appropriate commercial plants has now been programmed by NPC.


NPC has a mega-olefin facility under planning. NPC's planning & development director, Mohammad Hassan Peyvandi says "the plant is based on liquid feed including condensates from gas reservoirs and heavy-ends of aromatic facilities. The plant will be able to yield 400,000 tonnes/year of propylene for every one million tonnes of ethylene produced."

Peyvandi also said converting methanol to propylene is a very attractive option for NPC since Iran has abundant gas resources and it can produce large amounts of methanol at very comparative prices adding that NPC was ready to cooperate with owners of such technology to commercialize it.
Commenting on the world's propylene demand, he said international investors are paying particular attention to on-purpose propylene production such as propane dehydrogenation (PDH), methanol-to-propylene (MTP) and fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) units in refineries. Peyvandi, however, stated that "FCC is not an option in Iran since there are no plans for new refineries, while PDH processes have not proved their economic viability since they utilize a very special technology accompanied by low margin of propylene compared with propane."


In line with the NPC's policy to expand its presence at the major global markets, Petrochemical Commercial Co. (PCC), an NPC subsidiary, is due shortly to open its office in Turkey. Meanwhile,PCC is taking steps to open its offices in Pakistan and also in an African country.
Recently,PCC offices in Shanghai and Dubai managed to conclude three Bonded Warehouse Transaction (BWT) contracts for supplying polymers there.


Approaching the China's market and enhancing cooperation with Chinese companies to promote the development of the petrochemical sector is of profound significant to NPC, Mohammad Ehtiati, chairman and managing director of Petrochemical Commercial Co. (PCC) told China Chemical Week. Ehtiati said PCC's trade with China reached $200m representing 23% of its exports. He also said that NPC has a long-term plan for petrochemical cooperation with China.
Ehtiati expressed hope that Chinese oil and petrochemical companies could visit Iran to receive first-hand information on the NPC's activities and plans.
PCC has set up two offices in Beijing and Shanghai to expand its share of the Chinese petrochemical markets.