Catalysis: recent chemical advances accelerate change

Despite slower growth, China’s dominant role remains unchallenged. There are over 140 chemical parks, and the government is focusing on seven of them; several major petrochemical projects are planned. The BASF/Markor partnership started up a new plant in July last year, and BASF is building a plastic additives plant in Shanghai. SABIC has  agreed to build a coal-based petrochemical complex. Rongsheng is planning a plastic bottle factory for 2018, Sinopec is boosting capacity at its fine chemicals plant at Maoming, and a hydrocracking plant for Gazprom was recently announced.

September 2016 saw the launch of the Far-Eastern Petrochemical Company (FEPCO), a joint venture between Rosneft and ChemChina. The rest of Asia is also bristling with activity. BASF opened its first plant in Sri Lanka to produce construction chemicals and is expanding production capacity for specialty plastics in South Korea. In December of 2016 the German chemicals giant announced plans to build its first plant in Myanmar. India saw the opening of an additional plant for automotive emissions catalysts, while KBR is revamping its ammonia plant at Panambur, Mangalore. In Malaysia, Petronas is planning a refinery and petrochemicals complex, while Thailand’s IRPC announced it will expand its petrochemical capacity.

In Europe, one of the biggest projects is BASF’s acetylene project at Ludwigshafen. The plant will start up at the end of 2019 and replace the existing plant. It will serve around 20 production sites at the Ludwigshafen facilities. The company is also teaming up with Avantium to produce furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), a bio-based chemical. In the UK, Swedish plastics engineer Trelleborg has opened an applied technologies facility in Retford, Nottinghamshire, to grow its polyurethane manufacturing capabilities.

In Russia, Lukoil opened its largest vacuum gasoil hydrocracking unit in Volgograd. In North America, the shale oil and gas industry has resulted in several methanol and ethylene projects. Up to six ethane projects are expected to come online in 2017, and another ten are being considered. Several new facilities are planned. For example on the Gulf Coast, Exxonmobil will spend 20 billion USD over ten years on refineries, chemical and LNG projects and is planning a multi-billiondollar petrochemical complex in partnership with SABIC.

More efficient catalysts

This brings us to catalysis, an area which is currently receiving lots of attention, as scientists vie to find quicker, more efficient catalysts using less rare and expensive metals. The pace of innovation is so fast that scientists can hardly keep up. A major challenge is to find alternatives to the more expensive metals such as palladium, platinum, ruthenium and iridium.

Instead, scientists are looking to the likes of iron, nickel or copper, or are trying to dispense with metals altogether. Nickel is especially sought after as it has similar properties to palladium and platinum. In 2016 scientists at Missouri University of Science and Technology demonstrated a new nickel selenide catalyst for more efficient water splitting. At the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, scientists are working on a complex based on a nickel ion. 

One such catalyst is already available and others are being developed. More recently, a nickel catalyst was developed that converts the tough lignin from the grass Miscanthus into phenolic compounds that can be used in flavour or fragrance chemistry. However, these developments do not mean that traditional metals are on the way out. Scientists at Yale have developed a technology for reducing the amount of palladium required in a process, and a way has been found to use platinum catalysts to produce hydrogen. In short, there are more than enough technological challenges for the chemical industry to produce more energy efficient and with higher conversion rates.

Europe on the road to recovery

Cefic, the European Chemical Industry Council, is expecting solid 3 per cent growth of chemical output in the EU in 2017, driven by growing demand from customer industries. For this year, Cefic expects a slight deceleration to around 2 per cent “The recovery of the chemical sector follows the overall economic growth in the EU in the first three quarters of 2017, driven by robust consumer demand as well as investments in new production capacities”, Cefic states. The growth of EU manufacturing production, primarily in the automotive, construction, metal production and electronics sector, has led to increased domestic demand for chemicals. Furthermore, exports of the EU-produced chemicals to, among others, Asia and Russia have increased.

Marco Mensink, Director General of Cefic: “The momentum is growing for the EU chemical industry to achieve its maximum production volumes. This will not only help economic growth but will also drive innovation as the solutions provided by the chemical industry help develop cutting-edge technologies and processes in nearly all sectors of the EU economy from consumer electronics to medicines. The chemical industry’s contribution is also key in shaping the transition to a resource efficient, low-carbon and circular economy.” Although the 2018 industry outlook looks rather positive, the European chemical industry faces stiff competition from China and NAFTA countries in which feed stock and energy prices are lower.