Orion’s battery materials plant in Texas will be the only facility in the U.S. to produce acetylene-based conductive additives for lithium-ion batteries and other applications which is vital for the global shift to electrification.

PROCESS Worldwide brings to you the ‘Top 10 plant engineering projects of November 2023’ from all over the world. Right from OMV, Interzero developing Europe’s largest sorting facility for chemical recycling to inaugurating the world’s first pilot plant for green methanol in Germany, find out all the projects making headlines here.

The mega and fully automatic sorting plant will produce feedstock for chemical recycling. OMV will invest 170 plus million euros to build the plant which is expected to have a capacity of up to 260,000 tonnes per year in Walldürn, Germany.

BASF, Sabic, and Linde have started-up the world’s first large-scale electrically heated steam cracking furnace at BASF’s Verbund site in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The project makes use of electricity from renewable sources and has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 90 % compared to the technologies commonly used today in the chemical industry.

With this acquisition, Repsol has plans to enter the biomethane market. The agreement between Repsol and Genia Bioenergy includes 19 of its biomethane plants which are under development, with a total capacity of 1.5TWh per year, which will generate renewable gas from agricultural and livestock waste in Spain and Portugal.

MHI-LCSC, a part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kiewit have been awarded a Feed contract for the carbon capture technology at Heidelberg Materials North America’s Edmonton CCUS project.

A joint study will be carried out between Lummus Technology and Braskem to demonstrate Lummus’ SRT-e electric cracking heater. With this, both the parties aim to decarbonize one of Braskem’s sites in Brazil.

OQ Chemicals has reached a key milestone in its ‘Propel’ project with the mechanical completion of its infrastructure. The project will support the operation of Röhm’s new world-scale Methyl Methacrylate plant in Bay City site, USA.

With an aim to manufacture advanced and energy efficient Solid Oxide Electrolyzer Cells for clean hydrogen production, Topsoe will be setting up a factory in Virginia, USA. The move follows the company receiving nearly 136 million dollars in federal Section 48C tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act.

Arkema has entered into an agreement to acquire a 78 % stake in Proionic, a well-known start-up which produces and develops ionic liquids. These are key components used for developing the next generation of lithium-ion batteries.