The 300,000 tons annual MTBE capacity - expansion and renovation project of Dalian Hengli Petrochemical, which was designed by our company, achieved a successful one - time startup.

At 9:07 a.m. on October 28, 2023, with the extraction of a sample of MTBE product and its qualification through analytical testing, it marked the successful first-time commissioning of the 300,000 tons annual MTBE capacity expansion and renovation project of Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) Refining and Chemical Co., Ltd., which was designed by Luoyang Zhida Petrochemical Engineering Co., Ltd. Currently, the unit is operating stably, with all indicators meeting the design standards. The completion and commissioning of this unit have once again refreshed the ""Zhida Speed"" following the miracle created by the company's design of the 1.2 million tons annual delayed coking project of Ningxia Baoruilong Petrochemical, which set the record for the shortest design cycle and completion-to-commissioning time for such a scale of unit in China's petrochemical industry. Recently, the client sent a good news notice to the company, expressing gratitude for Zhida's outstanding contributions to the project construction.
As a Fortune Global 500 enterprise, Hengli Group's invested projects are benchmark-setting in China. This project includes a 300,000 tons annual MTBE unit and a 30,000 tons annual butene-1 unit. The contract was signed on July 5, with a design cycle of only 8 weeks. All the time nodes are unheard of for units of the same scale in the petrochemical industry, making the on-time completion of the design task extremely challenging.
Rapid Response and Meticulous Planning
Given the short contract period, the design task was undoubtedly arduous. As an engineering company holding Grade A engineering design qualifications in both refining and chemical engineering (issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China) and a Grade B qualification in the chemical, petrochemical, and pharmaceutical industry, Zhida has over the years quietly dedicated itself to tackling urgent, difficult, dangerous, and heavy tasks in numerous projects for Dalian Hengli, relying on its technical strength to earn a good reputation. Dalian Hengli's trust in entrusting this heavy responsibility to Luoyang Zhida stems from its confidence in the team.
A project team was quickly formed, creating a capable team that is especially hardworking and combat-effective. For the selection of professional leaders, designers, checkers, and reviewers in various disciplines, the company had long prepared plans. After the formation of the 61-member project team, project planning meetings and coordination meetings were immediately held to formulate a project schedule. Each discipline developed its own progress plan based on the length of the procurement cycle, classified the nodes for key control points, and broke through conventional boundaries to gain time for the orderly progress of downstream design work.
Coordinated Steps and Racing Against Time
The orderly progress of the project required close cooperation among each professional leaders. In the early stage of Hengli’s project design, each discipline agreed on design principles, ensuring information equality and smooth communication at technical review meetings, so that everyone was clear about their tasks, laying the foundation for improving design efficiency.
As the leading discipline of the company, the process team, having designed more than ten sets of such units with rich experience, anticipated the client's need to purchase pipe fittings and valves in advance in terms of specifications and quantities, and completed all equipment entrustments and tower internals procurement within a week. During the design of the MTBE unit, the process package was provided by the catalyst supplier. After discussions, the designer communicated directly with the catalyst supplier, providing the unit's equipment parameters to ensure that the supplier adopted existing equipment parameters as much as possible when compiling the process package, saving valuable time.
The piping discipline, acting as a link between the preceding and the following, required about four weeks for modeling. The checkers and reviewers in each division made full use of working hours, reasonably arranged overtime, and made concentrated efforts to tackle major project nodes one by one, ensuring the on-time completion of project milestones.
The equipment discipline broke through traditions and handled special matters with special procedures. In the conventional design process, material preparation drawings can only be issued after receiving the process entrustment and skirt eccentric load entrustment. To ensure the project proceeded according to the schedule, the process discipline confirmed with the catalyst manufacturer to determine the operating conditions and specifications of the equipment with minimal or no modifications. In issuing the equipment manufacturing drawings, four types of drawings with different design depths were issued successively, with modified parts circled in clouds each time to facilitate the manufacturer's review. Compared with the traditional one-step blueprints, this drawing-issuing method was carried out according to the manufacturer's needs at different stages of equipment manufacturing, making it more in line with actual requirements.
The structure discipline formulated in-depth decomposed schedules and assigned project personnel internally according to the project schedule. The project leader assigned tasks to different designers based on the difficulty of each individual structure, fully stimulating everyone's potential.
The instrumentation and electrical disciplines also pre-conceived design ideas in advance according to the working characteristics of Hengli to improve work efficiency. They simplified processes in various discipline entrustments, with instrument procurement entrusted to piping in batches to promote the design process. At the same time, they cooperated with the client in urgent procurement first, interleaved professional entrustments, and postponed configuration files to ensure the completion of the construction period.
The Project Management Department summarized the project progress every Friday, closely monitored the nodes, coordinated the progress of various disciplines, and ensured the orderly progress of the design schedule.
Focus on Quality and Full-Process Control
Design quality is the lifeline of the company, technology is the right to speak, and details determine success or failure. The project's pre-planning scheme was reasonable, with seven professional leaders having clear directions for their respective disciplines. The designers, checkers, and reviewers were professional and rigorous, creating favorable conditions for each other throughout the process. There were no repeated modifications in upstream entrustments among disciplines, and the design was completed in one go, saving a lot of time for the project.
Overcoming Difficulties and Working Overtime
In the eyes of the Hengli project team, there are no insurmountable difficulties or impassable barriers. All team members worked day and night, with weekends fully utilized. The lights in Zhida Petrochemical's office in the Beihang Science and Technology Park were always bright late into the night. Young employees forgot their fatigue, designers who had just become parents temporarily set aside family gatherings, and more employees put the company's interests above their own. It is through such hard work that they achieved fruitful success.
Various disciplines worked closely together, overcoming difficulties and striving hard, while continuously optimizing the scheme to ensure the design progress and quality. They completed all design tasks efficiently and with high quality within 8 weeks, creating conditions for the early commissioning of the project and winning high praise from the client, fully demonstrating the trong technical strength, high-quality technical services, and efficient management level of Luoyang Zhida Petrochemical Engineering Co., Ltd.
The smooth commissioning of this unit has promoted the capacity expansion and upgrading of Hengli Petrochemical's products and reached a consensus for in-depth cooperation between the two parties in the future.