SABIC to commission CO2 utilisation plant this year

SABIC is planning to start operations at the world’s largest carbon dioxide (CO2) utilisation plant at its chemical complex in Jubail, Saudi Arabia by the end of the year.

Plant construction, by Germany’s Linde Group is now complete and commissioning work is underway, reports ICIS Chemical News. The new plant will compress around 1,500 tonnes of raw CO2 per day from its glycol plants, which will then be piped to make urea and methanol. The unit is expected to ramp up to full operation toward the end of 2015, by which time SABIC’s new 500,000 tonne per year ethylene glycol plant in Jubail will be in production.

The project will capture CO2 in gas form emitted by the EG plant, and then purify and liquefy it for piping to associated plants of SABIC at the site to produce methanol and urea. As part of SABIC’s overall strategy for sustainable development, the company aims to significantly raise the utilisation of CO2 to 4.2 million tonnes per year in the next couple of years. Production in 2014 was 2.7 million tonnes.