The accord was signed by Abdulrahman Al-Jomaih, chairman of Gasan Investment and Industrial Development Company, and Salah Al-Faliq, chief executive officer (CEO) of the National TriGeneration CHP Company (NTCC), in Riyadh on Tuesday.
Speaking to newsmen following the signing ceremony, Faliq said Source Energy, a subsidiary of NTCC, will handle the new project to turn waste heat into electricity. The power produced from this heat could also produce desalinated water in the industrial city of Jubail in the Eastern province, he added.
Al-Jomaih said that the plant will be built next to Gasan’s facility and will begin operations in the third quarter of next year. It is expected to produce more than 24 megawatts of electricity, which will also be partly utilized to produce 83,000 cubic meters of desalinated water.
Gasan's Industrial Consultant Akram Madanat told Arab News that the new plant will utilize the heat produced from Gasan's facility in Jubail. The project is also expected to produce 500,000 tons of calcined petroleum coke (CPC) per year.
Madanat explained that the project is environmental friendly and would also serve the mining industry in the Kingdom. "Gasan Petroleum Coke Calciner will be a new addition to the petrochemical, chemical and mineral industry and it will be the Kingdom's first calciner that will provide a consistent high quality feedstock for the coming aluminum industry in the Kingdom and the Gulf region,” he said.
CPC is produced from green petroleum coke that has been thermally treated to drive off water content and volatile organic matters (VCM) in kilns to produce a high-grade carbon product that is used mainly in the manufacture of carbon anodes for aluminum smelting cells and for steel making furnaces.
Kurt Reuman, NTCC's director of business development and finance, described it as a cost effective project. "It would eventually reduce the use of energy, electricity and water."
Total world demand for CPC in 2006 was 16.0 million metric tons, rising to approximately 23 million tons in 2012. The CPC demand sectors are aluminum, titanium dioxide, needle or graphitized electrodes coke, recarburizer, and other specialty markets.
CPC is used also as a carbon source in a variety of other specialty applications, including corrosion prevention of metallic structures, in silicon carbide manufacture, refractory furnace linings, refining, deoxidizing agent in the glass industry, filtration agent in water purification, and cored wire production.
Aluminum production is the primary driver for worldwide CPC production and the largest CPC demand sector, comprising approximately 85 percent of the world's CPC demand.
