S.Korea's Hanwha Total to raise LPG use in cracker after expansion
PENANG (Reuters) — South Korea’s Hanwha Total Petrochemical will use at least four times more LPG feedstock when it completes raising its cracker capacity by 30% to 1.4 MMtpy in 2019, said a top executive.
Hanwha Total operates a 1.1 MMtpy cracker in Daesan, South Korea, that uses about 100 Mt to 200 Mt of LPG a year, said Sebastien Bariller, a senior vice president in charge of feedstock purchasing for the company on the sidelines of a condensate and naphtha forum in Penang.
The amount of LPG used after the cracker’s expansion would be raised by 700 Mt, he said, with supply source mainly from the United States.
Most crackers in Asia—which produce the fundamental building blocks of plastics such as ethylene and propylene—run on naphtha. Many of the units, though, can replace at least 5% of the naphtha with LPG, and that’s often done when LPG prices are at least $50/t lower than naphtha.
Hanwha Total, which also owns two condensate splitters, is a joint venture between French oil and gas company Total and the Hanwha Group.
Hanwha Total announced earlier this year that it would invest $450 MM to expand the Daesan cracker capacity to meet rising petrochemicals demand.
Reporting by Seng Li Peng; Editing by Tom Hogue
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