Sasol's Cobalt Crystal Catalyst Plant Part of $5 Billion in South African Spending

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--At the inauguration of its new cobalt catalyst manufacturing plant at Sasolburg, a spokesman for Sasol Limited (NYSE:SSL) (Johannesburg, South Africa) said that the global synfuels and chemicals group would invest $5 billion on local South African projects over the next two years.

The new $125 million plant was built by Sasol Cobalt Manufacturing, a subsidiary of Sasol Synfuel International (SSI), will supply the cobalt catalyst for use in SSI's gas-to-liquid and coal-to-liquid projects in Qatar, Nigeria and Uzbekistan. The SSI subsidiary was established this year to expand and consolidate the crystal cobalt operation. The proprietary product is key to the technology used in the synfuel process.

The product will be exclusively for export. as Sasol's local plants use an iron-based catalyst. The plant at the Sasol One site will operate under license from chemicals supplier and development partner BASF. Sasol produced cobalt crystal with the company at De Meern in the Netherlands. As it is a proprietary product, the catalyst will be supplied only to projects in which Sasol owns equity.

The manufacturing process uses aluminum, cobalt and other noble metals such as platinum. The one-nanometer cobalt crystal particles are deposited in wax. The support materials have high surface areas, making the catalyst in the slurry process highly reactive to the synthesis gas molecules.

Lean Straus, a Sasol senior group executive, said that the new manufacturing plant was a milestone, because it gave increased control over the high-quality product required by the company's international plants. "Given that Sasol's proprietary slurry-phase distillate process was developed in South Africa, it is also important to have the GTL and CTL processes on South African soil for the first time," he said.

Some 50 permanent jobs have been created at the plant. During the construction phase, about 700 local contractors were on site.

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