Solvay reports successful commissioning of HP plant

 “This new worldclass plant gives Solvay the means to bring its Hydrogen Peroxide business to a significantly higher level within this fast growing region and consolidate its position as technology leader”, said Eric Mignonat, general manager for Strategic Development Unit Essential Chemicals at Solvay.

“We look forward to serving the very dynamic market and customers”, he said in a statement released yesterday.

 MTP HPJV (Thailand), a joint venture with Dow Chemical Company, now runs the world's largest HP plant in Map Ta Phut. The plant is run on Solvay’s proprietary, high-yield hydrogen peroxide technology that enables such unique, large-scale plants to benefit from advantages in both specific investment and production costs. Solvay’s HP technology also brings significant environmental advantages such as reductions in energy consumption and in waste water.
 The plant has a capacity of over 330,000 tonnes per year of hydrogen peroxide at 100 per cent concentration and serves mainly as a captive raw material source for the manufacture of propylene oxide (PO) by Dow and Siam Cement Group (SCG). Propylene oxide is primarily used to produce propylene glycol, polyurethanes and glycol ethers.
 It is the second worldscale HP plant dedicated to PO production, the first being the 230,000 tonnes HP plant (Antwerp, Belgium) commissioned at the end of 2008, which serves a Dow and BASF HPPO plant. Producing PO with HP offers unique and sizeable economic and environmental benefits compared with conventional propylene oxide production technologies.
 Up to a quarter of the new HP plant’s production will be supplied to Solvay Peroxythai Limited (SPX), a leading manufacturer of HP in Southeast Asia. SPX expects to more than double its current capacity, consolidating its industry leadership in the region and offering greater longterm security of supply for its customers.