NEW YORK (ICIS)--Formosa Plastics Corp’s US propane dehydrogenation (PDH) project will be delayed to a targeted 2020-2021 start-up, a company official said on Thursday.
“The PDH unit start-up has been pushed back slightly, to 2020-2021,” said Steve Rice, senior manager, corporate communications, at Formosa Plastics Corp USA
The PDH project in Point Comfort, Texas, will have capacity of 658,000 tonnes/year of propylene, according to ICIS plants and projects.
In December 2016, ICIS reported that construction on Formosa’s PDH plant started but that no recent start-up date had been announced.
Dow Chemical started up its 750,000 tonne/year PDH project in Freeport, Texas in December 2016 and Enterprise Products is aiming for a Q3 2017 start-up of its 750,000 tonne/year PDH project in Mont Belvieu, Texas.
However, many on-purpose propylene projects have been delayed or cancelled on a more challenging outlook for the monomer.
Last year, BASF postponed its 450,000 tonne/year methane-to-methanol-to-propylene (MMTP) project and Ascend Performance Materials put its 1m tonne/year PDH project on hold. In 2015, REXtac cancelled plans for its 300,000 tonne/year PDH project while Enterprise Products shelved its plans for a second PDH unit.