09-06-2015

Grupa Azoty selects C3 Oleflex™ process technology from Honeywell UOP

UOP LLC, a Honeywell company  announced today that its C3 Oleflex™ process technology will be used by Poland's Grupa Azoty to produce propylene. The propylene will be used to make resins and plastics that replace metal automobile parts, decreasing automobile weight and improving fuel efficiency. The facility will produce 400,000 metric tons annually of high-quality propylene, enough to support the production of nearly 11 million cars per year. The new unit in Police, in the Szczecin region of Poland, is slated to come online in 2019.

Propylene is a byproduct of certain refining processes. Many of those process units are closing in Europe or are being converted to other processes that produce less propylene byproduct. The resulting propylene shortage has sparked investment in technology to create on-purpose propylene from propane, which is either derived from natural gas or produced from petroleum refining.

By 2020, 20 percent of the world's propylene production is expected to come from on-purpose propylene production technologies such as Honeywell UOP's Oleflex technology. For more than 20 years, Oleflex has been a leading technology worldwide for converting propane to propylene.

"In Western Europe, byproduct propylene is expected to decline about 4 percent over the next five years, while global propylene demand will increase by more than 20 percent, meaning on-purpose production is critical to fill the gap," said Mike Millard, vice president and general manager of Honeywell UOP's Process Technology and Equipment business. "This new facility helps position Poland as an important petrochemical producer with strong manufacturing capabilities that is creating new jobs in the region."

Grupa Azoty, one of Europe's largest chemical companies, offers a diversified product portfolio, ranging from mineral fertilizers and engineering plastics to oxo-alcohols and pigments.

"This new propylene production unit will be the largest project in our company's history and it will make a significant impact on the European petrochemical market, so it was important to select a reliable technology and an experienced company," said Krzysztof Jalosinski, president of Grupa Azoty's subsidiary in Police and vice-president of the Management Board of Grupa Azoty. "We chose Honeywell UOP Oleflex technology due to its economics, reliability and product quality, as well as the company's decades of experience with propylene projects worldwide."

Since the Oleflex process was developed, Honeywell UOP has continually improved the technology and the catalyst it uses. Compared with competing dehydrogenation processes, Oleflex technology provides the lowest cash cost of production, the highest return on investment and the smallest environmental footprint. This superior performance is characterized by low capital cost, high propylene yields, low energy consumption, and use of a fully recyclable platinum alumina-based catalyst system. In addition to the C3 Oleflex process to convert propane to propylene, Honeywell UOP also licenses its C4 Oleflex technology, a butane dehydrogenation process to convert isobutane to isobutylene.

In addition to technology licensing, Honeywell UOP and local affiliates will provide engineering design, catalysts, adsorbents, equipment, staff training and technical service for the project. The Police facility also uses technologies from Honeywell Process Solutions at several of its operating units, including Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS), Safety Manager, Profit Controllers and TotalPlant Solutions. These software technologies help plant personnel manage operations, maximize efficiency and increase uptime.

For more information, please visit www.uop.com