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Groundbreaking
ceremony for new organics
production facility
In March 2012, Evonik Industries broke ground to mark the official
start of the construction of a new organics production facility in
Shanghai (China), an upper-two-digit-million-euro investment. The
ceremony was attended by more than 200 guests including government
officials, regional and global contacts of Evonik’s key customers,
elements39 Issue 2|2012
strategic partners, as well as management and employees of the
company.
The detail engineering of the new organics production facility is
already completed and the plant is expected to be operational in 2013.
It will supply innovative ingredients and specialty surfactants based
on renewable raw materials for the personal care, household care, and
industrial specialties industry. It will primarily serve markets in China
and Asia Pacific, with an annual capacity of 80 kt. The new production
plant will be built on a 33,000 sqm plot of land at Evonik’s Multi-
User Site China (MUSC) in Shanghai Chemical Industry Park (SCIP).
It is conveniently located in the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone.
Evonik’s new organics production facility is also setting environmental
standards. MUSC, a wholly-owned Evonik site, follows all
Shanghai, China and Evonik standards and laws. In addition, the site
is regularly audited and certified (ISO 9001, 14001 and OSHA 18001).
Evonik will implement state-of-the-art environmental protection
meas ures, such as sophisticated air pollution and waste treatment
controls and two-step waste water treatment.
Parallel to the construction of the new production plant, Evonik
is expanding its R&D center at its Xinzhuang site in Shanghai, with
an investment of € 23 million. The expansion includes state-of-theart
laboratories for research and development, application technology,
and technical service, with aims to develop product applications
and provide technology service for customers throughout China and
Asia Pacific.
Biogas upgrading: new plant for hollow fiber membrane modules
Evonik Industries is investing an upper-singledigit-million-euro
amount in a plant produc ing
SEPURAN® hollow fiber membrane mod ules
at its Schörfling (Austria) site. In particular, the
novel membrane technology facilitates the
energy-efficient upgrading of biogas to biomethane.
Biomethane is fed into the public
natural gas grid. The new hollow fibre spinning
plant will come on-stream within 2012
to meet the grow ing demand on the biogas
market.
“With this investment, we’re systematically
strengthening our activities in the area
of gas separation membranes, proving our
commitment to renewable energies by producing
biomethane that can be fed directly
into the grid,” said Dr. Axel Kobus, head of the
growth segment Fibers & Membranes. “In
contrast to other processes, our membrane
tech nology needs no auxiliary chemicals; nor
does it generate any solid wastes or effluents
that would need to be disposed of.” The Evonik
process is offered on the market by leading
plant engineering and construction partners,
and works cost-effectively, even in relatively
small plants. It is therefore particularly suitable
for the local energy supply of tomorrow.
The novel technology is based on membranes
produced from high-performance
Hollow fiber membrane module for
the upgrading of biogas to biomethane
polymers that in the past have been, for
example, processed into fibers and used in
hot-gas filtration. At pressures of up to 25 bar,
such membranes allow significantly improved
separation of carbon dioxide and methane
with stable selectivity, in a single process
step. The method yields methane of purity
higher than 99 percent. Neither energyintensive
recycle streams nor costly downstream
processing steps are required, which
significantly distinguishes the Evonik method
from the technologies currently available on
the market.
At present, biogas is still largely converted
to electricity at its production site, with a
maximum of 40 percent of its energy being
utilized by the conversion to power. In such
local power generation the waste heat often
remains largely unused. When fed into the
natural gas grid, however, the raw material
can be stored much more efficiently, and
more than 90 percent of its energy utilized
as power and heat.