On March 26, 2014, with the 300 kt/a linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant, the last start-up project in PetroChina Sichuan Integrated Petrochemical and Refinery Complex (Sichuan Project) began to produce qualified polyethylene material, all the six projects in the Complex undertaken by Wison Engineering have started successful operations. With that, PetroChina Sichuan Intergrated Complex also completed its start-up success.
The Complex, with a total of 19 main units, includes two parts: one is the 10 MTA oil refinery plant and the other one is 800 KTA ethylene plant. To build such a Complex constitutes many sub projects in a high work volume, requiring a good master of diverse processing and construction techniques.
As one of the main EPC services supplier, Wison Engineering undertook the task of building six main units, including the ethylene cracking furnace and pipe-racks, the Linear Low-Density Polyethylene Plant, the wax oil hydrocracking plant, the integrated paraxylene-aromatic unit (including PSA), the integrated sulfur recovery plant, and the wide-area covering auxiliary units as well.
Throughout the three-year construction process, the strong project management team from Wison Engineering achieved a series of innovation and breakthrough in technology improvement, quality management, HSE and project schedule control. For example, one of the most important technical difficulties in the construction of the wax oil hydrocracking unit welding technology for high-pressure thick-walled (≥ 50mm) stainless steel pipes.
To tackle this difficulty, with the efforts from all the internal and external professionals and experts organized by Wison Engineering and after dozens of tests in six months, the company innovated a new construction technology of stabilizing heat treatment after think-walled steel pipes welding eleven tests were made Wison Engineering organized experts to coordinate multiple resources and spent over six months to master the technology. The breakthrough was also recognized as one of the technical highlights of PetroChina in 2012.
The cracking furnace project, which is the key part in the Ethylene plant undertook by Wison Engineering was awarded by the client as the “model project”, thanks to its high standard commissioning services. The steel structure framework of cracking furnace is 55.25 meters high, 12542.8 tons of weight need to be based in an area of only 4500 square meters. In order to ensure the construction quality, Wison Engineering adopted the factory prefabrication and modularization to effectively reduce the aerial work, lower the safety risks and improve construction efficiency.
In addition, with its profound expertise and the efforts of sub-contractors, Wison Engineering also achieved good performance in in steel structure welding, cracking furnace installation and pipeline construction etc., handmade series of technical innovation such as ultrasonic soot blowers were installed in the convection section, decoking effluent return to fire-box for combustion, pyro-block structures were adopted in the whole cracking furnace construction. For all the efforts, Wison’s Project Team was honored by Sichuan Petrochemical as “Model Team In Comprehensive Project Management”.
In building the integrated aromatic facility, the largest single refinery unit of the integrated Complex, Wison Engineering achieved outstanding performance with a 100% material procurement acceptance rate, a 100% unit-project passing rate, a 99.5% first-time welding passing rate and a total of 6.8 million safe working hours, which provided a solid record for Wison Engineering in building and delivering large integrated refining projects with high quality.
With a target of“zero quality defects, zero safety accidents, and zero environmental pollution”, Wison Engineering achieved an outstanding record of 29.19 million safe working hours without an lost accident during the project construction, Wison HSE staff were recognized as Excellent HSE Managers for eighteen times. Owing to good HSE management, Wison Engineering was nominated by Harvard Business Review at the Sixth Management Action Awards.
Mr. Zhou Hongliang, Senior Vice President of Wison Engineering, said, “The successful start-up of the six projects demonstrates Wison’s strong comprehensive capabilities in building a highly complex plant as an EPC service provider. The technical strengths and project management expertise accumulated by Wison Engineering during the last decade has been proved and further developed, with the successful trial production of this large-scale Complex. It will be laying a solid foundation for Wison to expand its business in the domestic and overseas petrochemical and refinery markets.”
