Future of Olefins (ethylene, propylene etc.) is dependent on the historical, geo-political and environmental factors among others.

• Historical factors include:
  • supply & demand
  • feedstock availability and pricing (crude oil and gas feed)
  • GDP growth
  • Population growth, more importantly growth of middle class in emerging and developing economies
  • Urbanization trends
• Geo-political factors include:
  • Trade barriers
  • Tariffs
  • Middle east tensions
  • Sanctions regime
• Environmental factors include:
  • Recovery of plastic waste
  • Recycling
  • Ban on single use plastics
  • Greenhouse Gas emissions & carbon taxation
  • Air quality in large urban centers
  • Climate change pressures
• Renewables and electrification of transport systems
  • Oil majors are shifting their focus to petrochemicals and away from fuels. This is changing competitive landscape of petrochemicals industry
• Large and complex facilities
  • High capital intensity
    • Leading to complex joint ventures
  • Developing and building these facilities within budget, schedule to achieve desired production and performance levels in reasonable timeframe
  • Operating safely, reliably and efficiently
• Disruptive technologies
  • As an example, shale developments brought petrochemical industry renaissance in US based on feedstock advantage
  • Transportation systems
  • Sharing platforms (like Uber)
  • Models for supply chains including commercial transportation systems
  • Alternate energy sources

The petrochemical industry is expected to grow in foreseeable future to meet the quality of life needs of growing world population, middle class and urbanization. This growth will follow the GDP growth.
Industry needs to proactively address the environmental and sustainability issues through innovation and operate these facilities efficiently and reliably to meet the future competitive challenges.

​At Apex PetroChemicals, we help our clients to manage technical complexity and risk profile in a competitive and cyclical business environment. We bring the value of strategic thinking, specific industry insights, knowledge, and a depth of experience for olefins based petrochemical businesses to develop, build and operate best-in-class facilities.

Furnace availability varies greatly from plant to plant and impacts the production levels, more so for the plants that are furnace constrained.
5 Leading Causes of Furnace Outages

1. Radiant coils – carburization, stress/creep rupture are the leading causes followed by plugging, bowing/twisting and brittle fracture
2. TLE cleaning – tube blockage
3. Instrumentation
4. TLE Repairs – contributing factors include water side corrosion, inlet tubesheet erosion, tube to tubesheet weld failure, gasket or seal failure
5. Refractory repairs

Reliability of furnaces can vary significantly depending on:

• Technology selection – including severity, selectivity, flexibility
• Design approach, specifications and selection of components
• Operation approach and discipline
• Monitoring and process control
• Maintenance approach and discipline

At Apex PetroConsultants, we focus on these aspects during all stages - including technology selection, modifications for performance improvements, design/engineering, operation and troubleshooting. Key is to maximize production at an optimum performance level and capital investment.