Polymers Facility

Capacity Increase

Nova Chemicals Corp. plans for a series of polyethylene plant modernization and expansion projects in Sarnia, Ontario.  The projects will add a total of up to 250 million pounds/year of new polyethylene capacity in stages during the next two years.  The projects include the following: upgrading products, improving reliability and expanding the low-density polyethylene unit in Mooretown, Ontario; optimizing the high density polyethylene unit at Mooretown to increase throughput rates and improve product quality; and debottlenecking high-density polyethylene and linear low-density polyethylene production at the St. Clair River sit in Corunna, Ontario.  The total cost of the project is approximately $80 million.

Synthetic Chemical Plant

SNF Co. is looking at building a synthetic chemical manufacturing plant in either Green Lake, Texas or Houma, Louisiana.  The plant is expected to employ approximately 650 people and SNF hopes to make a decision by the end of this month.

Plant Fire

A fire at BASF Corp.’s plastic products plant in Louisville, Kentucky triggered multiple small explosions, but no injuries.  The explosions were the result of a fire in the plant’s “bag house,” which recovers and dries leftover materials used to add color to plastic products.  The materials involved in the fire are not toxic.

GM Invests

General Motors is investing in Coskata, a start-up biofuels company that says it can produce ethanol from a wide range of feedstocks for less than $1.00/gallon, compared with a wholesale selling price of more than $2.00/gallon today.  Coskata says its process can consume virtually any carbon-based feedstock, including municipal waste, old tires and agricultural waste.  In the company’s process, feedstock is gasified into syngas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen), with the syngas sent to a special bioreactor where microorganisms consume the two gases, excreting ethanol as a waste product.  Finally, membranes separate the ethanol from water.

BP and Sinopec have signed a memorandum of understanding to add a new 650,000 ton/year acetic acid plant in Chongging, China.  The plant is estimated to be operational in 2011.  Acetic acid is an organic chemical raw material widely used in industries like chemical engineering, light and textiles, medicine, pesticide and dye.

Plasticizers

To meet the growing demand for solvents and plasticizers, BASF plans to expand the annual production capacity at its oxo-C4 plant in Nanjing, China by 55,000 metric tons to 305,000 metric tons by the fourth quarter of 2008.  This will ensure reliable supplies of the precursor alcohols n-butanol and 2-ethylhexanol.  BASF has also inaugurated the region’s first plasticizer applications laboratory in Shanghai, China.  The facility’s research and development efforts will focus on flexible PVC applications and Palatinol 10-P, a new C10 plasticizer.

Police Raid

Police raided a Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. ethylene plant in eastern Japan looking into whether the company committed professional negligence in the recent fire that killed four workers.  Mitsubishi is fully cooperating with the investigation.  The 476,000 ton/year plant has been shut since the December 21, 2007 fire.

Protestors

Construction at Dow Chemical’s Chakhan, India research and development center was halted because of protestors who were reportedly demanding justice for survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster.  The protestors included local residents and farmers who want Dow to address the issues facing the survivors of the 1984 Union Carbide disaster.  Not only do they criticize Dow, but they also criticize the government for failing to force Dow to clean up the contaminated soil and groundwater around the factory in Bhopal.

Joint Venture