Zhuhai Biyang Chemical Co (BP Zhuhai Company), China

During the final quarter of 2005 BP announced that it was planning to build a second world-scale purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant at its joint venture Zhuhai Biyang Chemical Co (BP Zhuhai Company) site in Guangdong Province China. Construction work began during the middle of 2006.

The new plant became operational at the start of 2008 and has a capacity of 900,000tpa of PTA. It is said that facility is the world’s largest single train PTA plant. Total investment costs are put at $400m.

TECHNOLOGY

The PTA plant is said to be the first to use BP's latest generation PTA process technology. BP said that the technology enabled scale and cost efficiencies which significantly reduced the both capital cost and conversion costs.

In addition. the new plant is said to "deliver a step change in environmental performance, reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and other waste streams".

BUILDING AND FRONT END ENGINEERING AND DESIGN CONTRACT

During May 2006, France's Technip announced that BP Zhuhai had awarded it a services contract for the development of the PTA project. The contract covered management of the project.

Technip's operations and engineering centre in Italy was responsible for executing the contract. This agreement followed on from the front-end engineering and design contract that Technip completed during 2005 for the same PTA plant.

PTA PLANT AUTOMATION

During July 2007 Emerson Process Management announced that it had been awarded a contract to digitally automate the 900,000tpa PTA plant.

Emerson engineered and managed the automation project using its PlantWeb digital architecture with FOUNDATION field bus technology for process control and data management. Emerson was also responsible for the detailed design, including the engineering design, and implementation of the digital architecture.

OPERATOR TRAINING SIMULATOR

Invensys Process Systems China was responsible for delivering a fully engineered operator training system (OTS) for the PTA production plant. Invensys said that the OTS project was the first cooperative effort of its kind between BP Zhuhai and Invensys.

BACKGOUND

BP Zhuhai is a joint venture between BP, which owns 85% and Fu Hua Group which owns the remaining 15%.

The company, established during 1997, already operates a 350,000tpa PTA facility which was completed during 2003.

The new production plant will meet China's growing demand for PTA.

Once the new plant is complete production capacity at BP Zhuhai will be more than 1.2mtpa, confirming Zhuhai as one of the major PTA production centres in China.