The National Petrochemical Company (NPC) has awarded the German contractor Linde a contract for the provision of basic and detailed engineering as well as supply of equipment for its olefin no. 7 project which is one of the world's largest olefin facilities. The contract is for ethane (C2+) recovery and fractionation plus the ethylene units. The ethane recovery unit will consume 1.25 mcf of natural gas and will produce 1,750,000-t/y of C2+. The ethylene unit will have a capacity of 1.1m tons per year.

According to the contract, Linde will also construct a gas separation plant, which will supply the facility with ethane, propane and butane through a 100-kilometer pipeline.

The contract was awarded on July 11, 2000 during President Khatami's visit to Germany.

The contract will be financed through a structured financing package of Euro 550m that was signed on June 16, 2000 between NPC and a consortium of European banks led by Deutsche Bank
(NPC News Bulletin # 6).

In addition to ethylene, olefin no. 7 will produce 200,000-t/y of propylene, 83,000-t/y of pyrolysis gasoline and 1,200-t/y of hydrogen. Its downstream units include polypropylene with a capacity of 220,000-t/y, high density polyethylene (HDPE) with a capacity of 300,000-t/y, low density polyethylene (LDPE) with a capacity of 300,000-t/y, monoethylene glycol (MEG) with a capacity of 400,000-t/y, diethylene glycol with a capacity of 40,000-t/y and triethylene glycol with a capacity of 2,000-t/y.



The NPC subsidiary Marun Petrochemical Company is responsible for constructing and operating this world scale facility, which will be built at Petrochemical Special Economic Zone at Bandar Imam in the vicinity of the northern coast of the Persian Gulf.





In the meantime, Aldo Belloni, Linde's Member of the Executive Board met with NPC President, M. R. Nematzadeh on July 2 at the NPC's headquarters and discussed mutual cooperation between the two companies.

The main theme of the discussions centered on the latest developments regarding the NPC's projects whose engineering or licensing contracts had been awarded to Linde.

The two sides also exchanged views on other areas of possible collaboration, including R&D and manufacture of equipment used in petrochemical plants.