Dow Launches Epoxy Plant in China and Major Polyurethane Expansion in Europe

---

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Dow Chemicals has launched a spate of new projects and major production expansions at locations in China and Europe. These include new glycerine-to-epichlorohydrin (GTE) and liquid epoxy resins (LER) plants to be constructed at the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park (SCIP) and scheduled for start-up in 2009 – 2010. The world scale GE plant will have a capacity of 150,000 tons per annum (TPA) and the LER plant 100,000 TPA. SCIP is located 50 kilometers north of Shanghai, on the Caojing coast.

Dow Epoxy has signed a letter of intent with SCIP and another with Shanghai Chlor-Alkali Chemical and its subsidiary Shanghai Tianyuan Group Huasheng Chemical for the supply of critical raw materials for both the GTE and LER plants.

The launch of Dow’s two plant projects is in line with the company’s growth strategy and development of sustainable chemistries. The GTE facility will be the first to use Dow’s proprietary GTE technology, which uses a renewable source, glycerine from biodiesel, to produce epichlorohydrin which provides significant cost and environmental advantages compared to the conventional process technologies. In 2006, Dow launched a stand-alone, full process GTE demonstration unit at the Stade, Germany site.

With expansions in propylene oxide (PO) and propylene glycol (PG) production in Stade and expansions of capacity at other plants, Dow has increased total nameplate production capacity for PO to over 1.9 million TPA and global production capacity for PG to 705,000 TPA. Expansions being undertaken at the Stade complex will see it become the world’s largest PG facility in 2009, with a production capacity of 270,000 TPA. In January, PO production at Stade rose to 630,000 TPA from 590,000 TPA. PG expansion will be accomplished in two phases. The first phase, already completed, moved capacity from 190,000 TPA to 225,000 TPA. The second phase, planned for completion in 2009, will add 45,000 TPA to bring the total output to 270,000 TPA.

Dow Polyurethanes plans to expand capacity at its polyols plant at Terneuzen in the Netherlands by 180,000 TPA. It also has scheduled the start up for a joint venture with BASF for the processing of hydrogen peroxide to propylene oxide at Antwerp, Belgium by 2008.

The European PG industry is growing at a rate of 3% per annum on average. This growth is driven mainly by strong demand from end use applications, including unsaturated polyester resins, food, feed, cosmetics, anti-freeze and aircraft de-icing fluids. Growth for polyols, which are used in the manufacture of polyurethane systems formulations and rigid and flexible foams, is driven by strong demand in the automotive and home furnishing industries and expected to grow at a rate of 5% to 6% peer annum on average. Pat Dawson, Dow Polyurethanes Business President, said that the expansion of the Terneuzen and Stade facilities and the Antwerp start-up was part of the company’s approach to meeting the growing and dynamic end-use application demand.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) provides marketing communication services ranging from industrial database solutions to market forecasting, custom analytics, and specialty promotions that support high-level image campaigns.