The last heavy equipment of Persian Gulf Apadana Petrochemical Plant in Asalouyeh County, Bushehr Province, has been successfully installed by local experts and engineers.
With the installation of two super-heaters, weighing 165 tons, the national project is almost ready to be launched, the Oil Ministry’s news service Shana reported.
Completed at a cost of $500 million, the plant will have an annual production capacity of 1.65 million tons of methanol.
Owned by the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company, it is expected to come on stream by the end of summer.
The complex will use natural gas as its key feedstock. Methanol produced by the plant will be of high quality with a purity at 99.9% and the entire output will be for export.
Methanol is used as an anti-freeze and as feedstock for producing high-quality petrochemical, the most important of which are formaldehyde, acetic acid, MTBE, methyl methacrylate, methyl chloride and methylamines, which are processed to produce other derivatives.
Up until 2007, methanol was used only as a chemical, but the completion of methanol value chain gained momentum after methanol to olefin and methanol to propylene projects were accelerated, which have a bigger profit margin.
The National Petrochemical Company’s data show Iran produces about 13 million tons of methanol per year, accounting for 5% of the world's total methanol production, which are exported to Iraq, China, the UAE, India and South Korea.
The methanol industry has experienced an explosive growth, primarily in China and the United States, owing to significant developments in shale gas.
The global methanol market is expected to grow at a significant rate in the coming years, driven mainly by the increasing use of methanol (in the form of fuel and antifreeze agent) in the automotive industry.
