A giant petrochemical unit will go fully operational in Qatar on Thursday, reported the Gulf Times newspaper.
The Qatar Vinyl Company (QVC)'s plant at the Mesaie’ed Industrial City will be inaugurated by the Qatari emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, it said.
QVC, a $700 million project, was established to produce raw materials, said the paper, adding that the annual design capacity of the plant was 290,000 metric tons of caustic soda, 175,000mt of ethylene dichloride (EDC) and 230,000mt of vinyl chloride monomer (VCM).
The unit will become the first producer of EDC, VCM and caustic soda in Qatar, utilizing available ethylene produced by Qapco as one of the feedstock materials.
QVC sources told the paper that “PVC is the second largest global commodity plastic material - nearly 30 million tons annually and rates next to polyethylene.”
Qatar Petroleum will provide QVC the fuel gas for its 130MW plant. The foundation stone for the plant was laid in April 1999.
QVC has Norsk Hydro and Elf Atochem as foreign partners. Qapco, Norsk Hydro and Elf Atochem will share the marketing responsibilities, the paper added.
Krupp Uhde of Germany is responsible for the core process unit of the plant. Italy’s Technip covers the implementation of a 130MW power generation/distribution plant and major utility plants and off-site facilities including upgrading several existing Qapco plant utility systems and construction of QVC offsite facilities – Albawaba.com
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