Assessment of Investment Opportunities in Iranian Petrochemical Industry through Integrated Technical, Economic and Financial Modeling of the Entire Network of Petrochemical Units

Setayeshnia, Ali; Fakhroleslam, Mohammad

Assessment of Investment Opportunities in Iranian Petrochemical Industry through Integrated Technical, Economic and Financial Modeling of the Entire Network of Petrochemical Units

Document Type : Original Research

Authors

A. Setayeshnia

M. fakhroleslam

Process Engineering Department, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Research Subject: Identifying and evaluating investment opportunities across the entire network of Iranian petrochemical units is of particular importance for developing the petrochemical industry's value chain, maximizing added value, and ensuring the optimal use of oil and gas resources.

Research Approach: The purpose of this research is to create a mathematical model to identify and evaluate investment opportunities by analyzing technical and economic-financial data of process units active in the Iranian petrochemical industry. This tool can process a large volume of information in a limited time and with acceptable accuracy and provide the desired output. Process information of petrochemical complexes, including operational units, production and consumption of materials, technologies used, and prices of raw materials and products, is the main data that form the basis for preparing mathematical models. In addition to process units, environmental variables affecting the system, along with their effect on the model, are also modeled and integrated with the network of process units.

Main Results: By creating a model and performing the simulation process, the various outputs of the system include: technical and economic-financial analysis, estimation of investment costs of process units, sensitivity analysis of the network of process units to technical and economic parameters and variables such as feed and product prices, as well as the operational capacity of process units. For example, to validate the simulator outputs, the actual data of the Amirkabir Petrochemical Complex were compared with the outputs obtained from the simulator, and accordingly, the error rate of the simulator was estimated to be 3.36 percent in the estimation of the production rate of main products and 22 percent in the estimation of the production rate of by-products. Finally, based on the simulator outputs, investment opportunities in the value chain of the Iranian petrochemical industry were identified, evaluated, and validated, and on this basis, the establishment of a methanol-to-olefin (MTO) conversion unit was introduced as a valid investment opportunity in the downstream part of the methanol value chain.

Keywords

Petrochemical industry

Value chain

Process-financial modeling

Pseudo steady state

Investment opportunities

Subjects

mass-transport

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