Sabalan Petrochemical Company in Asalouyeh, southern Bushehr Province, has started using domestically-made hydrodesulphurization (HDS) catalysts for the first time in the country to support domestic manufactures, the managing director said.
“Due to the US sanctions, the company could not import this type of catalyst that is exclusively made by the Danish chemical company Haldor Topsoe,” Mohammad Zali was quoted as saying by the National Petrochemical Company news website Nipna.
The US announced fresh economic sanctions on Iran in August 2018 targeting key industrial sectors. In the May of that year the beleaguered president, Donald Trump, tore up the landmark 2015 nuclear deal Iran had signed with the six world powers and in November imposed a second round of sanctions against the key energy sector.
“It was possible for us to source similar catalysts from other foreign companies but we preferred to support domestic production. We asked three local companies to produce this catalyst,” Zali noted.
The Petrochemical Research and Technology Company, Kharazmi Technology Development Company, and Sarv Oil & Gas Industries Development Company focused on the production of HDS catalysts.
Hydrodesulphurization is a catalytic chemical process widely used to remove sulfur from natural gas and from refined petroleum products, such as gasoline, jet fuel, kerosene, diesel, and fuel oils. The purpose of removing the sulfur in products such as ultra-low-sulfur diesel is to curb sulfur dioxide emissions from fuels in automotive vehicles, aircraft, locomotives, ships, gas and power plants, residential and industrial furnaces and other forms of fuel combustion.
Achievement
“Thanks to the efforts by domestic companies production of the HDS catalyst has been indigenized and this indeed is a great achievement for our petrochemical industry,” Zali added. An undertaking of Sepehr Energy Corporation (SECo), the plant can produce 1.65 million tons of methanol per year.
Located in South Pars Special Economy Energy Zone, the plant stretches over seven hectares.
This is the first of three methanol projects developed by the SECo and the other two are Dena and Siraf projects under construction. The company has said it will focus on exports.
Dena methanol plant in Asalouyeh will have an annual production capacity of 1.65 million tons, and Siraf will produce the same volume in Dayyer County, Bushehr.
National Petrochemical Company data show Iran accounts for 5% of the world's total methanol production with exports to Iraq, China, the UAE, India and South Korea.
Petrochemical companies in Iran produced 30 million tons in the last fiscal that ended in March, of which 22 million tons were sold in global markets
Exports earned $10 billion. Moreover, 8 million tons of petrochemicals worth $5 billion were sold in the domestic market.
China is the world's largest methanol importer. It has major methanol-to-olefins capacity and imported 10 million tons of methanol in 2019. Iran is the largest exporter of methanol to the second economic power supplying about 40% of its annual import.
In the petrochemical industry methanol is used to create high-quality basic chemicals, the most important of which are formaldehyde, acetic acid, MTBE, methyl methacrylate, methyl chloride and methylamines processed to produce other derivatives.
With the launch of new methanol plants net methanol output capacity has doubled in two years reaching about 12.2 million tons a year.
Already a major component of the global energy market, the role and significance of petrochemicals continues to grow. Demand for plastics – the most familiar group of petrochemical products – has outpaced almost all other bulk materials (steel, aluminum or cement), and has nearly doubled since 2000.
