Lummus Technology announced that it has achieved successful plant acceptance from Formosa Chemicals and Fibre Corp. for the company's cumene and phenol plant expansion in Ningbo, China. The expansion was to an existing 450 kMTA cumene and 300 kMTA phenol plant, which now has a 600 kMTA cumene and 400 kMTA phenol capacity.

"We are proud that this plant has successfully demonstrated reliable operation since its first start-up," said Leon de Bruyn, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lummus Technology. "Formosa's acceptance is another milestone in our long and close relationship that spans multiple decades. During this time, Lummus has provided world-class technology solutions to Formosa and helped them achieve reliability, optimization and superior performance at their facilities, while also lowering their carbon footprint."

The original plant was licensed in 2010 by Lummus. In 2017 Lummus was selected again by Formosa to provide the technology license and engineering design of the cumene and phenol plant expansion.

Versalis/Lummus' cumene and phenol technologies are best-in-class process technologies that leverage the design, operating and research experience of both organizations.

Phenol produced using the Versalis/Lummus process has the lowest carbon footprint due to lower overall energy consumption among available phenol technologies. The phenol process is an intrinsically safe and highly reliable wet-oxidation process. It utilizes advanced technology features, which not only maximize the phenol/acetone product yields and produce a very high purity phenol/acetone products but also results in the lowest cost of production per MT of phenol.

The cumene process is a liquid-phase alkylation technology using a proprietary zeolite catalyst and is characterized by a very high cumene yield, ultra-high purity cumene product and a long catalyst run length.