Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. has a contract to provide detailed engineering, procurement support and support services during construction of a new ester production plant at OXEA GmbH’s existing manufacturing facility in Oberhausen, Germany.
The Esterplant 2 project is part of OXEA’s strategy to expand global ester production capacity by 40% to meet the growing global demand for OXEA’s esters. These specialty chemical products are replacing the traditional phthalate plasticizers. The fast-track project is expected to come onstream in 2012.
MAN Diesel & Turbo is installing a CHP cogeneration unit at the Rheinberg production plant of Solvin GmbH & Co. KG, a joint enterprise of Solvay and BASF. The first of MAN’s new 6-MW gas turbines will be used commercially for the plant, which manufactures chemical products including polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The new CHP plant is designed to supply 6 MW of electrical and 11 MW of thermal power, thus enabling Solvin to meet its own electricity requirements in the future.
ThyssenKrupp EPC contractors have supplied and commissioned a plant for producing 3,500 tpd of urea solution in Sluiskil, Netherlands, for Yara of Norway. The plant, which took three years to build, has now been handed over to the customer. Yara invested €400 million in its construction.
The plant meets the latest environmental standards, as well as the best available technology standards. There are even special collection systems that, should the plant malfunction, ensure that no hazardous substances escape into the environment. What really makes the plant so remarkable, though, is that some of the urea it produces will not be used as fertilizer but as an aqueous urea solution to treat diesel exhaust fumes. This technology, known as AdBlue, reduces NOx emissions.
The technology was licensed by Stamicarbon. ThyssenKrupp Uhde was responsible for the engineering, equipment supply and plant construction on a fixed-price, turnkey basis.
Neste Oil is building a system for recovering emissions released when loading ships at the harbor of its Porvoo refinery. The system, valued at approximately €23 million, will recover the majority of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released into the atmosphere when loading gasoline.
The new system will reabsorb VOCs into gasoline during loading with the help of two absorption tanks and related equipment at the harbor, after which the gasoline used will be returned to the refinery for re-use. A similar system is already in use when loading tanker trucks at the Porvoo refinery’s distribution terminal.
Construction work on the VOC recovery system began in October 2011 and the facility is due to be commissioned in the latter half of 2013. HP