PROCESS Worldwide brings to you the ‘Top 10 plant engineering projects of August 2021’ from all over the world. Right from building a world scale petrochemical complex in Indonesia to converting a refinery services facility into the first carbon-neutral (blue) hydrogen production facility in the USA, find out all the projects making headlines here.

Under a MOU signed between the Port of Corpus Christi and Howard Midstream Energy Partners, both the companies will work together to convert Howard’s Javelina refinery services facility located in the Port of Corpus Christi, USA into a carbon-neutral hydrogen production facility. The project is claimed to be the region’s first carbon-neutral (blue) hydrogen production facility.

Claimed to be the largest potassium-fluoride-based plant for halogen exchange (Halex) reactions in the Western world, the Weylchem Group will construct the new facility at its Allessa site in Frankfurt-Fechenheim, Germany.

Haltermann Carless will become the world’s largest Cyclopentane producer after the completion of its new hydrogenation plant at the Speyer site in Germany. With this project, the company expects to significantly increase its production capacity of Cyclopentane by up to 70 % as of Q1 2022.

The Japanese company Itochu will use blue ammonia to produce fertilizers. Fertiglobe, a joint venture firm between OCI and Adnoc, produces blue ammonia at its Fertil plant in the Ruwais Industrial Complex in Abu Dhabi, UAE and the cargo is the first to be sold from the UAE to a Japanese customer.

With an aim to meet the growing demand of emission control catalysts, Clariant Catalysts has increased production volume at its Heufeld plant in Germany by 100 %. The facility produces Envicat emission control catalysts, which are capable of eliminating up to 99% of harmful substances from industrial off-gases.

The ‘MACBETH’ project aims to develop technologies that make important large-scale reactions, such as hydroformylation, significantly more energy efficient. Claimed to be the largest EU-funded research project coordinated by Specialty Chemical Company Evonik, the project has the potential to revolutionize large-scale reactions in the chemical industry.

Hyflexfuel is an EU funded research project which has produced biocrude from various biomasses. The Aarhus University utilized the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) process at its pilot plant in Denmark to produce the biocrude.

Neste, Mitsui Chemicals and Toyota Tsusho have collaborated to start first production of renewable plastics from 100 % bio-based hydrocarbons in Japan. Mitsui Chemicals will use 100 % bio-based hydrocarbons produced by Neste to replace a part of the fossil feedstock at its crackers within Osaka Works in Japan.

Coperion is supplying an extrusion system to Ghent University in Belgium for comprehensive research and development tasks in chemical recycling of mixed plastic waste. The company designed this laboratory system, built upon a ZSK 18 Megalab twin screw extruder, especially for chemical recycling of post-consumer waste within a throughput range of 1-10 kg per hour.