The Red Sea National Petrochemical Company (“Red Sea”) has selected Univation’s UNIPOL PE Process for two reactor lines. Each reactor line is designed to achieve world-scale nameplate capacities and will enable Red Sea with significant production capabilities to satisfy growing regional and export-focused demand for polyethylene products.
The two new reactor lines will be located in the Suez Canal Economic Zone in the Arab Republic of Egypt. Red Sea will take complete advantage of the broad product flexibility of the UNIPOL™ PE Process by designing both plants with “full-density” capabilities providing Red Sea the ability to produce both HDPE and LLDPE products in either reactor platform.
We are very proud that Red Sea selected Univation’s UNIPOL™ PE Process for this impressive integrated project in Egypt.
To cover their targeted polyethylene product segments, Red Sea has elected to take advantage of Univation’s high-density polyethylene (HDPE) technology platforms. These include PRODIGY™ Bimodal HDPE Technology to produce a range of advantaged bimodal HDPE applications (e.g. PE100 pipe, film, blow molding), and also ACCLAIM™ Unimodal HDPE Technology which enables the manufacture of advanced unimodal HDPE products (e.g. large part blow molding, unimodal films, pipe applications). Additionally, Red Sea will access Univation’s XCAT™ Metallocene Technology allowing the production of specialty metallocene LLDPE films covering a wide-range of food preservation film structures, durable shipping packages, and sustainable agricultural film applications.
As a further enhancement to the operational performance of their two UNIPOL™ PE Process lines, Red Sea selected Univation’s advanced process control platform: PREMIER™ APC+ 3.0. APC+ 3.0 is Univation’s latest generation of process control software and is designed to maximize the value derived from the UNIPOL™ PE Process enabling Red Sea to achieve world-class operational metrics.
Additionally, Red Sea’s recently signed a separate agreement with Linde Engineering for the steam cracker unit to produce ethylene feedstock for the two UNIPOL™ PE Reactor lines. Linde Engineering will also be responsible for the preparation of the Basic Design Engineering Package (BDEP) for the two lines. Univation Technologies and Linde Engineering have a cooperation agreement, which was formed to enable measurable capital investment synergies and overall lower operation cost derived from a high degree of integration of the UNIPOL™ PE Process with the cracker platform.
Luis Cirihal, president of Univation Technologies, commented, “We are very proud that Red Sea’s selected Univation’s UNIPOL™ PE Process for this impressive integrated project in Egypt. We look forward to contributing over 50 years of Univation’s polyethylene technology know-how to enable the successful completion of all key project phases ‒ including design, construction, commissioning, and start-up ‒ for these two world-scale plants.” Luis continued his comments, “Additionally, we are pleased to work with both the Red Sea’s team and our alliance team members at Linde Engineering to maximize the combined engineering and design strengths of the UNIPOL™ PE Process and the cracker platform. Our shared goal is to deliver to Red Sea’s a further competitive edge in the marketplace by enabling lower initial capital expenditure as well as on-going advantaged operating costs.”