MOSCOW (MRC) -- Air Products recently held a ground-breaking ceremony at Covestro’s facility in Baytown, Texas, where Air Products will invest USD350-USD400 million to build, own and operate a world-scale steam methane reformer (SMR), as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The SMR will produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide to be supplied to Covestro and other customers linked to Air Products’ Gulf Coast Hydrogen and CO Pipeline networks. The new unit is expected to begin operations in 2018.
"We have worked with Covestro (formerly Bayer MaterialScience) for decades and look forward to being an important industrial gas supplier to them in Baytown for many more years to come. The new SMR strengthens Air Products’ position in the Texas carbon monoxide market and enhances our well established hydrogen supply network," said Corning Painter, executive vice president, Industrial Gases at Air Products.
The SMR and cold box will be located on land leased from Covestro, a world-leading manufacturer of high-tech polymer materials for key industries, headquartered in Leverkusen, Germany. The SMR will produce approximately 125 million standard cubic feet/day of hydrogen and a world-scale supply of carbon monoxide.
"Safe, reliable and efficient operations through our people remains extremely important at Covestro. We continually develop our people to improve safety and respect the environment, as well as optimize our processes to improve our yields to top levels in industry, which means less raw materials, less waste and higher efficiencies," said Dr. Klaus Schafer, Covestro’s chief industrial operations officer. "Covestro’s alignment with Air Products will further improve our Baytown site’s reliable supply to our valued customers."
Covestro’s Baytown facility, its largest plant in North and Central America, was established in 1971 and employs a workforce of 1,100 with an additional 750 contractors. Covestro’s primary products at its Baytown site include toluene diisocyanate (TDI) and methylene diphenylene isocyanates (MDI), in addition to coatings and adhesives, inorganic basic chemicals, polycarbonates, and polyurethanes.
It is a leading supplier of high-value polymers and innovative solutions for key sectors such as transportation, construction, electronics, furniture, sports equipment and textiles.
We remind that, as MRC reported earlier, in October 2015, Covestro, formerly Bayer MaterialScience, and Reverdia have reached an agreement to jointly develop and promote thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) based on renewable raw materials. Covestro will employ Biosuccinium succinic acid from Reverdia for the production of its Desmopan brand TPU for use in a variety of applications, including in the footwear and consumer electronics industries.
MRC