Irkutsk Oil Company invested over 85 Billion Rubles in Irkutsk Polymer Plant as of December 31, 2021
The progress of the project (engineering, supply of equipment and materials, and construction) has already exceeded 40%. Construction and installation work at the ethylene facility is 15% complete, and polyethylene facility - 22% complete.
“At the moment we are right on schedule. The installation of steel structures and reinforced concrete columns is underway, and the concreting continues. The first stage of pre-firing of the lining material has been completed at the cracking heaters, the main equipment of Irkutsk Polymer Plant. In the near future, we will start connecting the cracking heaters to process pipelines,” said Ilya Khomyakov, Head of Ethylene Unit Construction at Irkutsk Polymer Plant.
In the fall of 2021, the installation of heavy-lift equipment, which had previously been delivered from a South Korean port via the Northern Sea Route, was completed at the facility. A total of 66 items were installed at the plant in 2021, including 44 heavy lift packaged units. Work on the installation of minor process equipment is currently in progress. “The first phase of silo installation has also been completed, and the work has been going on since last August. The silos are designed as intermediate containers for holding polyethylene powder and pellets, which are used to start the polymerization reactor. Currently, 4 units of equipment are installed on the construction site, and 16 silos will be installed in total,” said Maxim Pavlov, Head of Polymer Facilities Construction at IPP.
The fire tanks are also in the final stages of construction, with work beginning in May 2021. This year it is planned to commission four units with a total volume of 40 thousand cubic meters.
In addition, last year a record 122 thousand cubic meters of concrete were poured at the construction site — for the first time in the history of Irkutsk Oil Company. Irkutsk Polymer Plant is planning to pour a total of 240 thousand cubic meters of concrete.
In March 2021, a contract was signed with the French company Suez for the supply of equipment for wastewater treatment at Irkutsk Polymer Plant. Modern technologies — membrane bioreactor, reversible electrodialysis, and evaporation with thermal recompression of steam will make it possible to use a closed water cycle. The use of atmospheric precipitation will prevent the discharge of stormwater into bodies of water and simultaneously reduce the volume of river water intake. Water for cooling process units and other equipment will be used from the water circulation system. All wastewater will undergo multistage treatment and disinfection at the treatment facilities, after which it will return to the water cycle for use in production.
In addition, in 2021 as part of the construction of Irkutsk Polymer Plant, the architectural concept of the new housing district developed by architects from Irkutsk and St. Petersburg was approved. The modern residential space of 31 blocks of 9 and 11 floors with developed infrastructure is designed for three thousand people — the employees of the plant and their families. The review of project documentation will be completed in February 2022, after which a tender will take place to determine the general contractor.
Irkutsk Oil Company is building a polymer plant in Ust-Kut as part of a gas chemical cluster that includes facilities for gas production, treatment, transportation, and processing. The production capacity is 650 thousand tons of commercial products per year. Toyo Engineering, a Japanese engineering company, is involved in the construction of the plant and is responsible for engineering, equipment and material supply. Gemont is the general contractor for the construction of the polyethylene and ethylene plants. More than 2000 people are currently working on the construction site. These are engineers and workers from all over Russia, as well as from Japan, Turkey, France, the Netherlands, and the United States. Thanks to the launch of the facility, some 1,600 new jobs will be created in Ust-Kut district.
