Polyethylene Production Plants -- For The Archives

New polyethylene production plant in Mexico.

Braskem-Idesa is building a new integrated polyethylene production plant in Mexico. The project, named Ethylene XXI, will be the largest private petrochemical facility in Mexico.

It is being built in the city of Nanchital in the municipality of Veracruz, in south-east Mexico. It will produce 1.05mt of polyethylene a year from ethane.

Braskem-Idesa is a joint venture between Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem and a Mexican petrochemical group, Grupo Idesa. Braskem and Idesa respectively hold 65% and 35% interest in the joint venture.

The purpose of the project is to reduce the gap between Mexico's local polyethylene production and demands, which are currently being met by importing one million tonnes of polyethylene every year.

Alberta, Canada

Nova Chemicals Corp., Calgary, is nearing completion of a $1.4-billion (US) expansion that will make its Joffre petrochemical site in central Alberta the largest ethylene and polyethylene complex in the world, according to the company.

Once the project's ethylene and polyethylene plants begin operating, Nova Chemicals will become North America's third-largest ethylene producer (7.8 billion lb/year capacity) and fifth-largest polyethylene producer (3.5 billion lb/year).

The largest new facility is a $750-million Ethylene 3 plant (E3), which will be the world's largest ethane cracker (Fig. 1). When E3 comes on stream in August, its annual rated production capacity of 2.81 billion lb of ethylene will complement the 3.4 billion lb from the Ethylene 1 (E1) and Ethylene 2 (E2) plants, which began operating in 1979 and 1984, respectively.

The nearby Polyethylene 2 plant (PE2) will be the world's largest solution polyethylene plant and the first commercial facility to use Nova Chemicals' Advanced Sclairtech, a catalyst and process technology that creates various grades of high-margin products.
The PE2 plant will begin commercial operation in early 2001 and will have an initial annual production capacity of 850 million lb of polyethylene. The existing 16-year-old Polyethylene 1 plant (PE1) produces up to 1.2 billion lb of linear low-density polyethylene.