Turkmenistan plans to produce petroleum needle coke

The technological potential of Turkmenistan’s Turkmenbashi Complex of Oil Refineries (TCOR) makes it possible to start a profitable production of high quality needle coke, the newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan said.
The needle coke is a highly structured carbon product with a low content of metals and sulfur, the deputy director of the US-based Westport Trading Europe Limited’s branch in Turkmenistan, Allaberdy Ilyasov said in an interview with the Neutral Turkmenistan.
“It is an expensive product, manufactured by means of refining of oil and is used for production of graphite electrodes,” he said.
Ilyasov said the graphite and its derivatives are used extensively in the nuclear, metallurgical, chemical, and aerospace industries.
“The need in it is due to favorable conditions for organization of the production of this product in Turkmenistan,” the specialist noted.
Ilyasov said that earlier his company conducted research on raw materials used on the test equipments at the TCOR, which confirmed that it is possible to obtain the world-standard needle coke here.
The needle coke production process is technologically complex, requiring the development of unique methods of processing of raw materials and the production process for each enterprise that entails significant costs.
The newspaper said the TCOR produces two types of petroleum coke – the total coke and the calcined coke.
Compared to the total coke, the needle coke is five to seven times more expensive in the global market and its cost reaches $2,000 per ton.