Dow Awards Aker Kvaerner Contract

The Union Carbide Chemicals & Plastics Technology Corporation (UCCPTC), a subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company, has awarded Aker Kvaerner an engineering contract to assist in the development of process design packages and extended process design packages for two Ethylene Oxide/Ethylene Glycol (EO/EG) plants that will use the METEOR(TM) LEC EO/EG technology. The plants will be built in the People's Republic of China by subsidiaries of Sinopec under a license from UCCPTC. One project is at the Sinopec Tianjin one million tonne per annum (TPA) ethylene complex in the Dagang District of Tianjin, and the second is at Sinopec Zhenhai Refining and Chemical Company's production facility in the port city of Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. The awarding of the contract comes on the heels of the July 5 announcement of a cooperation agreement signed between Dow and Aker Kvaerner for METEOR EO/EG technology. The work will be executed by a joint team working in two locations - the Union Carbide Technology Park in South Charleston, West Virginia, U.S.A., and Aker Kvaerner's engineering office in Zoetermeer, The Netherlands.

Both the Sinopec Tianjin branch and Sinopec Zhenhai Refining and Chemical Company have recently received approval for one million TPA ethylene crackers. The Tianjin EO/EG plant will be able to produce up to 420,000 TPA of Monoethylene Glycol (MEG) product and 40,000 TPA of pure EO. Sinopec Zhenhai Refining and Chemical Company's EO/EG plant is planned to produce up to 650,000 TPA of MEG product, and 100,000 TPA of pure EO. The major use of ethylene glycol is in the manufacture of polyester fibers and resins. This includes polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is well known for its use in plastic bottles for soft drinks. Ethylene glycol also has a significant market as an antifreeze additive in the automobile industry.