EPM has announced the successful completion of the project, from foundation to commission, within 27 months – 3 months ahead of schedule.

Emerson installed PlantWeb digital architecture throughout the SECCO complex, an integrated digital automation system incorporating 47,000 control loops, 40,000 instruments, and in the order of 13,000 intelligent devices, networked in the world's largest Foundation fieldbus installation.

Located in the Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park about 50km from Shanghai, the complex is expected to achieve annual production of 900,000 tons of ethylene and more than two million tons of other related petrochemical products used in the plastics and synthetics industries.

At the core of the plant is SECCO's ethylene cracker, not only the largest in China, but one of the largest in the world.

ABB Lummus Global and Sinopec Engineering were awarded a contract by SECCO to provide engineering, procurement and the technology licence for the 900,000 tons per annum naphtha cracker. The cracker will be integrated with an olefins conversion unit to produce 590,000tpa of propylene.

ABB's proprietary ethylene and olefins conversion technology, based on the short residence time (SRT) pyrolysis furnace module, will be used in the production units. The technology provides high thermal efficiency and yields, with a long run-time between coil decoking. The use of online-decoking technology eliminates the need to mechanically decoke the furnace and transfer line exchangers.

EPM was also charged with the engineering and project management of the site's construction and commissioning. By coordinating multiple suppliers, EPM was able to accelerate the schedule's progress, resulting in the early commissioning.

SECCO claims the ethylene cracker plant's start-up time of 10 hours 45 minutes as a world record for a project of this scale.