S-Oil recently announced on the 30th that it has completed the installation of the largest propylenes separator tower at the Ulsan Shahin project construction site.
The propylenes separator tower is the tallest among domestic petrochemical facilities, standing at 118 meters (m) in height, 8.5 m in diameter, and weighing 2,370 tons (t). The tower, which is equivalent to a 50-story apartment building, was moved from the loading dock to the site, where the installation work was completed vertically using the Tower Lifting System (TLS) on the 22nd.
The Shahin project is a mega-sized integrated petrochemical complex that S-Oil is constructing with a total investment of 9.258 trillion won. The project is being built on an area of about 480,000 square meters (㎡) adjacent to the S-Oil Ulsan Complex within the Onsan National Industrial Complex, which includes a steam cracker (ethylene production facility), TC2C (a facility that directly converts crude oil into petrochemical feedstock), and raw material storage facilities. A factory producing polymer products from ethylene produced by the steam cracker is also being constructed on a site of about 400,000 ㎡ in the Dongmyeong area of Uljin County.
Currently, as key facilities are being erected one after another, the Engineering, Procurement, Construction (EPC) progress rate of the Shahin project has surpassed 60%. Once the Shahin project is fully operational, S-Oil will produce 1.8 million tons of ethylene, 770,000 tons of propylene, 200,000 tons of butadiene, and 280,000 tons of benzene, among other basic petrochemical products. It will also produce polyethylene, which is used in various synthetic materials including plastics, using the ethylene it produces.
S-Oil noted, "We expect this to become a new turning point for the domestic petrochemical industry, which is facing difficulties due to slowing global demand growth and large-scale expansions in China."