China's Dragon Aromatics defers post-accident start-up of main unit by a week

31-Jul-13

China-based petrochemical company Dragon Aromatics will delay by a week the start-up of the main unit at its US$3 bln petrochemical complex. The unit was impacted by a small blast on Tuesday, due to leaks at a hydrogen pipeline during testing of a 3.2 mln tpa hydrocracker unit, a company official told Reuters. A fire was put out within about an hour and no casualties were reported. Dragon Aromatics, owned by Taiwan's Xianglu Group, is one of China's biggest independent petrochemical producers and potentially a major importer of condensate. Central to the new complex are an 800,000 tpa paraxylene (PX) facility and a 4 mln tpa condensate splitter. Dragon started trial production of its condensate splitter in early July, and was due to start up the key aromatics or PX facility this week. The main plant had previously been expected to start trial productions in late May, timing that had already been pushed back nearly a year.