MOSCOW (MRC) -- Air Liquide is investing EUR125m to build the first world-scale oxygen production plant to enable renewable energy production at the Port of Moerdijk in the Netherlands, said the company.
The new air separation unit (ASU) will produce oxygen with an energy storage system to help facilitate more renewable energy on the electricity grid due to its grid stabilising capability.
The plant will have an oxygen capacity of 2,200 tonnes/day and will allow storage of 40MWh of energy (enough for the daily consumption of 4,000 households) “with circa 10% less energy consumption", said Air Liquide.
"While keeping a constant production for customers, it can accommodate the intermittency of renewable energy thus contributing to the growth of power coming from the wind and solar on the electricity grid," the industrial gases producer added.
The ASU will be used to produce oxygen, nitrogen and argon for industrial, food and medical markets and will be connected to Air Liquide’s industrial pipeline. Its location in Moerdijk will serve to decrease bulk truck deliveries by 400,000km a year, further reducing the environmental footprint.
As MRC informed earlier, Air Liquide has entered into a long-term supply agreement with NLMK Group (Moscow) that will see it invest around EUR100 million (USD114 million) in the steel producer’s site at Lipetsk, Russia, on the construction of a new air separation unit (ASU) and the acquisition of existing hydrogen and rare gases production units.
We remind that Shell Singapore restarted its naphtha cracker in Bukom Island in early December 2019, following a two months maintenance shutdown since the beginning of October 2019. Thus, this cracker was taken off-stream for the turnaround on 1 October 2019. The cracker is able to produce 960,000 tons/year of ethylene and 550,000 tons/year of propylene.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 595,170 tonnes in the first five month of 2020, up by 10% year on year. Deliveries of all ethylene polymers, except for linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE), rose partially because of an increase in capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market was 457,930 tonnes in January-May 2020 (calculated by the formula production minus export plus import). Deliveris of exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
MRC