China's Nanjing Chengzhi Yongqing Energy started feeding methanol into its new methanol-to-olefin (MTO) plant today.
The MTO plant at Nanjing in Jiangsu province uses both UOP and Wison Engineering technologies. It can produce up to 360,000 t/yr of propylene and 240,000 t/yr of ethylene at full capacity.
Chengzhi expects the plant to yield on-specification olefins in a couple of weeks.
Chengzhi has also built an integrated 100,000 t/yr butadiene unit at the MTO plant. The butadiene unit will start operations in mid-July.
The start-up of the new MTO plant will have a major impact on both feedstock methanol and downstream olefin markets. Chengzhi needs to buy 1.8mn t/yr of methanol from the market to feed the MTO plant. The company does not have any olefin derivative units.
