Association of Petrochemical Industry Corporations (APIC) announced that a fresh round of negotiations has begun between Iran’s petrochemical officials and three major American and European petrochemical companies with the main axes of talks being construction of new polymer units, knowledge and technology transfer as well as issuance of license for new petchem plans.
On the sidelines of K Trade Fair 2016, the world's premier fair for the plastics and rubber industry in Germany, high ranking officials of Iran’s petrochemical industry held meetings with authorities of France’s Total and Air Liquide as well as America’s UOP, formerly known as Universal Oil Products.
The talks with UOP mainly revolved around supply of modern technologies to petchem industries especially in the field of propylene production, cooperation in methanol-to-olefins (MTO) technology as well as propane dehydrogenation (PDH) as a process step in the production of propylene from propane.
Presently, 80 per cent of propylene production is directly being converted to polypropylene since a centerpiece of the Sixth National Development Plan has been to uplift production capacity of propylene in order to feed petrochemical complementary industries.
Development of petrochemical industry in Iran also aims to increase production capacity of propylene and polypropylene to supply feed to petchem plants; accordingly, projects to convert methanol to polypropylene have been put on the agenda.
In addition to UOP, separate talks were also held with representatives of France’s Total oil company aiming to construct a polyethylene complex with new grades on the basis of modern technologies.
Undoubtedly, Total has been to most active European company in Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemical industries in the post-JCPOA era.
Also, Iranian officials at the German exhibition attended a meeting with representatives of Air Liquide Industrial gases company exchanging views on turning methanol to propylene and construction of industrial gases units in petchem industries.
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